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Here's a current picture of the Streptocarpus 'Blue Frills' leaf pieces, with a number of plantlets already visible.

Zooming in on the region in the upper left:

A few days ago I opened the ziploc containing pieces of Begonia 'Starry Nights'. Like Strep. 'Blue Frills', it's an easy one to root by conventional methods. However I started with a medium sized leaf, and ended up with about 91 pieces with roots and/or plantlets (most had both) plus about 19 pieces that hadn't rooted yet.

That one zoomed in:

The little green things are of course leaves of small plantlets.

I also removed the leaf pieces of Streptocarpus 'Roulette Cherry' from it's ziploc bag yesterday. Nothing surprising to report, just number of rooted leaf pieces.

Wow, Randy, congrats on your success! They are so tiny and cute! Rosie

I went ahead and potted up the first 36 a couple days ago. I'm sure some people would say they are too small, but I'm pretty sure most will survive at this point. Plus they were getting crowded. Plus I want to push this, and stimulate the growth of more planets

And here are the "leftovers". I counted about 30 more (33 the first count). Another "crop" should be ready to harvest in a couple weeks. I'm hoping to push this close to 100. We'll see.

This was not propagated using this method, but I'll add it anyway. This is my "tiny" Blue Frills plant, an updated photo with more flowers open.

Nice! Boy I hope you have lots of room! Rosie

Mark your Blue Frills has much less white than the earlier photo.

My Blue Frills is blooming right now as well. It's a really nice plant and so far has been staying relatively compact and on the smaller side. A lot of blooms for it's first blooming cycle.

Btw, if you ever do need or want to try shipping streptocarpus when the temperatures are at or close to freezing, here is a tip. Let the plants or leaves dehydrate a little bit until they are slightly floppy before shipping. With the lower water levels in the cells, if they freeze then they don't rupture as easily. Once the new owner gets them, simply soak in water to fluff them back up. Presto! I've tried it a few times when I was selling streps and none of them suffered cold damage that way. Dale Martins agreed it was a useful tip since these plants belong the the 'resurrection' gesneriad group that regularly suffer long dry seasons.

Hyn! Good to hear from you! Hope all is moving along and well!!!

I can see the logic of what you say. Good information to know. Thank you! Rosie

dbarron, I'm going to guess that's it's because these are still very early (smaller?) flowers on a small plant. I'm betting they don't show the full form and colors at this stage. The larger plant is also grown in an unheated greenhouse by my friend; mine is indoors under lights. It's possible conditions are having some effect. However, I bet it's most due to size/maturity.

Regarding size of the plant, did I forget to post these pictures? My friend Jose gave me 4 leaves on Monday. I sent the two largest to someone as part of a trade, and the smallest one to someone else. These are good sized leaves! And it seems all of the small ones I've grown grow multiple rosettes very early on. I suspect mine will get big with time, although perhaps not this big, even if I grew them outside.

Here's the plant on Monday. I think he said blooming had stopped for a short time and is starting up again.

The second "smallest" I used for leaf probation by ziploc/paper towel. I ended up with 6 bags with about 20 pieces each, and a 7th bag with the cuttings containing mostly the central vein. I actually have a couple spare sets of ziploc bags with Blue Frills pieces if anyone wants to try starting the process in the middle. I'd probably trade for something that would be interesting and/or of interest to propagate. I might send for postage. I'm running out of room for these.

Half the pieces:

One of the bags. This one is going to a friend. If these work, they should yield dozens of plants. This is a quart sized ziploc bag. I wrote the dimensions elsewhere, possibly it is 9 x 13 inches. I could check.

I suppose it's likely to be an all or nothing situation. These cuttings are from very different leaves than I used before. But I think it should work.

Don't you think it is too cold to ship? Or are they going to a warmer climate? Rosie

It's definitely not too cold here, and in the last 2 days I've successfully sent/received Strep leaves from Oregon and Arkansas. As Streps, I would imagine they are fine as long as they are kept above 32 F.

An update on the original 'Blue Frills' ziploc bag propagation. The first "harvest" I potted up 36 planets, many of them very small. They are doing well, and have grown considerably. A few days ago I potted up 34 more, to make a total of 70 from the one small leaf. Here's what 50 of both harvests look like--I think it's clear which are from the more recent one, as seen by the appearance of the soil.

One thing that's clear above is that proximity to the light source promotes growth. I think it's clear where the light (an LED bulb) lies

And here's a comparison of the growth over 18 days--I think these are the same plants beings compared

I was hoping to get 100 plants out of this. I counted plantlets on the leaf fragments yesterday, and found about 45. If more than 2/3 become large enough to pot up, that will push things past the goal of 100. I'll try to get a picture of those when the third round of plantlets are ready to be potted up. It will be very interesting to see how long I can continue to harvest plantlets.

Even without cutting the leaf pieces so small, I often got easily 100 babies off of regular leaf splitting if the leaf and the variety were particularly viable. But trust me, I rarely wanted that many. After the first 20 or 30 it starts getting hard to find people who want them and they all take up a lot of space when you have 120+ other varieties you want to also propagate. Into the compost they went! So good luck! ;)

Hyn! So good to hear from you. Hope all is well. Rosie

All is well. I have been very busy repotting several hundred plants this past week. I downsized my collection by a few thousand but I still have a lot left and they were really over due for cleaning up. I'm almost done though. Just a few more flats to push through though one of those are full of babies over due to be divided. In the spring I'll have about 350 adenium to repot but, for now they can wait for warmer weather and lots of sunshine.

Hyn Patty, i would point out that this leaf was pretty tiny--I believe about 3 inch by 1.5 inch would be an upper limit and is probably too large an estimate. It was a small leaf from one of my very young plants. One of the reasons for doing this is that I want to push this technique as far as I can. I'm hoping these will not go to waste. There are a number of places in the SF Bay Area (and surrounding areas) where one can donate plants. I've arranged to give a couple plants (a mountain Papaya and a cold group Brugmansia cross) to a mail order/retail/wholesale plant seller in the near future. I'll see if I can convince them to check out this plant--it would make a spectacular display plant at their nursery, and a set of dozens of young plants coming into bloom in their sales area would be stunning. We'll see. There are other places (botanical gardens, etc.) where I know people as well, including the college where I bought my first Streptocarpus at their annual sale.

The mountain Papaya--not my hybrid (from Martin Grantham at SFSU), but one that someone should sell, in my opinion (sorry to stray from Gesneriads, but this is cool...):

One well-known Begonia expert/discoverer just told me she's very interested in the technique because she often gets plants in the mail which are largely rotted. To be able to save them from a small viable piece is of great interest to her. Similarly, I think it's wise for anyone to propagate newly received plants. The smaller the amount of material required (a fraction of a leaf) the more likely that people will do it. The more successful they are likely to be, the better.

In that case then why not just push it all the way and tissue culture it? A small piece of leaf could give you tens of thousands of baby plants. Anyone who is serious about any commercial production of a plant isn't going to mess around with less than full throttle - time is money. You can learn to set up and tissue culture in your own home, though it does take a little practice to get things sterile. Or you can send plant material away and have it done for you.

Not mind you that I'm objecting at all to what you are trying to do. It's an in-between that could be helpful to the average person who only has a tiny piece to work with, and I've been there and still grown new plants off of pieces -literally- no larger than my pinkie fingernail. But that said, I'd throw out a warning for the average home grower that if you do much of it, it's liable to backfire. Too much work, too much space required, and what to do with so many plants. But no harm in trying. ;)

I started doing this because I was looking for something with some of the advantages of tissue culture, but very low tech and very inexpensive. People often become enamored with technology when there are simple solutions. Those approaches should be exploited fully. In the case I was initially was interested in, that of Begonia U614, propagation from leaves was failing me, completely. I wasn't about to spend the money for tissue culture either at home or sending it out, but I was looking for a way to propagate it other than by division. Similarly, I had been looking for a more efficient way to propagate Begonia brevirimosa. From an intact leaf, I could get maybe 5 or possibly 10 plants. I wanted to be able to get more. Pieces of leaves quickly turned to mush for me. In both cases this method nicely filled a gap and was very successful. Should I do tissue culture so I can make thousands of each and spend a lot of money? Why?

Propagation from seeds also tends to give "too many" young plants, but I would never tell someone not to do it for that reason. But I joke about it, for example: http://forums.gardenweb.com/discussions/1751160/begonia-dregei-and-the-problem-with-growing-from-seed (the "problem" of course, is too many plants...).

I would emphasize that 'Blue Frills' is the first Streptocarpus I've tried this on. I was initially focusing on Begonias, but I figured this would be easy, and nice test of the method. I'm having fun with it and seeing how far I can push it. Of course I'm going to see how many plants I can get from one small leaf.

The method requires a ziploc bag, a paper towel and a small amount of bleach. And water. So the total cost is probably about 5 cents, using materials most already have. The amount of work involved is minimal. Do people really have to be warned that a simple, inexpensive technique might be too successful? I give people more credit than that.

This is a helpful explanation to understand your reasoning better, thank you. ;) You'd be surprised how a polite warning might later be appreciated. It's easy to get in too deep with too many plants and then get frustrated and burned out, tossing out everything. It happens all of the time.

Here's another example of how the technique may prove useful. A couple years ago, I bought this Gloxinia. It was beautiful and the price was right (Half Moon Bay Nursery is wonderful):

More recently, I found out that the plant may be someone's lost hybrid. This is what I have right now, a big dormant tuber, a small dormant tuber, and 4 small propagated plants:

I plan on sending the hybridizer the main tuber, to confirm the ID. I could generate a few backup plants, just in case, using conventional propagation (I set up a few leaves as well), but I thought it would be more useful if the hybrid could be widely available quickly, either to the hybridizer and/or to others interested in the plant. So I removed the leaves indicated and sent them into the ziploc bag method. Below is the third leaf, so you can see how I chopped it up in an attempt to maximize the number of times the cut sites intersect with veins of the correct polarity.

I have about 100 such pieces incubating in one large and three smaller ziploc bags. It's been 2 weeks...

And after 2 weeks, I already see the first roots. I have a feeling this is going to be very productive.

Here's the current status of the results of the first 'Blue Frills' ziploc bag: 147 plantlets have been harvested, many more still on the leaf fragments. I expect to push it to 200 plants/plantlets before the leaf pieces give up. It may go well above that. Thanks to Travis' reconstruction of the leaf, it looks like it was about 3.7 x 2.4 inches, or 8.88 square inches. So that's an average of about 0.06 square inches of leaf per plantlet, or an average of 0.25 x 0.25 inches per plantlet.

Here's one of the biggest ones. I think if it might have a bud, but I can't tell for sure. I should know in a few days. This is only slightly smaller then they have been developing buds in general. It has been almost exactly 3 months from the original leaf at this point.

In a 3 ounce cup:

I just put this one in the mail yesterday, propagated conventionally, growing in a 2 1/2 inch pot. Here's a photo taken Dec. 31st. It now has 7 buds (independent inflorescences), although some of these "buds"/inflorescences appear to be producing at least two flowers. This is an extremely floriferous hybrid.

And here are two more I took out of the ziploc bags yesterday:

'Kahinta':

Notice the one at the top with only a sliver of green has plantlet(s) started.

And 'Cicero', which was probably opened a little prematurely:

I'm now up to 193 platelets from the approximately 3.7 inch x 2.4 inch Streptocarpus 'Blue Frills' leaf. The leaf pieces are going strong, so right now I'm shooting for 300 plantlets. They are growing fast, some have small buds, so I'm going to need to find homes for a lot soon. I've been giving away quite a few.

I have a question - how is the experiment with Sinningia piresiana is going?

Streps - you proved it, Sinningia speciosa - you can start it from leaves anyway - but these large Sinningias - they are hard to start from leaves, they start easily from new shoots, much slower from tip cuttings - and so far - they do not ever start from leaf for me.

Another question - 5% bleach you use to decontaminate your plant material - it is pretty much a straight bleach from the Clorox bottle (it is 6% solution) or you are talking about diluting a household bleach 1:20?

Irina

Good going Mark! Great results! I wish it was shipping weather, I would love to have a little piece! Rosie

Sorry, Irina, I missed your question. If I remember correctly, Sinningia piresiana looked like it was doing poorly, so I opened up the bag. Nothing had rooted. i transferred the pieces to soil and they eventually died. In general I have had poor success with plants that are bulbous/tuberous and can be propagated by leaves. Eucomis and Haemanthus albiflos aslo did poorly. I have had success with Begonias which can be propagated from leaves, but which are difficult. One example is Begonia amphioxus. Actually I just took a picture of the little ones tonight:

The two species Streptocarpus I tried seemed to be a little more difficult. S. formosus has finally started rooting after a long time (more than 2 months). S. floribundus has not rooted that I'm aware of. I also tried tiny pieces of S. dunnii (a unifoliate) and those have not rooted, but they are probably to tiny to conclude anything. i should try that one again now that my plant is getting bigger.

I had been eyeballing how much bleach I was using, instead of trying to measure out a small amount. I decide to check what I was calling 5%, and it turns out the dilution is actually closer to 1 to 10. So I'm saying 10% at this point. I just dilute regular household bleach in water. .

I still have what remains of the Sinningia piresiana cuttings. I just checked to make sure that nothing was lurking beneath what I might see as dead pieces on the surface. They are completely dead.

Randy,most sincerely dead? (sorry got my munchkin going this morning).

I may be misremembering (thinking this is for streps and not sinningias), but I possibly remembered that you could propagate sinningia speciosa by partial leaf cuttings containing segments of the midrib. If that isn't just a mixed-up figment of my newly awakened mind, it's odd that you didn't get sinningia success on at least some. I do remember it took full leaf cuttings of S. speciosa a long time to produce a tuber, which would eventually start to grow a plant. Maybe just not enough food in your little pieces to do so?

dbarron, see the posts above from December 28, which are probably buried in this long thread.

I've found Sinningia speciosa to be easy, either by conventional propagation or hopefully in the ziploc bag. So far in the ziploc bag I have roots on some pieces starting at 2 weeks, I assume that will lead to tubers/plants. I could take another photo showing more roots, but I'm not sure it would show much . Actually I just remembered I have this one, showing a tiny piece that must have broken off, with a root. I put a dime next to it for a size comparison:

The only S. speciosa I have is the pink one, photo in bloom posted up above on Dec. 28th, which looks identical to Dale Marten's hybrid 'Touch of Spice', a hybrid which seems to have vanished... So that will be looked into, and early morning fragrance of the flowers would confirm the tentative ID by Dale.

I am again also propagating the possible 'Touch of Spice' in perlite, Currently the big plant is dormant, but I have some smaller ones. A couple years ago I did a larger propagation using full sized leaves. It worked very well. Here is one of the cuttings after 16 days. These cuttings went on to form tubers and plants:

So Sinningia speciosa has not been a problem, certainly by conventional propagation, and probably also by this ziploc bag method. The problem is possibly with other Sinningia species. Sinningia piresiana failed, and so far I have seen anything from leaf cuttings of the hybrid 'Prudence Risley' (I'm not sure if anyone knows the parentage of that one). I have not tried any other Sinningia species/ hybrids and I need to look into it.

Seems that your experiment more or less correlates with a regular technique of rooting cuttings in soilless mix, but definitely gives a higher return. Timewise - I think it is in the same ball park - fresh Streptocarpus leaves also will root in 28 days - that's when you checked your cuttings.

Regarding Sinningias - speciosas root easily from a leaf - but when rooted in soil mix - I have better success if I root whole leaf, not a wedge. The losses probably will be avoided if we use your bleach wash and pasterize the soil.

Large Sinningias - the ones that belonged to Rechsteineria genus before the lumping - do not root or rarely root from leaves - S, cardinalis, piresiana, leuchotricha etc. the ones that form large tubers and prefer to have tubers half way on a surface.

Speciosa roots like a charm, some other species do, some do not, Miniature Sinningias can be rooted from leaves, micro miniatures - S.concinna, pusilla etc, - also can be rooted - but the rate is low. The problem with rooting SInningias from leaves - they often form blind tubers.

"Prudence Risley' is a complex hybrid with one of the long stem Sinningias in parentage - (may be S.sellovii - also former Rechsteineria or S. tubiflora) - nobody knows exactly - it grew from a mixed seed pack. Anyway - it grows fast producing long stems. You can root chunks of stems, not only tips - so probably with PR the paper propagation approach would work by using pieces of stem with internode.

This is super interesting! I'm a college student and actually this semester am taking a class on plant tissue culture... just got out of lab session where we put caladiums into culture. I've always wondered how easily tissue culture could be simplified into something one could do with common household materials. Mark, have you done a side by side experiment to see if the strep leaves yield more plantlets when grow with your method? Also if you don't mind, I'm going to show this to my professor ;)

Thanks for the encouragement. No, I haven't done anything side by side. I did describe the technique in greater detail elsewhere, for example here: https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/5060360/method-for-leaf-propagation-between-paper-in-ziploc-bags?n=8

As of yesterday, I'm up to 250 plantlets potted up from the original small 'Blue Frills' leaf. Yes, my place is filling up with 'Blue Frills', and I need to move some outside. The first of the 250 should open its first flower in the next day or two.

Amazing Randy! Congratulations!!! Rosie

Thanks Rosie. Here's a very different kind of leaf cutting using this method, from Pearcea abunda. This is not a difficult plant from leaf cuttings using conventional methods, but it looks like it will work really well here.

And here's the first flower of the first Streptocarpus I've propagated using this technique, 'Blue Frills'. It was started on October 7, so it took just over 4 months. Soon there will be many more. Not the best photo...

Awww, it is a nice little baby pix! My little start of S. "Blue Frills" didn't make it in the envelope, remember? As flat as that little bugger was, it was just too cold.

Every time you mention about putting plants outside for a brief instant I panic!!! Then I remember you are in California. ha, the joke is on me! Glad you are having such success with your methods! Rosie

Irina, what is a blind tuber? A tuber with no eyes? If it has no eyes is that why it cannot make roots or starts??? Info please? Thanks! Rosie

Yep Rosie, it can't see where to grow :) (err never does make growing points, aka sprouts).

chuckle chuckle,,,,sorry, I think this is a hoot! Just tickled my funny bone! Rosie (tee hee) Who would have thunk it!

This just reminded me that I was thinking of starting another thread on Sinningias--using different propagation techniques. The micro mini Sinningia I have works fairly well from leaves. I started some 10 days ago and took pictures, and then never posted them. They are starting to form small tubers--I lay them on top of soil, so everything is easy to see. I also wanted to see which of my list of Sinningias Irina or others thought would be of greatest interest to try propagating using the ziploc bag method. Ideally that would be something that's not impossible from leaves, but not something easy, either.

If you start a new thread let me know. I only have one, S. pusilla. She is blooming right now. My goal is to let her fill up her little pot before I transplant her to something larger.

Also looking to collect S. White Sprite and S. cocinna (sp?) But I would love to read your new thread! Rosie

Rosie, I think it would be helpful to find out how to best propagate various Sinningias. Something that just gives some idea of the ones that can be propagated from leaves would be useful.. Maybe there's a good resource out there, but I don't know of one. If there is, hopefully someone will suggest it on that thread.

Good idea Randy! There are so many things I need to learn about sinningias. For instance I had never heard of a blind tuber until Irina mentioned it! Who woulda thunk it???

I am going to start that new thread now. I will title it Sinningia Propagation. Care to join in???? Rosie

An interesting read, Mark. I know I'm resurrecting an old thread, but I do have some clarifying Qs ... (See Rosie, you're not the only one who needs to ask "dumb Qs" heh j/k)

When you say " I guess they don't list isopropanol (= isopropyl alcohol) but I think concentrations of 50% or more probably work. That's a guess. " , do you mean straight 50% isopropyl as purchased in a store or taking some proof of iso. and diluting it with water making a 50/50 solution? If the latter, what proof do you think might be sufficient?

Are the paper towels initially dry with the leaves between them before you add the bleach solution?

So your rinse entails pouring the sterilized water into the bag and swishing it around to try and remove the bleach? Hmm, wouldn't have expected that to be effective -- especially if the towels had been dry. Having absorbed the bleach solution into the fibers, would have thought it would be difficult to displace it with the rinses.

I am quite frankly amazed the cuttings don't rot under such water logged conditions in the ziplock. Also surprised by the fact they can get enough light through the towels to fuel growth.

Seems that some plants really want to live. And some - require us to baby them to no end.

Paul, I would go with the actual concentration of isopropanol at 50%. The paper towel is indeed dry when the bleach solution is added. I do worry about it sticking, which is why I do so many washes, some of them for long periods of time. I was even able to root succulent leaves with this method (Tacitus bellus) so maybe killing the bulk of the pathogens reduces the chance of rot? Things are definitely wet, often swimming in water, and it works fine.

" I was even able to root succulent leaves with this method (Tacitus bellus) so maybe killing the bulk of the pathogens reduces the chance of rot? Things are definitely wet, often swimming in water, and it works fine."

Amazing, simply amazing.