82 PLANT LIFE ON THE FAKM. 



Bud Formation* In the higher perennial plants, 

 among which are included many which come under the 

 notice of the farmer, asexual multiplication is effected by 

 means of buds. When a bud is to be formed, growth in 

 length is checked, the stem or the branch ceases length- 

 ening, the outer leaves often become reduced to a scale- 

 like condition, while the inner, central, and younger 

 ones remain in an undeveloped state until the warmth of 

 spring calls them into growth, when they gradually 

 lengthen into shoots, as in fruit and timber trees. While 

 the buds remain fixed to the trees which gave them 

 origin, their growth and development is a process of ex- 

 tention or branching merely. Similarly the process of 

 " tillering " is simply due to the formation and develop- 

 ment of buds and shoots from the nodes or knots at the 

 base of the stem of the wheat, and is to be regarded as a 

 process of branching rather than of actual multiplication. 

 Such branches are formed more readily in proportion as 

 the seed is not buried deeply. The same process of 

 growth which is desirable in a cereal or in clover is 

 highly objectionable in the case of " weeds," such as 

 docks, thistles, and plantains. The imperfect measures 

 often taken to exterminate these often tend to increase 

 the mischief by bringing about the formation of many 

 new buds. When buds become detached naturally, or 

 are severed from the parent artificially and made to grow 

 as when a gardener takes a " slip," " buds" a rose, or 

 "grafts" a fruit tree the process is really one of multi- 

 plication. So, when a farmer plants a " seed potato," 

 which yields him, it may be, forty-fold, he really plants, 

 not a " seed," nor a root, but a peculiar form of bud 

 called a tuber. 



Tubers. A potato, in fact, is an underground branch, 

 or connected series of buds, forming a swollen subter- 

 ranean shoot, In this are stored up the starch and other 



