THE DIFFERENT METHODS OF PROPAGATION OF 



PLANTS. 



By Jackson Dawson, Jamaica Plain, Mass. 



Read before the Society, March 6, 1909. 



It seems to me that this theme has been so thoroughly rehearsed 

 that it would be almost impossible for me to give to you anything 

 new on the subject. Throughout all time in the annals of civiliza- 

 tion the question has been predominant as to which is the best 

 method of increasing the vegetable kingdom, especially the plants 

 useful to mankind, either for food or for ornament. At the present 

 day most of our gardeners have little or no conception of the care 

 needed to carry on successfully a large collection of seeds, grafts, 

 and cuttings, especially when they have been collected from all 

 parts of the globe, and are obliged, as I have been, to grow them all 

 under one sheet of glass. The gardener of the present day is a 

 specialist; he grows a few plants of commercial value for house 

 decoration or for market, a house of roses, carnations, chrysanthe- 

 mums, and bedding plants. The problem of seed growing with a 

 few exceptions is but little known, and except in a few places such 

 as on a large estate where great variety is necessary to beautify the 

 landscape and grounds, the gardener is interested only in the pro- 

 duction of a few species or a new rose, carnation, gloxinia, or begonia. 

 In these few places mentioned, however, men want to be up in all 

 subjects that will increase their ideas of the propagation of plants, 

 particularly of hard-wooded plants, for which there is so much 

 demand. 



My theme is the propagation of plants, and while it has been put 

 before the public so many times, to the present generation it will be 

 new. As I wish in a short paper like this to give as much informa- 

 tion on the subject as I can, and to make it as clear as I can to all, 

 I will not use scientific terms which only a few will understand, 



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