Andy, I trust you won't mind if I demonstrate how I treat beheading. This is an Echeveria 'Cubic Frost' that I found at one of the BBS's earlier in the week, neglected. It is becoming somewhat etiolated and the crown leaves are small. I negotiated a VERY nice price. These are my older plants of the same Echeveria that have had full sun all summer. The heads are tight with large leaves. After bringing it home, I immediately beheaded it and set out to callous. It's been about a week since this was cut. I usually don't wait until roots appear. For me, it's easier to plant sooner. For this plant I have decided to use a grit/coir mix. I like to fill the pot and form a "cone" of mix in the center of the pot. This is where I will insert the cut stem, pushing down gently until the base is as deep as I can get it. I'm using a 5" pot. Pushing down on the crown, I gently tap the pot on the countertop several times to seat the stem and pack the mix around the base. keep it in a "brightly shaded" area for a week or so until roots form. I know when this happens, because I gently wiggle the plant and if the mix moves, it's got roots and watering begins! Thanks, Andy.

Many plants other than succulents grow a stem with nodes from which leaves and branches develop and a space between the nodes called internodes. Many succulents mimic that same growth habit, but have very short internodes and differently shaped leaves. All living plant tissues synthesize a growth regulator called auxin, one of the functions of which is to suppress new lateral growth/branching off the main stem. The primary source of this suppressing growth regulator is in the apices (apical meristems) near the tip of stems and branches. When you remove/destroy the meristematic region, the polar flow of auxin (the term polar is used because of auxin's tendency to only move from shoots to roots) is significantly diminished. When this occurs, it allows a second growth regulator that auxin sort of shares an antagonistic relationship with to become dominant. This growth regulator, cytokinin, stimulates lateral growth (back-budding) whenever there isn't enough auxin to suppress it. Some plants do not naturally produce enough auxin to suppress lateral growth, so their growth habit runs more to 'shrubby', with many stems and lots of lateral branching - Colletia cruciata comes to mind for some reason. Essentially, by removing the source of auxin, you're manipulating the growth regulators/hormones that determine branching habits. This is the basis for pruning practices, and not anything particularly innovative, even though it might be a concept that's new to many growers who didn't yet understand what causes the plant to react to being pruned. Example: When I removed the apical meristem of this Aeonium, it activated dozens of new buds behind the pruning chop, which was only a couple of inches from the ground. By removing all the newly forming buds in places I didn't want a branch, I was able to manipulate the plant into producing a cluster of 7 branches/rosettes, instead of the long and sinuous single stem with an occasional branch and a rosette of leaves at the end of each branch stem, which is how it wanted to grow. You can use the technique Bernard discovered in his travels to manipulate the growth habits of thousands of different plants. It can make growing much more interesting if you're creating something unusual. Al

Highly recommended to use a fan if you have grow lights. Additional airflow reduces leaf surface temperatures by 5-10°C easily, which improves growth. I'm using a small 60W vortex-type fan on its lowest speed, about 8 inches away for my primary grow light setup. It is always running. I also have a large 116W vornado fan on its lowest speed, to help add extra cool area into my loft. This keep the area cool and also cools my secondary grow light setup. Timer is set to start two hours after my lights turn on and an hour after they turn off. My propagations typically are kept in natural light or the least-bright areas under my grow lights (ends of the tubes, far sides, or under leaves of other plants).

Rina, I have some observations you might be interested in. I found what looks like a regular root higher up on a plant, although it's a vine. In this case, a Kalanchoe longiflora, as far as I know. You can see aerial type roots lower down. I didn't think a 'regular' root would normally grow higher up in the plant like that, although you did show an example of that. As you can see, the upper one is pink and flexible, while the lower ones are the usual brittle ones. Even stranger, the photo below shows the normal pink type roots coming out of an aerial root (left). I still don't know if an aerial root can 'turn into' a regular one in the soil, but apparently can grow out of one in this instance. I thought you might like to see this because it partly proves some of the things you were positing, and showed me things I thought didn't occur.