# propagation from cuttings



## texasnative (Mar 3, 2005)

has anyone had success propagating fruit or shade trees from cuttings? if so, which species? i know some will root easier than others, but i'm looking for a little input as i have a few experiments in the works now.


----------



## gumneck (Mar 3, 2005)

*Good Luck*

I doubt you'll have much luck. But certainly try. 

Fruit trees propagate well by stooling. You can also air layer. Cuttings would probably have to have misting and good horticultural practices etc.


----------



## Elmore (Mar 3, 2005)

I've rooted Ginkgo under mist in a poly tent in a green house. Most everything I do is from seed and grafts so I don't remember the details but I recommend a manual by Michael Dirr...Propagation of Woody Plants or something like that. Soon I am possibly going to enlist the help and assistance of a friend who roots material in rooting a rare maple, Acer x 'White Tigress'. It is a cross between an Acer pensylvanicum and an Acer tegmentosum. It has magnificient stripes of white on green bark. Most all improved Red Maples, i.e. 'October Glory', 'Red Sunset' etc. are rooted. Most fruit trees are grafted/budded onto superior root stock. Look for the book.


----------



## Tree Machine (Mar 3, 2005)

*Are we ready to <i>Rock</i> ???*

This is a really good time of the year to talk about asexual propagation of trees. Rootings, cuttings, air layering, are all ways to reproduce trees without reverting to seed. You are, in the truest sense, cloning.

The reason this is a really good time of the year to talk about cloning is because we're still in the dormant season, just ahead of the time of year when more successful trys are done. In fact, the time is <b>now</b> to actually start doing it.

Let's make <u>March 1</u> the official start of cloning season !


----------



## Elmore (Mar 3, 2005)

hear...hear
<img src="http://www.partyoutfitters.com/itempics/games/CLOWNS.JPG">


----------



## gumneck (Mar 3, 2005)

*Right On*

I think I'll go out tonight and sweet talk some antique apple scion into a little propagation-fest and have it conjoined to some Budhovsky #9.


----------



## Tree Machine (Mar 3, 2005)

*Let's give a big, biological Yee HAaaaa*

Then it's <i>UNANIMOUS!</i> Cloning season has begun!

I feel like the moon and the stars have lined up on this one.


We'regonnahavesome fun !!!


----------



## Tree Machine (Mar 3, 2005)

Our humble Elmore is a closet genius in the area of grafting. One of our Sponsors, Rainbow, may be interested in the work we have to do in the cuttings arena. I even know a person who could contribute to the in vitro tissue culture aspect of cloning.

However, the thread is clearly titled <b>propagation from cuttings</b>.

is it OK to lead with an overview of tissue culture? That would be brief, as it has nothing to do with anything any of us would do, but it is interesting and connected in a way (it's a method of cloning plants).

Then there's grafting. Should this thread be about cuttings and grafting? or just cuttings? We could have three threads, or just one. I vote one thread for all methods of asexual propagation.

What does everyone else think?


----------



## gumneck (Mar 3, 2005)

*Offer my services*

TexasNative,
Send me some scion's from your fruit tree and I'll "clone" that tree for you. If its apple, I've got dwarf, semi dwarf, semi standard rootstock.

If its peach, I've got Loring rootstock. Anything else, and I can get it. I'll send it back to you next winter.


----------



## texasnative (Mar 7, 2005)

i have cuttings of Prunus mexicana, Cordia boissieri, Magnolia grandiflora, and Liriodendron tulipifera, as well as azalea "formosa". i set a 12"x24" tray and lay a bed of perlite in the bottom of the tray, with an indole3butyric acid solution diluted in water below the layer of perlite with the cuttings set in the little cylindrical peat moss seed starters, and the cuttings have been dipped in a powdered iba prior to setting in the peat moss cylinders. the peat moss cylinders wick moisture through the perlite, and the perlite keeps the cuttings from being in standing water. in another tray, i have cuttings in perlite only with an iba treatment. everything is indoors at room temperature (70'F) with two 40 watt flourescent lights. for cuttings with flower buds, should i cut the flower buds off so that the cutting will revert more energy to developing roots, or should i let them do their thing? i vote one thread for all methods of asexual reproduction myself. btw, great website! i'm glad that i stumbled upon it.


----------



## TREETX (Mar 8, 2005)

It sounds like you have a fairly decent start on your propagation project.

For more reading, if you don't have it, get Jill Nokes - How to Grow Native Plants of Texas and the Southwest.

It is from the UT Press.


----------



## Tree Machine (Mar 8, 2005)

Yes, very good start. You know how we love pictures...

Qustion about your indole-butyric acid, synthetic auxin, Root-tone. IBA is not very soluble in water, nor is the carrier. How did you get it dispersed in your perlite tray?

Also, the cuttings that you dipped in the powder, and then put in the perlite, did you get the feeling that the powder might be blocking the water tubules right at the cut? Did you dip them in powder, paste or solution? 


How do you get the cuttings to stand up in perlite. How deep is it, do you have a problem with them falling over?

I would pop the flower buds off one half of the cuttings, leave the other half alone. Chances both will do OK, but you get the answer you ask.

On what date did you start the project. We wanna keep active in the progress in Texas monitored at least weekly up until they go in dirt six weeks or so from now.

Thanks for the reference TreeTX. We should keep a running list of resources.... wait... that's the beauty of a forum. If you share a resource, it just <i>just became</i> part of the running list.


----------



## Tree Machine (Mar 8, 2005)

I've been thinking about propagation threads, all headed under one title, and although tissue culture will likely be only a page or so, 'Grafting' could go on for a long time. So can 'Cuttings'. In rethinking, this thread could get huge and deep and vascillate between different propagation techniques within the same thread. If we create distinct threads, we always have the option to hyperlink between them, the common relevancies.

I change my vote. I say better to <i>focus,</i> in specific technique that go with the method on thread. Cutting, grafting, by seed, tissue culture. Four distinctly seperate methods of propagating a tree. Lets run all four threads alongside one another, each in their own packages.

Is there a thread running on transplantation?


----------



## texasnative (Apr 6, 2005)

i am sad to report that all of my cuttings have died with the exception of 2 magnolias. they are potted and have started new growth. i took the cuttings in january.


----------



## Tree Machine (Apr 6, 2005)

Two is good. There are hings you learned. It's still early in the propagation season. Let's share methods, staying on the topic of Cuttings.


----------



## Elmore (Apr 6, 2005)

Typically you should root your semi-hard wood cuttings in mid-June.


----------



## Tree Machine (Apr 9, 2005)

Semi--hard. Is that meaning like the first-year green wood?


----------



## mrniceguy (May 3, 2005)

Gumneck.....Please explain what stooling is and can I do it to a weeping higan cherry? Thanks! Joe.


----------



## Tree Machine (May 13, 2005)

The tree in the pics came to me quite by acident.

One morning, when going from here to there, I saw this dude walking down a thoroughfare, I asked if he needed a ride. He smiled big, got in an began thanking me. "Six months I've been walking, and you're the first person to ever offer me a ride."
"The World sucks. Where ya goin?" I asked.

He was on my way home and I'd saved him 45 minutes on getting home. He was really thrilled. 

I pulled into his driveway and noticed an extremely unusual tree, one that I had never seen. I asked him what kind of tree it was and he voiced a Latin _Genus specie_. "Tell me about it, will you?

He points to a half dozen others and says, "Follow me around the back".

Out back were a small plantation of this same specie of tree, arranged in rows, evenly spaced. I was intrigued.


There's a whole story here of the project he had going on, the tons of leaf litter and the earthworms.

The tree is special as it is a nitrogen fixer. His entire back yard was dedicated to bioconversion and creation of fine, earthy compost; 100% organic, rich humus. Soil. I was wholly impressed.

As he was telling me details of these trees, the growth rate, and he tugged this growth coming off the trunk and accidentally snapped it off. He threw it to the ground. I sez, "Why not root it?"

Impossible. We've tried many, many times. It just doesn't happen. I looked at the explant and being a fast growing plant, should root quickly, in maybe 10 days. It needed, during that critical period, an absolutely ideal micro-environment.


I think I'm in the 8th or 9th day since I adopted it. I pretty much have not disturbed the plant since dropping it into straight water, and it did well being left alone to recover and begin developing callus, and then diferentiation into root primordia.

That's where I started taking pictures. I just think this stuff is so fascinating......


----------



## Tree Machine (May 13, 2005)

Here's the apical meristem region (4) and 2 stem shots showing root primordia (9 and 10)


----------



## Tree Machine (May 13, 2005)

The three shats are of the lateral bud above the leaf stem. The leaf was cut off, and has now developed a dome of tender callus tissue, which will differentiate into root tissue over time. Root primordia is already forming in places along the lower stem.

The lateral bud is a meristematic growth region. Plant hormones called auxins concentrate in bud areas and control and stimulate _elongation_. If this cutting were on the tree, that would be fine. That is vegetative growth, That is _life_.

But, my little pet is in a yogurt cup being asked to set forth roots. The hormones that stimulate rooting are called _cytokinins_. What I see is is auxins being produced in a region where I want cytokinins.

The plant is stable and healthy, living in it's high-tech enviro-chamber.

I'm thinking of doing a little surgury, excising those two meristematic buds. 

What do you think?


----------



## gumneck (May 13, 2005)

mrniceguy said:


> Gumneck.....Please explain what stooling is and can I do it to a weeping higan cherry? Thanks! Joe.



Stooling is where you essentially are piling a mixture of soil/sand/mulch material over a trees/vines new growth in order to make that new growth send off roots. I've used it to reproduce apple trees/grapevines with great results. Keep in mind the tree produced will be an exact copy of the new growth where roots were formed. So if your weeping higgan cherry is on 
rootstock, the new growth from the tips will be different. If it is grafted you can propagate the rootstock by taking a root cutting. 

A trench or whole can be dug laying the cherry tree in it laying down on its side. Then begin covering up the tree with the s/s/m material continuously throughout growing season. I let the new growth just barely sit above the material. Then when its dormant brush/remove the material and you should have roots formed at various branch of new growth. Cut behind those roots and you have produced a copy. 

If its a patented plant, keep it on the downlow.(not that I would ever violate a patent law)


----------



## Tree Machine (May 13, 2005)

Privledged information from gumneck. Thanks for passing it forward.


----------



## Tree Machine (May 13, 2005)

So what's my tree? It's from Australia.


----------



## gumneck (May 13, 2005)

I'll bite. Looks more like a plant. 

I'll guess: how about a SquashEucalyptus!

Sorry.


----------



## Tree Machine (May 14, 2005)

Yer funny, Gumneck.

It's a tree. Grows at a phenomonal rate. The new branches are hollow and very fleshy. I'll have to swing back over there and take pics of the tree itself, as well as the bioremediation gardens at the bases of the trees. Fascinating stuff for a recycling freak like myself.

Keep guessing


----------



## gumneck (Apr 14, 2008)

TM

The suspense is killing me. Please give us the answer.

Tom


----------



## gumneck (Apr 15, 2008)

I got it. Its a KIWI!!


----------



## ropensaddle (Apr 15, 2008)

gumneck said:


> Stooling is where you essentially are piling a mixture of soil/sand/mulch material over a trees/vines new growth in order to make that new growth send off roots. I've used it to reproduce apple trees/grapevines with great results. Keep in mind the tree produced will be an exact copy of the new growth where roots were formed. So if your weeping higgan cherry is on
> rootstock, the new growth from the tips will be different. If it is grafted you can propagate the rootstock by taking a root cutting.
> 
> A trench or whole can be dug laying the cherry tree in it laying down on its side. Then begin covering up the tree with the s/s/m material continuously throughout growing season. I let the new growth just barely sit above the material. Then when its dormant brush/remove the material and you should have roots formed at various branch of new growth. Cut behind those roots and you have produced a copy.
> ...


Question will that approach on fruit trees make fruit quicker on the clone?
Does the graft think its older than it is?


----------



## gumneck (Apr 15, 2008)

ropensaddle said:


> Question will that approach on fruit trees make fruit quicker on the clone?
> Does the graft think its older than it is?



Good question. I dont think so but depending on what your trying to propagate is the key. I do it to produce rootstocks(apples,pears,peaches) or regenerate grapevines.

Lets assume its an apple. 
The way I understand it is that If your top variety is lets say Fuji and you get the Fuji part of the tree to send off roots then the speed with which the new tree develops fruit spurs depends on that varieties characterstics(If Fuji ungrafted trees take 10 years to fruit than it will take 10 years). 

Your second question...Kind of and depends on rootstock variety too. Although different cultivars develop fruitspurs faster than others, the rootstock makes the big difference with how soon a variety will fruit. I've had varieties of apples grafted on a dwarfing rootstock called Budhovsky #9 that developed spurs two years after grafting while still in a pot. 

I hope I was clear and all should feel free to jump in,add to, correct, critique, send money etc.
Tom


----------



## Earthy (Apr 27, 2008)

Finally...I have been looking for discussions like this for a long time. Anyone have pictures of their mist beds and propagation set up? Can anyone recomend a mist system or heads?


----------



## gumneck (Apr 27, 2008)

Earthy said:


> Finally...I have been looking for discussions like this for a long time. Anyone have pictures of their mist beds and propagation set up? Can anyone recomend a mist system or heads?




http://www.arboristsite.com/showthread.php?t=50151&highlight=mistbed

The green tip heads came from DRAMM. My timer and valves are actually a sprinkler type system that was in the house I bought. Luckily, I can adjust the timing to get very close to 8 seconds on time. Much more is too much for what I do.


----------



## KsWoodsMan (May 17, 2008)

Tree Machine said:


> So what's my tree? It's from Australia.


I wouldnt have known it was Australian. We have been plauged by them here since the 70's. You are right about their growth rate. They are an extremely invasive tree that will proliferate at the first oppurtunity. 

Extremely fast growers. You could plant one when your kid is born and they will be able to climb in it when they are old enough.

We always refered to it as Pulpwood. I think it might be a Camphor ( cam - fer' ) tree. I dont recall any bugs in them except tiny red tree mites.


----------

