212 VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY 



The power of living plants to assimilate the food manu- 

 factured by others is taken advantage of in the processes 

 of grafting and budding. In these operations a slip of 

 a particular plant is inserted into a wound made in the stem 

 of another nearly related one, and the two are closely bound 

 together. The graft or scion comes into such close connec- 

 tion with the stem or stock that the food which is contained 

 in the cells of the latter passes into the tissues of the graft, 

 which thus receive their nourishment. After a longer or 

 shorter time the two become so completely united that they 

 live subsequently as a single organism, and the processes of 

 carbohydrate and protein construction proceed as in a 

 normal plant. 





