210 PERMANENT NURSERIES. 



their being placed in position should be prune 1 off ; the remainder 

 may be left with all the : r foliage, as the fibres of the bamboo are 

 rapid conductors of water. 



6. Layers. 



Layering is scarcely the work of a forest nurseryman, yet in this 

 country he may have a fruit or flower garden attached to his 

 nursery. Moreover the operation may sometimes be utilized out 

 in the forest for covering bare ground round certain spreading 

 shrubs or trees. 



Layers may be made to strike root either (1) in the ground, if 

 the branches are low and flexible or (2) in soil contained in a pot, 

 basket, &c., above ground (by circumposition, as it is called, if the 

 branches are too high and too rigid to be bent down to the ground. 

 In the first case, the branches to be layered are bent into the soil 

 (Figs. 54 and 55) and kept in place by means of a stake or peg 

 with a curved head or with a loop of wire buried in the ground, 

 or, if the layers are thin or possess little elasticity, simply with a 

 stone placed over the soil. If the branch is long and very flexible, 

 it may be bent into and out of the ground more than once (serpen- 

 tine layering, Fig. 55). In layering by circumposition (Fig. 55), 

 the branch more or less retains its position, the soil is put into a 

 box, garden-pot or basket, or may even be held together merely 

 with a piece of matting or coarse canvass bound with twine. A 

 garden pot, cut some way down on one side before being burnt, 

 does extremely well, or the branch may be enclosed between the 

 two halves of one and the same pot, the halves closing up against 

 one another except where a whole in the bottom allows the branch 

 to pass through. As in this elevated position the soil is liable to 

 dry up rapidly it should,. during dry weather, be covered with moss, 

 straw, &c., and kept constantly moist by means of a pot suspended 

 vertically above, through a hole in the bottom of which the water 

 drips continually. Whatever the method of layering employed, 

 the early and abundant development of adventitious roots is en- 

 couraged by arresting the downward progress of the elaborated 

 sap. This may be done either (i) by means of a ligature, or (ii) 

 by twisting, or (iii) by tongueing or heeling (Fig. 54 a), or (iv) 

 by ringino- (Fig. 54 6), or (v) by splitting the branch through the 

 middle for about 2 inches of its length, or (vi) by cutting one or 

 more notches right through the bark into the wood. 



With species that are specially well adapted for this method of 

 propagation the branches may be laid in the ground for a consider- 



