I've grown peperomia obtusifolia (baby rubber plant) from leaves. It took 10 or 12 months for me to see new leaves coming up. Once they started, though, the plant took off.

I've also grown crassula aborescens (silver dollar jade) from leaves. More than a year later, the plant is still teeny tiny. I expect it to be very small for a long while.

Wow! So besides rooting hormone and good soil you need alot of patience. I think it's interesting that the pilea came up already although it took about 4 months but that thicker leaved plants take longer. Thanks for the reply!

Hi there Nina,
Unless you got a bud and piece of stem along with the hoya it probably won't grow into a new plant. The leaves do root and will stay green for years possibly but never produce a plant. Check on the hoya forum for more info there are a great bunch of people over there. Can't comment on the fiddle leaf fig, never knew they would root from leaf! I've done some begonias, african violets, snakeplant and peperomia from leaves they all root and grow quicker in the spring for me.

Chaz,

That's disappointing about the hoya. My husband brought me home a twig or part of the vine, you might say, from work. The cleaning lady there had rescued it from a trash can. What I did was to cut the stem up in segments and plant them making sure each segment had at least one leaf. Maybe I did get a bud in there somewhere. This was back in March. I sure hope it works otherwise I have to go try to find a hoya plant at a store because I love them. We saw a mature one at Longwood Gardens last weekend (near Philadelphia). It was very old and beautiful. Have you had good success with what you have propagated? Any tips? I will check the hoya forum--thanks.

Nina,
It sounds like you took a piece of the main stem along with the leaf? If so you'll eventually get a plant out of it, it may just take some time. I read your post to mean that you just rooted a single leaf with no stem which is possible, but not productive. Good luck, as long as you each segment has a leaf or two you'll do fine.

Thanks, Tim and Chaz for the info and encouragement. My boss told me that he had gotten the leaf that grew into the mother plant for my leaf from the floor of an office he was visiting 14 years ago. He asked if he could take it since it had fallen on the floor. He put it in a glass of water, it rooted, and grew into the huge tree -like plant we have in our office today.
I was afraid that maybe I needed a node or something other than a stem to grow my plant into a leaf. It was just a 1 1/2" stem. Putting it in a plastic propagation case set on a heating pad (low setting) really worked for producing roots fast. It's a little brown and dry at the base of the leaf, but the rest of the leaf is still as healthy as ever. Do you think I should cut the leaf down a bit? I know the African Violet folks say that works with their plants....they cut them in half saying it stimulates growth of the plantlets.
Chaz, I wasn't too clear when I posed my question about the hoya. My mistake. I am hopeful about getting results someday, since all the leaves had some stem on them.
Nina

A lot of times people buy hoya cuttings and there is one node to the cutting. It takes longer to produce a plant, but it can be done. Hoya kerrii is one which is often produced with one node cuttings. Be patient with the fig and hoya, more than likely they are filling their pots with roots, before they decide to really take off.

I am just now seeing growth on most of my hoyas. They are really growing gangbusters at the moment, I have one hoya which has grown three new leaves and about 1.5 in in a week. My obovata is finally growing leaves on it's stems which have been bare for months.

I would leave the leaf on until it either falls off itself or you get some new growth for photosynthesis.

There is a difference between nodal/leaf-bud/single-eye cuttings and 'leaf cuttings'.

Some leaf cuttings have preformed, primary meristems. We could simplify that statement by saying that these leaves have a group of cells that was engaged in meristematic (growth-extending) activity. These leaves come ready to rock with what is needed to form a shoot and grow.

Other leaf cuttings have tissues that are entirely differentiated. That is all the tissue is formed and dedicated to specific jobs other than acting as a growing point (meristem). These leaf cuttings produce secondary, wound-induced meristems. In these leaf cuttings, the dedicated tissues must first dedifferentiate and then change (redifferentiate) into new meristematic (growing) zones to form an adventitious bud.

In leaf cuttings, the ability to generate buds or shoots, not roots, is usually what determines success. Roots form much more readily than buds, and in some plants, rooted leaf cuttings can survive for years w/o producing an adventitious shoot. I witnessed this in a schefflera leaf I rooted years ago. I drilled a hole in a piece of lava, placed it in a tray of water, and inserted a scheff leaf into the hole. After a few weeks it rooted, but I finally gave shoot growth up as a lost cause some 3 years into the adventure.

Al

Al,

You're a patient guy! I think I get what you are saying. But how can you tell when you are getting a leaf that has differentiated cells as opposed to one that has the dedicated tissues that must dedifferentiate? Are there physical characteristics or does it vary by plant type? Maybe the nodes and the stems are the only places that have those tissues.
Do you know if there is a difference between "water roots" and "soil roots"? Someone said that rooting a cutting in water only produced the water roots and when planted, the plant would then have to make soil roots.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. How do you know so much?

Mentha,
To what do you attribute the growth spurt in your hoyas? Just time and patience? That's wonderful to hear that they are doing so well. I don't even know what kind of hoya I have as I am so new to the species. It had clusters of pinkish white waxy beautiful flowers a few months ago. When they dropped off, that's when I cut up the only stem I had, making sure I had a leaf or two on each stem segment. Then I placed them in small individual pots in my propagator.
I finally cut my huge fig leaf down a bit, I thought maybe all that green was sapping too much energy from the plant when it should be making a baby plant!
Nina
BTW my name is pronounced with a long I sound rather than the usual E sound. NOt that it matters with email!

Hi Nina,
I have a friend who pronounces her name the same as you do. I would say my plants are growing because of the heat and they are spending the summer outside. I also feed them Eleanors VF-11 and leftover miracle grow tomato food from my tomato spray.
If Al doesn't answer your questions I'm sure someone else can get technical. I would but I'm headed out.

I got a coleus to work for awhile but then it ended up dying on me well after it had formed a normal sized plant. Go figure. Another coleus leaf, which was pretty much entirely leaf, grew other leaves for a while but it was in a weird rosette shape and wasn't getting any stem. I'm surprised it worked at all (I was taking these cuttings in the middle of the night from planters on campus in late October, and I didn't even have a cutting tool, so accuracy was difficult).

I'm also trying to do this with some African Violet leaves right now, because I woke up in the middle of the night and started attacking my plant for some reason (I think I thought it was an alarm clock or something) and broke several leaves in the process, so I'm trying to get them to root because they're not good for anything else at this point.

I practice bonsai, so that pursuit in and of itself is an exercise in patience. I think I'm very patient with plants and pets, but I'm not always as patient with people as I'd like to be.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience. ~Ralph Waldo Emersonsize>

I make mention of the difference in tissue types between plants rooted in water and plants rooted in a solid, well-aerated medium in the recent thread the embedded link takes you to.

Roots and shoots on cuttings arise completely independent of each other. In some cuttings, cells in the vascular cambium or other branch parts must also dedifferentiate and redifferentiate to form roots. If I had to make a broad generalization, I would say that most leaves with at least partially lignified (woody) leaf petioles (stems) (ficus, the sages/salvia, schefflera, etc.) will not have meristematic tissues associated with the leaves, while plants with more herbaceous stems (coleus, begonia, Impatiens, etc.), will. When rooting the former, it is best to take anvil/nodal/leaf-bud cuttings of these plants, or stem cuttings with multiple nodes, which almost guarantees predifferentiated tissues in the leaf axils (crotch between the leaf and stem).

Some plant's natural growth rhythm appears to be in spurts. Actually, growth spurts may not be as pronounced as you might think. Plants like Citrus, for example, seem to put on lots of canopy growth, which then slows while root growth takes place - and of course you cannot see roots grow, so it's somewhat natural to believe growth has stalled. The reasons why are not all clearly understood, but we know that during the root growth phase, roots grow rapidly while the top of the plant seems quiet. This is the plants strategy for building nutrients to a 'threshold' level. Once the threshold level has been reached, plants enter a vegetative growth phase in which the nutrients are used in growing and maturing leaves and stems while root growth slows dramatically until a 'lag' phase is reached and the process starts all over again. Important is the fact that if any one or multiple nutrients are in short supply (deficient) it increases the time it takes to reach the 'threshold level'. Hormonal (growth regulators), metabolic, and cultural conditions are all players in determining when and how often the spurts occur.

I'm sleepy now. Good night. ;o)

Al

I'm back to answer the growth question, but it seems Al answered it so well. My hoyas were repotted this spring, so they took most of the summer growing roots. I now know they have established a substantial amount of roots because now they are growing stems & leaves. Some hoyas take years before they show any growth at all, so I'm happy with their progress. I've had them for less than a year. I repot as soon as they come into my house in my epi/hoya mix, which at the moment consists of 1/3 crushed red lava rock, 1/3 perlite, and 1/3 peat free potting soil. This is the best mix I've come up with. I'll be using it for some time to come. I may ditch the perlite if I can find a local source of LECA, though. I am looking into making a plant cloner, so they will be converted to semi-hydro eventually.

I think that root growth happens more often during spring and fall, while above ground growth happens in the warmer months. However here in this part of CA there is no real winter, so root growth happens in winter also.

Mentha,
Hello from another homeschooler! Hope everything is still ok for you folks out there in CA!
I found Al's explanation of plant growth coming in spurts and switching between the roots, stems, leaves, flowers very interesting. It makes sense. First you get established (roots to anchor the plant and bring in the water, etc.) then you can concentrate on growing above the soil. Or something like that. Of course you need a few leaves to keep the plant going while the roots are forming....
Glad your hoys is taking off. That would make me so happy. I have very little experience with hoya. I never even knew they existed until 3 or 4 months ago, then it took me awhile to identify the stem I had been given.
Where do you find stuff like epi-hoya mix? Do you have to order all this online> I don't see it at Home Depot....Why do you use peat free potting soil? I have tried using 1/2 perlite and 1/2 sphagnum peat moss or perlite and potting soil. Don't know which works. I haven't gotten that far yet.
Nina

Nina,
Things are a bit shakey for us homeschoolers, They are trying their hardest to make it illegal. If they do, we'll move out of state. I fill out my own papers with the state, so I am my own school. We used to go through an umbrella school but it got to be too expensive. This year we're going to sign up with HSLDA.

I make my own mix. Most potting soils are too heavy, thus staying wet way too long. I use the above mentioned formula, 1/3 potting soil without peat, 1/3 perlite, and 1/3 red lava rock which can be found as a ground cover at a rock yard or home improvement. Mix it all well and I water about once or twice a week. Some people use coco fiber, LECA which is a high fired clay, pumice, or whatever, but I use what's cheapest and easily found.

There is a Hoya forum here, if you want to ask your questions there. Just go up to the top of the HP forum and click on the link to the hoya forum. I am too new to hoyas to give reliable advice. I just use the same mix for Hoyas, Rhipsalis, some Orchids, and Epiphyllum.

"Roots form much more readily than buds, and in some plants, rooted leaf cuttings can survive for years w/o producing an adventitious shoot."

This reminds me of something I've always wondered about. Since I've been thinking about Norfolk Island Pines recently, I've always heard you could fairly easily root a branch from a NIP, but it would never produce a trunk (and that getting the trunk to root, while possible, isn't likely).

So, I'm wondering how long a rooted NIP branch could live on its own, and what it would actually do over time. Has anyone ever experimented with this? I'm thinking about buying a cheap, half-dead one from Wal-mart after the christmas season to experiment on.