Someone I was talking to was advocating planting willow trees as cuttings rather than planting bare-root trees, saying the cuttings would actually grow more reliably and vigorously.
Is this good advice if I had free choice between the two and there weren't other factors?
I prefer cuttings: you see a good plant, you accidentally cut few branches, and you plant them. After one or two year, you remove all but one.
Bare-root is always more tricky: hole, watering, etc. So I prefer using "statistics", and so various cuttings, and ignoring most of common rules on planting saplings.
Various plants are created with cuttings (but not all plants are able to create roots from stem/stem modes). When you see "clones" (e.g. fruits plants), usually it means that the plant originated in such manner (or they were grafted). All grape vines you see are all created in such manner (and often cuted twice): also the root stock is a clone derived from a branch.
