Rooted cuttings

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The other day @JudyEv and @rebelann were discussing propagating plants. That brought up the subject of cuttings and then today I was looking at some of the ones I took a few weeks ago – can’t remember exactly when, sorry. These are from a shrub called Abelia grandiflora (which doesn’t really seem to have a common name). Anyway I looked at these and could see a few small roots just starting to poke out of the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot, so I thought I would have a look and see how they were doing. I had started, probably about two months ago, with a dozen cuttings in a pot of gritty compost. They have been outside in a mostly shady spot, and by today they all still look green and healthy. But when I tipped the pot out I found quite a variety of outcomes! Two had each grown a big cluster of roots. Two had just two or three small roots. And the other eight had done nothing so far. I carefully teased them all apart and potted the rooted ones into new pots of their own. I could just have thrown the others away, but I decided I may as well put them back and see if they did anything if I waited longer. Nothing to lose after all! The striking thing is that looking at the top part of these cuttings, there is no way you could tell which were growing and which were not. One of the cuttings with a big root ball had grown new leaves, but then so had one of the cuttings with no roots at all! Many of them were flowering as well. Just like people, plants – or in this case even parts of the same plant – are all different! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2023.