propagation Archives

Bringing tropical cuttings and seeds to life

If you love plants, coming home from a trip with a bunch of seeds and plants in tow is like adding an extra day to your vacation.

All but a single one of these bags was approved at the USDA checkpoint to travel from Hawaii to the mainland, since the U.S. government is primarily concerned about the risks of transporting pests contained in commercial crops and fruit. As tropical plants washed free of soil, pulp, cotton, leaf spots and bound for a quarantined indoors setting, there’s little risk that any would become invasive threats in Colorado’s snowy climate.

Like an 8 year old back from trick-or-treating with a cache of Halloween candy, you spread your bounty out over the kitchen table and sort through what you got. After making some quick strategic plans, it’s off to the local garden store to buy some extra seed trays and plastic domes to get started.

Out of the dozens of types of plants I got though the USDA inspection in Hawaii, I feel relatively confident I can grow all but few. The philodendron vines and Monstera are notoriously easy to propagate from stem cuttings, even in plain water. I have two types of Crinum asiaticum (spider lily) seeds, which I’ve grown before and know they’re basically foolproof. Croton cuttings are also fairly easy to root in soil or water, although one of my cuttings is looking pretty wilted after shipping and I’m not sure if it will make it.

A batch *Crinum asiaticum*, or spider lily, seeds planted in a simple seed tray in vermiculite and potting mix. These are very easy to sprout—I figure all 6 out of 6 will survive.

An African tulip tree in Kona covered with flowers and big pods full of seeds.

One species I’m less sure about are the Spathodea campanulata seeds, known commonly as the African tulip tree, which reportedly have low germination rates. The pod I found on a tree growing next to a parking lot in Kona contained what looked like thousands of seeds—a dense, loose mass of flat, lightweight seeds, each imbedded in a thin cellophane-like sheet of tissue. Even the slightest breeze scatters the ultra-lightweight seeds into the air, where they flutter around like mosquitos. (This was an annoyance to the group I traveled with, when a swarm sparkly seeds blasted out of the pod on the dash and into the cab when the air conditioner came on.)

The seeds are plentiful and extremely gregarious travelers, but this plant’s reproduction strategy to is to produce its seeds en masse and allow them to spread far, with lower emphasis on each one’s viability. I’m worried there’s a chance the entire batch dried out too much while it was still on the tree and none will sprout.

The seeds of the African tulip tree are extremely lightweight and plentiful. This bag of seeds came from a single, banana-shaped pod. Although the seeds have a relatively low germination rate, it’s easy to see how *Spathodea campanulata* has become such an aggressive invader in tropical forests where it has been introduced outside its native range. These are headed to a seed tray to see if any will sprout, and will remain indoors as houseplants if they do.

I’m also less sure about the single, grape-sized seed pod I found in a refuse pile in the Maka’eo walking path garden at the old Kona airport (an amazing garden to visit if you are ever in the vicinity, by the way). I thought I knew what it was—I initially thought it was a Euphorbia neohumbertii—but now I’m looking that species up and having some doubts my ID was correct. In any case, the three seeds, which fit snugly in the three-chambered pod and have hard casings that resemble pine nuts, seem like they might be temperamental when it comes to watering the right amount. (An aside: these gardens are amazing place to visit if you are interested in looking at a wide range of tropical plants and succulents. But, though the gardens are unguarded, please don’t pluck any attached plant parts or take out any fallen fruit or other useful material. The gardens are maintained by local people, and theft of valuable plants and food crops has been a problem there).

Finally, I have some seeds from an Aloe of some sort that was absolutely covered in open pods, and a sandwich bag of seeds rom a large planting of Stapelia (also known as “carrion flower”) in Kona that was spewing its cottony fluff all over the sidewalk and beyond. The Stapelia pods look remarkably similar to those of milkweeds, as do the seeds themselves, so I looked the genus up and found Stapelia comes from the same subfamily as milkweed, Asclepiadoideae.

A mound of *Stapelia*, or carrion flower, growing at the community garden in the old airport in Kona. It turns out, *Stapelia* is in the same family as milkweed.

(It’s fascinating, the connections you can make when you know a bit about taxonomy. You can walk into a new environment, knowing hardly anything about the plant species there, and quickly identify a bunch of plants with Google by searching your location + the plant family or genus a specimen seems to belong to).

In any case, I have never grown Aloe nor Stapelia from seed, and sometimes these drought-loving plants can be temperamental to water properly in shallow trays. So we’ll see what happens.

I’ve been fascinated by the seeds from a Delonix regia tree, also known as royal ponciana or flame tree. Coming from an enormous dangling pod, which I left in Hawaii to reduce the risk of carrying pathogens, the seeds look like elongated beans. But unlike beans they come in a waterproof, waxy casing that prevents them from swelling even when soaked in pure water. It’s a strategy many plants and trees employ to encourage their seeds to last longer before they sprout, which gives them more of a chance to spread far and wide or emerge at the right times.

Many varieties of Lupine have a similar seed coating, which makes sense because they are also members of the Fabaceae or pea family, and this is something that can make their propagation more complicated. In the case of Lupine, the translucent seed coating is degraded by winter freeze-thaw cycles, fire, or long periods of time in general, helping the plant to get at least some of its seedlings to lie dormant in the seed bank and spring up in optimum conditions in early spring or after a wildfire clears competitors away. But Delonix regia, a tropical species, doesn’t live with cold winters or with recurrent fire (as far as I know). Instead, I wonder if the casing naturally dissolves in the stomach of an animal or bird, and sprouts great distances away in piles of poop.

In any case, I set seven seeds to soak in a tray of water and none of them looked any different after 24 hours. As a test I scoured the corners of two seeds with a piece of sandpaper, and sure enough, they began swelling from the scoured end, stretching and ripping the waxy coat apart until the entire seed had swelled.

Delonix regia (flame tree) seeds soaking in water. The two larger seeds were scoured at one end with sandpaper, allowing the seed to swell with water and break out of the waxy waterproof coating. The rest look exactly like they did before they went into the tray.

I’m also unsure about the viability of the Terminalia catappa, or sea almond seeds, which were easy to find all over the beaches in Hawaii. Supposedly these too are fickle to grow from seed—many of the seeds cores rot out during the long time that passes between the moment they fall and when the right conditions come along to germinate. The interestingly almond-shaped, lightweight, corky seeds evolved to float in sea water and colonize distant beaches, but are hard to pry open and I was unable to cut any open with the tools I had on hand during my trip. I’m excited about the seeds because the attractive, large-leafed trees seem to be a potential substitution for fiddle leaf figs, which are extremely trendy houseplants, but, in my opinion, are not well suited to life indoors. Fiddle leaf figs are just too finnicky, languishing in the low-light conditions in most homes and developing unsightly spots or dropping leaves at the slightest provocation.

Clusia rosea is another candidate I hope to use to fill the role of the fiddle leaf fig, and I got a few tiny seeds along with some cuttings. The seeds are small and come imbedded in a sticky orange goo that helps them attach to mature trees in a wet forest, germinate on a branch, send aerial roots down to the ground and ultimately overwhelm or strangle the unfortunate host tree. The seeds dry out and die easily (I planted six and the rest were dry and dead within a day), but the cuttings seem resilient, staying very plump and green in transport.

Additionally, there are some dry Pandanus tectorius (screwpine) seeds in my cache, a rare Hawaiian native plant that happens to be extensively cultivated, and I was able to collect the dry seeds from the lawn at a resort.

I’m fortunate to be somewhere with a lot of light, and the plants are getting started in a humidity dome to help them root and also give me a chance to discard any that show signs of flies or disease. However, they’ve all been rinsed and soaked, plucked and preened, and have had any spotted or damaged leaves removed. I’m not expecting any problems, and can’t wait to see what some of them turn out like.

A cutting of *Clusia rosea*, or autograph tree. I have no experience with them but I think they will be very easy to root because the cuttings are still plump and green with no wilting even after days in transport.

Cloning from cuttings: simple plant propagation techniques for home gardeners

Most of us got our first trial at plant propagation by sticking a sprig of mint or philodendron vine in a glass of water. After a few weeks, we had roots! Then they were ready to be planted in soil.

Plants that root in water

There are a number of plants which can be propagated in this exceptionally easy way: coleus, dieffenbachias, begonias, brugmansias, tomato plants, bee balm, many types of salvia, dracenas, african violets and more. These plants resist rotting, absorb water directly into a freshly-cut surface, and may have latent root buds along the stem. Many come from the mint or nightshade families, or are tropical houseplants, selected from species that tolerate wetness and are adapted to rooting quickly to spread in their highly-competitive native habitats.

Cacti and succulents

On the other end of the spectrum are succulents, many of which would rot in water but carry enough moisture in their fleshy leaves or stems that they can root in soil without special care. Most sedums, aloes, aeoniums, jade plants or cacti will easily root after air-drying for a day or two and being inserted directly into soil. They can last a long time on stored water so the cuttings can live for weeks or months without roots. Some types of succulents will generate new plants from a single fallen leaf.

Everything else

The largest number of plants fall into a difficult middle category: they’re both vulnerable to rot in pure water and unable to store enough to live without their roots unless they have some sort of life support. Some species seal wounds quickly and won’t take in water through a cut stem in a vase. Others are adapted to dry climates and haven’t developed defenses against bacteria and fungi that live in water, or can’t transport oxygen to submerged tissues so they suffocate and die below the water line. To get these cuttings to root, you need to control their environment more carefully.

Industrial nurseries use elaborate systems for this: tight temperature controls, chemical formulas, sterilized equipment and sprayers that mist the plants every couple minutes to keep leaves consistently wet. They’ll even create new plants by tissue culture, an advanced propagation process starting with small clusters of cells added to a sterile petri dish. For the home gardener, this is too elaborate to be practical, so some of the most challenging plants are beyond our reach. But we can still propagate a long list of plants at a moderate skill level with a fairly simple setup.

A simple nursery setup for cuttings

I propagate most of my cuttings in a basic “greenhouse” made with clear plastic containers and plastic wrap. The clear container lets me see the young roots forming, and the plastic wrap will trap humidity to achieve a 95-100 percent humidity level that prevents cuttings from losing moisture. I fill it part way with a rooting media (potting media, sand, perlite or vermiculite). Most plants are OK with potting media but some of the plants that rot more easily need an inorganic substrate.

Artemisia ludoviciana cuttings, prepared from a single stem, cut into segments and prepared to be stuck into a rooting media.

There’s no easy rule to determine whether a plant is easy to propagate by cuttings or how to select the best part of the plant to use; plants are too diverse. I recommend looking up the species or variety to learn its propagation methods. Government databases, universities or botanical societies have straightforward online databases to search. You should find whether or not propagation from cuttings is possible, the best time of year to take them, whether the best tissue comes from the stem tip or the base of the stem, whether to select young or old stems, you’ll see how long the cuttings should be, whether the rooting media should be kept very moist or on the dry side, and other variables that will impact whether your cuttings succeed.

Taking the cuttings

Generally, if I’m lacking more detailed info about a species, I will take a full stem from the donor plant if that’s available without doing too much damage to it. It’s best to do this in the morning when the stems are hydrated after a cool night.

I’ll take the single stem and cut it lengthwise into several individual cuttings. That way, one cutting will be made of old basal stem, which is hormonally prepared to root in many species, one cutting will be a young stem tip, which in some species forms the most vigorous roots, and gradations between them. I make sure each segment has at least three nodes (the place where a stem connects to a leaf and new shoots can emerge), and with each segment I’ll remove the lowest leaf and keep the top two.

Inserting the cuttings in the rooting media

It can be tricky coming up with the right moisture level for rooting media, since different plants prefer different amounts of moisture. A good middle ground is to wet the media thoroughly and let it drain so it is saturated but not super-saturated.

I stick the cuttings so that the node corresponding to the lowest leaf is right on the surface of the rooting media. That places one node at the bottom of the cutting under the media, one internode is buried the media, and one node is partially covered. Two leaves are able to photosynthesize, but the top leaf is completely clear of moist rooting media in case the one resting on the media rots. The batch contains variety of tissue types and positions from which roots may grow.

Artemisia ludoviciana cuttings have been stuck in the rooting media, in this case vermiculite that has been wetted just enough that no water drips out when tipped on its side.

Rooting hormone powder or gel is optional. It certainly helps plants that are harder to root from cuttings, while fast-rooting plants produce a lot of the same hormone internally and won’t derive much benefit from what you add.

If the stem is rigid, you can stick the cutting directly into the media, but in most cases it helps to dig a hole with a pencil or toothpick, insert the cutting and pat down the media around it.

The Artemisia ludoviciana cuttings are wrapped in plastic wrap to keep the air inside humid. That way, the cuttings will not wilt despite lacking roots.

Maintaining the cuttings

After the cuttings are struck, I cover the container with plastic and poke small holes in it to enable a little bit of gas exchange. It can be placed on a windowsill that doesn’t get too much direct sun, or, more successfully, under bright white fluorescent lights.

A note on plant lights: Artificial light for plants doesn’t need to be special, but it has to produce light without too much heat, so do not use incandescent bulbs. The closer the light appears to natural sunlight, the better. Newer LED setups might combine red and blue light, which should work. Otherwise, plain white light is best. (DO NOT use blacklights or UV lights; plants don’t use ultraviolet light to photosynthesize. They use the same wavelenghts produced in the largest amount by the sun, which are also what your eyes use to see and it will appear white.)

Cuttings under artificial lights need to be on a timer: plants require a period of darkness every day to undergo a full metabolic cycle, but will root faster if there is more light than darkness. I use a 16-8 photoperiod, or 16 hours on, 8 hours off, unless I learn otherwise about a particular species.

Several sets of cuttings are wrapped up and placed under lights for rooting.

Moving to the next phase

Different plant species take varying lengths of time to root, so you’ll have to keep an eye on your cuttings by looking through the container. Sometimes I lift a cutting or two out to check, although I do this with caution because it can break small roots off or delay their growth. I usually move the plants to the next phase when the roots are a centimeter to an inch long.

After the cutting has formed small roots, it no longer needs the high-humidity environment under plastic wrap. It can be removed from the container transferred to soil to continue to develop there.

When a cutting is mature enough to transfer, it’s better to do it as soon as possible because the very high humidity environment under plastic wrap can leave plants vulnerable to forming mold or developing diseases. But the plant will be shocked and die if it is moved directly into dry air or hot sun, and needs some intermediate steps. Initially, you can transfer it into small pots in potting mix and left in the same environment with the same light cycle that it rooted in.

After the young plants form roots, they can be transferred into soil trays and returned to the same environment they were in before to continue to develop. After further growth, you can start moving them into brighter light or the more variable weather conditions outside.

From there, you can gradually harden your plants off. Watch closely for wilting or signs of severe drought stress such as leaves crisping up around the edges—if that happens, you’ll want to slow down the hardening-off process or cover the plants with a clear plastic bag to raise the humidity again.

If all goes well, root systems will quickly grow. When you see roots coming out from the bottom of the container, you can transfer the plants outdoors in shade on a mild day. Avoid hot sun! Over time, you can move the plants to a spot that gets early morning sun. You may want to pot them up into larger pots if you plan on leaving them in hot sun or overwintering them in containers. Otherwise, continue to introduce them to brighter light and eventually you’ll be able to plant them out in your garden!