Chapter 4. 
METHODS OF VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION AND 
PROPAGATION. 
Tubers. Bulbs and corms. Bulbils. Runners. Layerings ‘and 
cuitings. Pudding and grafting. 
As explained in my first lecture vegetative repro- 
duction is the multiplication of the plant by means of 
structures, which partake of the nature of vegetative organs 
and are not the result of the fertilisation of flowers. 
This means therefore that the offspring, however numerous 
they become in the course of years, are not so much 
descendants as actual portions of the original individual 
just as the most recently formed buds of a tree are really 
part of the.same tree, which ten or a hundred or even a 
thousand years before bore similar buds. The only 
difference is that the buds which the tree produces year 
after year all remain attached to the same parental stem, 
while in the case of tubers or bulbs the parent plant dies 
down each year, so that these structures become so many 
separate individuals. The very large number of distinct 
plants which thus arise will perhaps best come home to us 
if we consider that in the case of a potato plant pro- 
ducing yearly only six new tubers, we should have at the 
end of ten seasons obtained over ten millions of tubers. 
If an average of ten tubers were produced by each plant, 
the number of tubers at the end of ten generations would 
be 10,000,000,000 potatoes. As the millions of new plants 
which are thus developed are, properly speaking, all parts 
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