"Rod" wrote in message
...

"Franz Heymann" wrote in message
...
If you Google on "aspirin rooting" or "salicylic acid rooting" you will
come across a large number of cases in which aspirin and
willow bark extract are discussed in the context of rooting agents.
Unfortunately all the entries I found are either
qualitatively anecdotal or second-hand reports.

Exactly. We need to see the papers if they exist.
As to rooting powders as found in garden centres - this stuff has
virtually zero shelf life and is therefore almost certainly
worthless at point of sale.

If this is indeed true, could we start a campaign to persuade the
manufacturers to put a "use by" date on the package? Otherwise, as you say,
we are almost certainly buying pigs in pokes. How am I to know how many
years the stuff has been on the shelves?

On a contrary note: In the case of the powdered materials, how on earth can
there be any chemical reactions in a powder lying there,quite still? I
notice that in the case of indole-3-acetic acid, which is the most popular
(only?) rooting agent, it has a melting point of 165 deg C. Now, if a
substance is stable enough to survive up to such a temperature *and* is
stable enough to actually melt, and re-solidify, I would have thought that
it would be pretty stable at room temperature.

Do you have any reference for your statement that the stuff has a short
shelf-life?

[snip]

Franz