In time if you leave it attached it will grow it's own set of roots. After you have a couple of roots a couple of inches long then you can cut it from the main plant and plant it up all by it's self. The other option is to just leave it where it is and in time it will send up it's own little set of flowers.

Very interesting and timely for me! I had to cut a blooming spike off a phal that was doing poorly, so I stuck the spike in a vase to enjoy for a while. After seeing your post, I looked closer to see if there was anything to see.... and there is a tiny green nub poking out of the stem! I don't know if it will be a keiki or if it is just still trying to geow and branch... but I will keep an eye on it. And to think I glanced at it yesterday and throught the flowers were beginning to fade and I shoudl probably toss it..... Thanks for the inspiration! Alexa

Actually, cut flowers of Proteas, Leucospermums and Leucadendrons are not all that hard to find at higher end florists, or go to the Flower Mart in San Francisco. Flora Grubb nursery in the Bayview District of San Francisco always has a great selection of Proteas, Banksias, Leucadendrons, Leucospermums, etc, with many of them already in full bloom in one or five or even 15 gallons sizes. Annie Hayes of Annie's Annuals is a personal friend of mine,(as is Richard Ward of the Dry Garden), and you're right, she does have a great selection of South African plants, with nursery prices being cheaper than mail order. She typically doesn't have the widest selection of Proteaceous species from seed, but does sometimes have some juicy things propagated now from cuttings of stock plants at the nursery, such as Mimetes cuculatus. If you do make the drive up from the south bay, you can easily hit all the nurseries here in Berkeley, Oakland, Annie's in Richmond, and Flora Grubb in one day. The Dry Garden Nursery in Oakland often carries smaller one gallon specialty proteas grown from seed by local backyard growers, but the prices are likely to be a bit higher than one gallon sized plants from Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville. Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville has a very good selection of Proteacea plants, all grown right next door at Rosendale Wholesale Nursery, and their acres of display gardens are well worth a browse as well, Another source of Proteas would be the annual spring/fall sales at UC Santa Cruz Botanic Garden, or browse what they have at the book store/nursery near the entry/parking lot. In southern California, there is also Jo O'Connell's nursery that does mail order, and she has a good selection of Australian and South African Proteacea plants. She is located in Ventura, and her website is www.australianplants.com If you would like to get tapped in to the local horticultural scene and get better inside sources for plants, I would suggest joining either the Western Horticultural Society at www.westernhort.org and based in Los Altos, or the California Horticultural Society at www.calhortsociety.org and based in San Francisco. Joining either gets you a subscription to Pacific Horticulture Magazine, as well as monthly meetings, field trips to gardens, local wholesale nurseries, etc. You may find you get bitten badly by the bug/interest in South African plants, I know I have, and love designing gardens with Fynbos plants such as Proteas, Restios and succulents. UC Santa Cruz Botanic Garden and the demonstration gardens at Sierra Azul Nursery in Watsonville are both great local to you examples of what one can do in their own garden.

No, it won't work like that Suzi - while an annual will rebloom if deadheaded if in the ground,and therefore make seed, because it is now detached from its original roots, that option is just not open to it anymore because it cannot produce the energy to make new roots on the end of a flowering stem. A cutting taken from an appropriate leaf node, possibly but once flowering is initiated, the programme must run through to the end. It is metabolically programmed to grow, bloom and seed in one season.