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ON THE PROPAGATION OF FLOWERS. 



It is a lucky circumstance for the admirers of fine flowers, that many of them 

 are very easily propagated. Whether they be hothouse, greenhouse, or hardy 

 plants, and whether trees, shrubs, or herbs, they may be all increased either by 

 seeds, layers, cuttings, or by simple division. 



Flowering plants which only live one summer, are called annuals, and are of 

 two classes, tender, and hardy. The first are raised from seed sowed in pots or 

 pans placed in a mild hotbed, or near the windows of a greenhouse, and when the 

 plants are of sufficient size, are either potted for the convenience of removing 

 them to stages, or to balconies, or window-sills, where wanted to flower. Or they 

 may be so raised to be planted out in the open borders in May. All the hardy 

 annuals are sown where they are intended to flower in the open ground. 



Portions of both these descriptions of annual flowers should be sown twice in 

 the season, viz. in March, and again in May ; in order to prolong the flowering 

 as far into the autumn as possible. Greenhouse and stove plants may be also 

 raised from seeds, when these can be procured, in the same way as are tender 

 annuals, though the process is often more tedious. 



But the most expeditious way of propagating stove and greenhouse plants, is 

 by cuttings ; by which a great majority of them may be increased. Some skill 

 is required in choosing the proper shoots or parts of shoots, which most readily 

 make roots. Experience has taught us that, in propagating by cuttings, if we 

 take those parts which are too young and succulent, they are liable to mould and 

 damp off before new roots are formed. On the other hand, if we select pieces of 

 the old shoots, that is, such as have been formed two or three years previous, 

 they will but with difficulty make roots, because they have less vital energy than 

 the shoots more recently produced. The propagator, therefore, chooses shoots of 

 exotic plants, as well as those of all others, which are neither too young nor too 

 old ; and this is the point on which practical skill must be exercised. 



All the family of Cape heaths, and all heath-like-growing shrubs, whether 

 African, South American, Asiatic, or Australian, may be propagated by taking 

 points of their young shoots as soon as they have gained sufficient length and 

 firmness, say a length of two inches, and the colour somewhat brown at the place 

 where the cutting is separated. The cutting should be cut right across, just 

 below a joint, if it be a jointed stem, or just below the insertion of a leaf. The 

 cutting need not be longer than from one to two inches. One-third of the lower 

 end is divested of leaves, and this portion of the cutting should be inserted and 

 fixed in the soil. The shallower the cutting is inserted, the better chance it has 

 of making active roots. There is a certain stratum of the earth on which the 

 moisture rising from below, and the action or influences of the air meet ; and in 

 that stratum the rooting of cuttings as well as the germination of seeds most 



VOL. II. NO. XXII. DECEMBER. X 



