92 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



nigosa, R. cinnaniomea, and R. alpina). Some of these root 

 cuttings, especially the trees, will take two years to make plants. 

 This is a common practice with the Japanese Anemone and some 

 greenhouse plants such as Dieffenbachia, Dracaena, and Bouvardia. 



Cuttings of evergreen trees and shrubs, mostly coniferous plants, 

 are put in during the autumn and kept over in a cool greenhouse 

 or cold frame. The same thing is done with Cotoneasters, Euony- 

 mus, and Buxus. They scarcely do more than callous during the 

 winter. A fair percentage may be expected to root during the 

 following spring and summer, but some Junipers, Torre^^as, and 

 Taxus may lay over another year. Those that root may be planted 

 in the spring, but it is customary to keep them in flats until es- 

 tablished as the roots of some are very brittle, especially the Yews 

 and Torreyas. 



It is best to root all the forms and variations from the type from 

 cuttings, especially the foliage forms of conifers, as they are surer 

 of retaining their varietal character than when grafted. Ordi- 

 narily the juvenile forms of Thuya, Juniper, and Chamaecyparis, 

 with acicular whorled lea^-es, give way in a few years to the ad- 

 pressed adult form and sometimes quite extreme forms. If, how- 

 ever, these juvenile and other forms are rooted from cuttings they 

 will very likely retain their individuality during the lifetime of the 

 plant. In this way many peculiar forms of conifers have been 

 established and are now in cultivation, but if grafted they are 

 liable to take on the adult form or revert sometime or other, either 

 wholly or in part. The dimorphic character of many conifers 

 makes it difficult to fix these variations with any degree of cer- 

 tainty and they sometimes break away. The Red Cedar, as before 

 stated, has at first acicular juvenile leaves and later adpressed, 

 scale-like adult leaves. Now if it is pruned or gets injured the 

 first new leaves that appear are juvenile and it does not resume the 

 adult form for two or three years, starting life over again, after a 

 setback, so to speak. 



It takes less time to flower a plant from a cutting or graft than 

 from a seed and at less stature. This fact is often taken advantage 

 of to dwarf stock. A cutting of the well-known Poinsettia if taken 

 in spring and grown will sometimes reach a height of six feet before 

 flowering, but if a cutting is taken in July it will flower at one-third 



