CHAPTER III 

 HARD-WOODED CUTTINGS 



THE making of hard-wooded cuttings differs from that of making 

 most softwooded cuttings in that a heel of older and harder wood 

 is attached. As their name implies, soft-wooded cuttings are soft, 

 fleshy in character and are propagated under conditions which helps 

 them to do their work quickly such being essential to their success. 

 But hard-wooded subjects have no super-abounding sap, their blood 

 is more sluggish, their vitality less exuberant. As their natural life 

 is much longer their progress is correspondingly slower, a matter 

 we referred to sufficiently in our opening chapter. 



Just as the development of the shrub is relatively slow, so is the 

 cutting slow in rooting, taking sometimes as many months as 

 geraniums and other soft plants take days. The propagator, taking 

 his plants as he finds them, falls in with their natural habits, knowing 

 how futile it is to run counter to them. He makes no attempt to 

 hustle them, not even to gently force them, for experience assures 

 him the end of such attempts would be .failure. 



There are exceptions. We can just remember the time, some half- 

 century ago, when we used to strike the soft wood of aucuba japonica 

 in heat, but at that time the plant, now so common, was not well 

 known and was in fact scarce. It lent itself to this method, though 

 there was quite a large percentage that died, but no one in these days 

 would think of reverting to that obsolete practice, for we have for 

 many years known it to be as hardy and as easy to propagate as the 

 common laurel. 



Now why are most the great majority of hard-wooded cuttings 

 made with a heel of older and harder wood ? We made many 

 thousands even in our young days, but we regret we were never 

 enlightened as to the reason probably because the propagator 

 under whom we learnt did not himself know and was not sufficiently 

 curious to find out. So far as we know and have been able to work 

 out our own theories there is a two-fold reason, or perhaps we might 

 more correctly say there are two reasons. The first is, that because 

 of the lengthy and trying period between the time the cutting is 



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