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Help!! Broken Stem, What to do???

15 years ago

My dog chased a chipmunk into the garden and snapped two 7 ft high stems off my Nelly Moser. This plant was planted in early spring and has grown several feet and was doing quite well. There are two remaining stems left but now my my trellis looks uneven. I cut the broken stems up and put them in a glass of water yesterday and they are fine (not wilted). There are about 10, 3-4 inch sections. I'd like to try and re-root these stems, but I don't know what is the best method. I have rooting hormone powder. Can I let them root in the glass of water or should I re-plant? Do the roots sprout from the woody wood or the green new growth?

Sometimes I wonder why I have so many dogs! grrr...

Thanks for your help.

Comments (4)

alina_1
15 years ago
Your Clematis in the ground will be just fine. It will start to grow back in no time.
Personally, I've never had much luck with rooting Clematis cuttings. They take months to root both in rooting medium with root hormone applied and water. Then, rooted cuttings are very vulnerable when planted in the ground. I would not bother with Nelly Moser which is cheap and widely available. You can still try it, but expect to wait for 3-6 months to see first roots. Soft new growth is likely to rot.
nckvilledudes
15 years ago
Ditto, toss the cut off stems and don't worry about the plant.
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Diakon, This year I broke several tomato stems. One Merced broke when I was transporting it home from Texas in the trunk with my luggage. I rooted the broken off top in water and planted it in a pot for a month then into the garden. It's doing better than the Merced that didn't break. Okay ... I broke off another seedling when it was about 8" tall ... broke it off about halfway up but not completely off ... only left a little hinge of skin on one side of the stem. I taped it up with ordinary masking tape. I stuck the tape down on the table and peeled it up a couple of times to get about half the stickum off the tape so it wouldn't stick to the plant too bad. I left it that way for a week or so, and the plant healed back up fine. Now that it's in the garden it just has a lump there were the scar is. Okay now ... a fellow sent me some plants from Louisville and the post office broke off three of the tops. Broke them off near the root crown. I just potted them up as is with the roots and whatever inch or two stem was left outta the ground and now they have sprouted new branches and made new growing tips. Good luck with whichever way you go with it.
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Mickie Marquis
15 years ago
For what it's worth.... I've used green floral tape to 'splint' stems back together. It almost always works, but you have to do it right away. Like grafting, you have to make sure the cambium (green layer just under bark) touches, one to the other. Don't fret. Just put the stems end to end and wrap about 6" of tape around it. Presto!

Mickie
nckvilledudes
15 years ago
I would just take the broken branches as mother natures way of pruning the stems. Since Nelly is a type II, the damaged stem area may serve as an entry point for wilt to gain a foothold. Whether splinting the branches back together would actually work or not would depend on how damaged the stem was. If the vascular system was disrupted, then putting them back together would be like trying to splint an arm back on a person when the blood vessels had been severed.

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