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 CHAPTER XVI

BUD PROPAGATION

We have learned (in Chap. VI) that plants propagate by means of seeds. They also propagate by means of bud parts,—as rootstocks (rhizomes), roots, runners, layers, bulbs. The pupil should determine how any plant in which he is interested naturally propagates itself (or spreads its kind). Determine this for raspberry, blackberry, strawberry, June-grass or other grass, nut-grass, water lily, May apple or mandrake, burdock, Irish potato, sweet potato, buckwheat, cotton, pea, corn, sugar-cane, wheat, rice.

Plants may be artificially propagated by similar means, as by layers, cuttings, and grafts. The last two we may discuss here.

Cuttings in General.—A bit of a plant stuck into the ground stands a chance of growing; and this bit is a cutting. Plants have preferences, however, as to the kind of a bit which shall be used, but there is no way of telling what this preference is except by trying. In some instances this preference has not been discovered, and we say that the plant cannot be propagated by cuttings.

Most plants prefer that the cutting be made of the soft or growing parts (called "wood" by gardeners), of which the "slips" of geranium and coleus are examples. Others grow equally well from cuttings of the hard or mature parts or wood, as currant and grape; and in some instances this mature wood may be of roots, as in the blackberry. In some cases cuttings are made of tubers, as in the Irish