Chapter 4. 



METHODS OF VEGETATIVE REPRODUCTION AND 

 PROPAGATION. 



Tubers. Bulbs and corms. Bulbils. Runners. Layerings and 

 cuttings. Budding and grafting. 



As explained in my first lecture vegetative refro- 

 diiction is the multiplication of the plant by mxeans 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 m 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 }'ear 

 after year all remain attached to the same parental stem, 

 while m the case of tubers or bulbs the parent plant dies 

 dow^n each year, so that these structures becomic so m.any 

 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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