THE GREEN-HOUSE. 



187 



Most plants succeed best when the cuttings are 

 taken off in young succulent shoots ; and hence it is 

 necessary that the plant to be propagated be in a 

 growing state. For this purpose, it is the practice 

 with nurserymen and others who propagate exten- 

 sively, to place specimens of the plants considered 

 more rare or difficult to root in the stove early in 

 January, that they may protrude shoots ready to be 

 taken off in February. With the more common 

 kinds, or any not much in demand or readily struck, 

 they wait till they are sufficiently grown with the 

 usual temperature of the green-house. As the villa 

 winter-garden will generally be kept at a higher tem- 

 perature than the green-houses of nurserymen, where 

 the object is to preserve the plants, more than to pro- 

 duce an effect ; and as it is only now and then that a 

 few cuttings can be wanted for keeping up the stock, 

 abundance of young wood will be found without re- 

 course to forcing. 



Though most plants strike readily in young wood, 

 and with leaves on the upper part of the cutting, yet 

 there are some which root very well in old wood, or 

 wood of one or two years' growth, as the orange, the 

 leaves being retained; and others of the deciduous 

 kind which root freely in wood^ one, two, or three 

 years old, without any leaves. This however applies 

 only to the deciduous sorts, as Fuchsia, Aloy^sia, &c. 

 Some plants root most readily when the cutting is just 

 beginning to ripen its wood, and others when the 

 wood is ripened. No general rules are in this respect 



