ROOTING ROSEBUDS.

Globe, Volume XXIII, Issue 2402, 14 December 1881, Page 3

ROOTING ROSEBUDS.

[Prom " The Garden,” Aug. 20.] First of the medium itself in which they are to be rooted ; it must be porous at base, for drainage is the foundation of horticulture. Water in motion is the breath of its life ; at rest, it is its death. It must be hard. Firmness provokes growth ; this is so with seeds, cuttings, buds, especially the latter. The bark and bud coverings hold growing force as in a vice. The ratio of growth may often be measured by the amount of mechanical and other resistance that holds it in check. The providing of this necessary firmness is one of the difficulties of Boses in our new medium. Moist silica gets more solid than any of the other materials, and perhaps for this and other reasons it is the best. It is also pure as well as firm, The buds need nothing from our moist medium but pure water. The buds need differ little from those used for insertion into Briers. If anything perhaps they should be rather riper ; growing buds and succulent dormant buds must be avoided. The former will exhaust rooting strength in useless growth ; the latter have not enough store of organisable matter to root at all. Plump well filled dormant buds are the ones to choose. With mature buds and thick bark and special care in insertion and after treatment, the buds will form roots. But it is far better to retain a thin sheath of wood under the buds. It trovides it with more food during the preliminary stages, and thus lessens the risk of being starved to death while endeavouring to root. The sheath of wood, too, enables the bud to be securely fixed in its rooting medium without risk of injury to the bark. Besides, it is just at the point of union between the bark and the wood that roots are formed. It is a mistake to assume that these are formed by either the wood or the bark ; on the contrary, they proceed from what is called the cambium, a sort of disputable borderland between the outside of the wood and the inside of the bark. Consequently by abstracting the wood we greatly lessen the bud’s power to form roots. In the case of small-leaved Boses the leaf should be intact. With larger leaved sorts two or three leaflets should suffice. Th-'re is a practical difficulty in leaving too much leaf. Its weight, unless supported by a tiny stake (really the beat method), is apt to pull the bud out of the rooting medium. Otherwise, perhaps, the more leaf left the better, for the green leaf may be said to take the initiative in the formation of roots. Each movement of fluids through it causes a correlative movement throughout the bud and its appendages, and these movements, in whatever direction, are summonses to the bud to hasten to make roots. Of course, atmospheric .and other conditions must be sufficiently moist to prevent the leaves from flagging ; the bud and its appendages will also be preserved fresh buried, all but the point, in the moist sand. A close, cold frame is the beat place for rooting Kose buds. The soil must be moist and perfectly drained, and will not require much water until the buds have rooted. The leaves should be dewed over once or twico a day, and no sun should shine directly on them till the buds have taken to the soil, that is, either callused or formed roots. Artificial heat may be given, and bell or other propagating glasses or cloches used, but as these introduce fresh elements of danger, and are by no means essential to the rooting of Eosa buds in earth, they are better dispensed with. It is hoped that two classes of readers at least may profit by this article—those who wish to have all Boses on their own roots, and also those who are so enamoured of the Brier that they have used up every one of them. Though their own v ows are so widely divergent, they may meet in friendly rivalry on this common ground of forcing the earth itself to become the true foster parent of many a good Rose.