CUTTING. A detached portion of a plant inserted in soil or water for the purpose of prop agation. This process, one of the oldest forms of artificial reproduction, is also one of the most important. Plants in general lend themselves readily to the process, thus enabling the propa gator to secure hundreds of offspring from a single individual. Cuttings are superior to seeds, because, with the exception of bud varia tions, plants so propagated come true to kind, i.e. varieties of cultivated plants which do not come true to sort by seeds can be perpetuated by cut tings. In its sphere, propagation by cuttings is as important to commercial horticulture as the art of budding or grafting. While a great major ity of the cultivated plants are capable of being increased by one form of cutting or another, it is not economical so to increase them, and other means are resorted to. Cuttings are made from such a variety of parts of plants—sometimes even from root, stem and leaf of the same plant —that a corresponding number of styles of ea ting.; have been developed. In general, cuttings are made from hard wood or soft wood or herba eeous plants,• and are classified accordingly: under each general head there are a number of subdivisions, depending, upon the plant employed or the Manner of making the cutting, as fSimple stem, Hard-wood ' (2) Single eye, cuttings 1 (3) (1) Mallet, etc.
(1) Stein-cuttings—slips, Soft-wood (2) Lear-cuttings.
(hPrbaeron9) (3) Root root stalk or rhizome, cuttings 1 (1) Tubers, etc.
Some conception of the importance of this means of increasing plants can he gathered from the fact that, except for the production of new varieties, all commercial varieties of grapes, currant,, and gooseberries are increased in this way, while among flowering and ornamental bed ding plants. millions are annually produced by one or another of these methods in the United States alone. Sugar-cane and pineapples are extensively perpetuated by this process.
The parts used in making cuttings are numer ous, but the methods resorted to are as varied as interesting. Some plants root readily from cuttings placed in the open ground; others re quire special treatment before they will 'strike' root, while still others require most careful nursing in the greenhouse and even tinder a bell jar to induce them to take root. Special devices, carrying a variety of soils, and capable of main taining a given degree of heat and moisture, have been constructed, in order to facilitate the work of propagating plants by this means. Consult: Bailey, The Nursery Book (New York, 1896) ; article on "Cuttings," in Cyclopedia of American Horticulture (New York, 1900).