the leaves might grow roots, but they will not grow into a plant. eventually the leaf will die.

you need at least 3 leaves with a stem to get new plant going. but 5 leaves is much! better.

the best way to get the rooted plant out of perlite is to flood it with water to get a slush consistency. then you can lift the rooted stem without damaging roots.

it's not necessary to pull off perlite pieces when you plant it into soil mix.

I actually see some roots budding in the leaves in the vase today.

As for the branch with two leaves, I'll let you know how the repotting goes. I'll be much more gentle when I pull it out this time.

so you will have leaves with roots - but nothing else. no new leaves will grow - just letting you know, so you understand that you can't propagate it this way.

petrushka, no I'm not propagating the leaves in the vase. I'm hoping to keep them green as long as possible in a vase. :-)

What I'm propagating is the branch rooting in perlite right now. Sorry for the confusion.

:)

i remember somebody posted about doing the same. don't remember how long they lasted but maybe 3mo?..so quite nice for a vase arrangement.

i often stick all sorts of cuttings into vases with flowers and they root well, especially Ficus benjamina or alii.

3 months? That's quite a long time! They are fun to have as an arrangement. I wonder if there is anything I can add to the water to prolong the life of the leaves?

keep the water clear of bacteria and algae - either change it often or add 1.5tsp 3% peroxide to 1 quart of water, then it'll stay fresh longer. and you can just top it of with more of the same solution.

i just noticed that you stripped all except for last 2 leaves. i would never do that - those leaves contain nutrients that the branch can process while it has no roots.

in time they would've yellowed and dropped off. it is recommended for best results to keep at least 5 leaves on the branch.

i've been propagating my F. lyratas for many years. made many pots from tall branches of my original tree. Had to prune it as it was reaching the ceiling.

and i do long branches regularly without loosing leaves :). and usually the plant does not loose any bottom leaves for sev years.

have a look at these old posts of mine.

I tried to root some cuttings of my angel wing begonia recently. I cut off 10 branches that we're getting too long that I wanted to encourage branching on. I left 5 with several leaves, and 5 with one leaf and the tip. I stuck all the cuttings in the soil with the mother plant. The 5 cuttings that I left all the leaves on dried up and died within 3 days, but 4 out of the 5 cuttings that I left just one leaf on rooted. Id have to agree with Al here.

If you leave lots of leaves on, you increase the water demand on the cutting because each leaf it has to maintain places a moisture load on it. The cutting has no roots with which to absorb the moisture to support the leaf load.

Cuttings are best left as little of a moisture load to maintain as possible, because it needs all the energy and moisture resources it has in storage to produce new roots.

I too have found fewer leaves to be better when propagating both Ficus and Schefflera.

Sheffs seem to work best for me stripped of all leaves.

Ficus did very well with a 6-12 inch cutting with 2-3 leaves (Benjamina and Alii).

I don’t care much for Lyrata, but if I were to propagate, a good stem with only one leaf would probably work best since they have such large leaves.

if you tent the cutting and keep it very moist it'll be in 100% humidity - more leaves will survive.

i root all tropicals in flooded large perlite, inclosed in plastic to create terrarium.

occasionally when the leaves are very big (Clerodendron speciosissima) or super prima-donnas (crotons) the first 2 weeks i keep them in just water so it is convenient to submerge them in a sink for 20-30 min to rehydrate the leaves. I started doing it for just crotons as i read in the special publication about it. they drop the leaves super fast when cut and then they don't root. but now i do it for anything that i want to keep more leaves on. works like a charm. i have a 100% success rate with Crotons that are usually air-layered (which is possible only in yr own garden).

curious, did you look at the link i posted?

Doing all of that is simply unnecessary in many cases. Sure, you can keep a cutting with too many leaves alive in that kind of a intensive care, neo-natal ward setup. OR you could cut it down to a leaf and stick it in some dirt and keep it moist. From the moment you take the cutting, it is on battery power. There are no roots for all those leaves to support. They are a liability. If you want to take a cutting with lots of leaves, air layering it will yield far better results than that life-support system. You can create an entire trunk complete with branches and roots by layering off a cutting. It will take years to develop a cutting without roots into a complete FLF tree, no matter what kind of tech you throw at it.

i totally agree that in many cases it is not necessary at all. but it works much faster then just sticking cuttings in the dirt.

my guess - you didn't bother to look at posts? sure, i air-layer too, when i am at home and have access to plants - and you can see the results in those posts.

i get large looking plants in one year easily with air-layering. but i get very similar results from just cutting long branches too.

it works very well with wooded shrubs/trees specifically.

besides, i actually root cuttings while traveling in FL - have no dirt to stick them in and need to keep them alive and well for sev months with minimal attention.

i often get them back by packing in a suitcase (dirt weighs more then perlite obviously and there is more danger of pathogens while dark damp and in transit for more then a day) i started doing it because of travel but it's very convenient at home too. it had additional benefit of keeping sterile conditions. as outdoor plants in FL are often full of pests that are very hard to get rid off.

I was worried the water loss from the leaves would be too much for an immature root system, that's why I decided to strip the cutting down to two leaves. It is working so far but I always appreciate hearing about other peolple's experiences. Thanks all for sharing.

HK - from my perspective, that makes the most sense. When I start a cutting, I'm not interested in babysitting it to the nth degree, or testing how many leaves the cutting will support. If from a plant that comes easy from cuttings (as all Ficus do) about all I want to do is stick it and pretty much forget it (other than providing a top-off for its moisture needs now and then).

I think we benefit individually from being an accomplished propagators, even if only for the personal satisfaction, but I tend always to try try to strike a balance between easiest and high probability of success. IOW, if I can leave one or 2 leaves on a cutting, or cut large leaves in half and in doing so eliminate the need to set up a tenting arrangement, that's what I'll do. Occasionally I'll desperately want to clone a stubborn plant or a thick, woody cutting, and I'll use this set-up:

Al

>>I'm not interested in babysitting it to the nth degree, or testing how many leaves the cutting will support.

that's funny, but i do what i do specifically so i don't have to baby-sit anything. it's not hard (how could it be?) to put a cutting in a plastic bag and close it (the plastic jug is easy and can do, but i prefer more transparency). and then leave it. with all the leaves on. i have many cuttings going when i go away for 2 weeks and come back and they are not dried up and nobody is watering them - because they're tented and in flooded perlite: so that there is perhaps 2inches of water on the bottom - plenty for 2 weeks. i really don't understand why this might be considered 'pampering' or hard.

i don't do dunking with FLF's as they don't need it and they don't need stakes in plastic to prevent leaves from touching. so the work is less then monitoring cuttings for moisture and dribling water on them when needed (while some take 2 months to root).

mine root fast in 1mo AND i keep all leaves too. what's not to like?

Tapla, if I had a 10g aquarium around, I would be too tempted to turn it into an aquarium or a pico reef... :-) Thanks very much for all your insights.

You're welcome - my pleasure. Had to look up what a pico reef is. ;-) First time I heard that descriptor.

P - I was talking to HK, not you, thank you.

Al

I'm going to see how long I can keep these leaves green in water. At least some are growing roots finally.

Roots! · More Info

The leaf with roots will last a long time, but please don't expect formation of a viable plant with all 3 organs (roots. leaves, stem) common to trees. F lyrata isn't able to produce a meristem from tissues in leaves or petioles. You need to have a node, a meristematic region, included with the propagule. That would be a branch, or at a minimum, the active or latent bud in the leaf axil.

Translated: A leaf without a bud won't turn into a plant. A horticulturist would say you have a 'blind' leaf cutting. The part you're missing (and need in order that a complete and viable plant might form) is the meristematic region that gave rise to the new branch just beginning to grow in the axils of both leaves in the image of the rooted cutting below.

Strong work!

Al

Hi Al! I bet I won’t understand the answer to this, but ... how come some plants can be propagated with leaf cuttings - the ones where you slice the leaf in pieces and lay it on a medium, like some begonias - and others can’t? like FLF, presumably.

As plants grow, they produce a regular pattern of meriSTEMatic areas (think of STEM cells, which are cells that can differentiate into specialized tissues to form an organ [leaves, roots, stems]). In order for a propagule to become a plant with all of it's organs, the propagule must be able to form adventitious roots, and there is very wide variation plants' ability to do that, both genetically and physiologically. Second, the propagule must have a bud or be able to form adventitious buds, which would be buds that are not the terminal bud, buds that occur at nodes, or dormant buds in leaf axils. Adventitious buds are formed spontaneously (de novo, or anew) in random locations on the propagule's stem. So, when a propagule doesn't HAVE a bud, it must be able to form an adventitious bud, which requires developed cells to dedifferentiate, then redifferentiate into a meristematic growing area, from which any of the plant's organs can be formed, based on cultural (light/ moisture/ temperature ...... levels) and chemical (growth regulators/ hormones) stimuli. In the case of Ficus, propagules without buds are capable of forming adventitious roots, but not adventitious buds; so, while leaf cuttings with the leaf stem (petiole) attached can form roots, it cannot form that 3rd organ necessary to make it a complete plant - the stem.

When it comes to leaf cuttings, some plants have preformed primary meristems on the leaves, often referred to as 'foliar embryos' - like Bryophyllum pinnatum. Other plants, like Begonia, produce wound-induced secondary meristems that arise from the process of dedifferentiation of groups of cells and their redifferentiation into a meristematic region which can then give rise to any of the plant organs, something Ficus is incapable of.

I hope that wasn't too complicated ........ and was helpful.

Al

Thanks, Al!!! That is a bit over my head, but I’ll just read it a bunch more times. I think I understand though that some plants have meristem on their leaves and others don’t - I had never heard of “foliar embryos.” Nature, is, like, ”wow” ... to engage in Valleyspeak for a mo. I am not a native speaker but sometimes it is the Thing to Do.

Thanks again!

Thanks - appreciate the kind words.

Our ability to produce the cultural conditions that facilitate cloning is ahead of our current understanding of the chemical mechanisms that drive the process. Once we figure out the chemical part, cloning on a commercial scale should become much easier. Cloning as part of the hobbyist's fun-stuff-to-do list might or might not become significantly easier, depending on what hoops they discover that need to be jumped through.

Al