ABSTRACT

INTRODUCTION The professional tree propagator needs to be a keen observer of plants, understand biology, and be a skilled technical practitioner. Propagation is so basic to plant science and agriculture that there is an International Plant Propagator’s Society devoted to this subject. For the forester/arboriculturist/ horticulturist, propagation is the path for perpetuation of a particular selection or species of tree or other plant. Successful propagators work in concert with the inherent capacities of a plant to multiply itself, capacities which have been honed through centuries of evolutionary selection. It is often much easier to complement the modes of propagation observed in a plant’s ecological niche than to force into production a mode of propagation foreign to that species. Nevertheless, man’s ingenuity has given us an array of technologies whereby we can extend the modes of propagation well beyond those expressed in the natural environment.