An excellent source of vegetative buds for use in plant hormone studies on apical dominance.

When studying the role of plant hormones in the control of growth at apical meristems, it is often difficult to obtain needed amounts of physiologically uniform buds. A source and method are described for obtaining sufficient quantities of large, uniform buds and for the treatment of the buds with indoleacetic acid and kinetin. Buds from the root system of Euphorbia esula L. were grown in Petri plates, with agar suspending the short root sections from which they emanate. Plant hormones are applied by their incorporation in the agar. The effect of various concentrations of indoleacetic acid and kinetin on bud growth was examined.