PROPAGATION OF PLANTS. 95 



summer is with some quite as unfavorable as the coldest 

 of midwinter. You would probably succeed were you to 

 begin your experiments by the 1st of March, and con- 

 tinue them three or four months. 



2. Select for cuttings only the strongest shoots of re- 

 cent growth. Any others will either fail to take root, or 

 will make very puny and feeble plants. 



3. Make the cut with a sharp knife, in a somewhat 

 slanting direction, just below a leaf -joint the third, 

 fourth, or fifth from the end. Trim off two or three of 

 the lower leaves, allowing one or two next to the terminal 

 bud to remain, and the cutting is ready for the sand. 



The point at which to make the cut is a matter of some 

 importance. With some few plants roots will grow only 

 from a leaf -joint, and with perhaps nearly all rather more 

 readily from that point than any other. If the cutting 

 is very tender, it will rot, or " damp off ; " if old and 

 hard, it takes a longer time for the roots to start, if they 

 start at all. The best point is, therefore, somewhere be- 

 tween these two extremes some florists say, just where 

 the stem will break and snap apart on being bent. 



4. Wash the sand perfectly clean, and put it in a 

 water-tight dish a coffee-cup, or something larger. In- 

 sert the cuttings without crowding more closely than 

 contact of the leaves, and keep them as much as possible 

 in the sunshine, with the sand thoroughly wet "wet as 

 mud." 



5. Examine the cuttings occasionally by lifting some 

 of them carefully from the sand. When any one is found 

 to have roots about half an inch long, remove it to the 

 smallest sized pot, and accord to it the dignity of a new 

 and separate plant. The time required to form the roots 

 varies from a week to a month or more, and there is hope 

 so long as the surface of the cut is sound and hard. 



6. For cuttings of Ivy, Oleander, and some other 

 woody plants, a small glass bottle filled with water will 



