how to propagate catha edulis

[mint]

hey everyone

i was wondering how you propagate catha edulis (or cathy as i like to call her) by cutting?

[ENtiTY]

Best option is to propagate from suckers. Pre-rooted cuttings

Cuttings are possible if you can supply the right conditions, I know someone who is getting 100% strike from the PH strain. Narrow is extremely hard I hear and is why their more expensive to buy than the other Catha's. Sucker is the only reliable way apparently, other than seed of course.

Edit: Typos Typos Typos , to much drinky poos

Edited November 30, 2010 by Harry

[krazykungfu]

Khat Cuttings

Just tried layering this very day - will see how it goes...

Edited November 30, 2010 by krazykungfu

[Alice]

Narrow being difficult to propagate is a myth. It is just as easy to strike as the other types.

[planthelper]

Narrow being difficult to propagate is a myth. It is just as easy to strike as the other types.

 

what you say, is true, but aswell one could say, it's not true.

i explained this all many times...

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=24941

the ph, seems to me to be aswell a bit more difficult to probagate, just the same as the nl.

the reason for this, might very well be, this very "short young plant mode" of the nl and ph.

[planthelper]

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12455&view=&hl=catha

i wrotte about this a couple of times already, so forgive me if i keep it very brief this time.

as a general rule plants and even cacti show a decline in strike rate the older the cutting material get's.

catha edulis showes two differnet types of leaf formation, spiral alternating for young growth and binniate for mature growth. binniate is no good for cuttings, but with the broad leaved ones still works pretty well. however the narrowleaved strikes pretty much only if you use cuttings which have leaves in the spiral alternating fashion. now comes the catch the narrowleaved produces very fast a lot of useless branches, and in short a mature plant doesn't provide you with any the material you need.

so you have to rejuvinate the plant, prune it hard, and use the regrowth.

another methode of probagation is my suckers, look for tiny shoots at groundlevel and just pull them out. some will break, some will pull up fine with some roots already attached. chances are that by pulling out the suckers, more suckers will be produced.

all my narrowleaved plants come from one single cutting i took a long time ago at the rbgs, it was right away clear to me that a cutting of this plant has to have those qualities as described above, hmm took me one min to work that one out, hmm, but than that's easy if you can talk to plants, hahahaha.

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=23493&view=&hl=catha edulis probagation&fromsearch=1

catha edulis place wing facing up.

lagochillus seems aswell to like the part which is a bit flat facing upwards.

the correct polarisation can be checked by putting seeds beetween layers of wet newspaper or rockwool.

place them in different ways and than check after a while which seed's have the taproot going straight down.

if a seed is placed the wrong way mostly they will still germ, but if the seed's are old and the embryo lacks of stamina, all the efforts of bending the taproot all around can exhaust the seedling.

correctly placed seed allways come up earlier than ther upside down placed seeds!

Edited December 1, 2010 by planthelper

[naja naja]

Not on topic, but there are so many topics on khat, I thought I'd just chuck this question in here.

So far in Oz we seem to have Narrow, green, vienna white, red and the PH hybrid.

So by my count, that is 4 wild forms and 1 cultivar. Below is an extract from an study on khat chemistry. It got me thinking, wat do these other distinct forms look like? Does any1 have any pictures or even a decent botanical description of the differences between the ~44 wild forms found in Yemen Arab Republic. Are there any other forms not commercially available within Oz that any1 knows of ? Or maybe the 44 diff types refers more to chemotypes than phenotypes? Any thoughts, khat lovers?

"The environment and climate conditions determine the chemical profile of khat leaves. In the Yemen Arab Republic, about 44 different types of khat exist originating from different geographic areas of the country."

[tripsis]

I recall seeing khat sold streets of Kenya & Tanzania a few years back. I wasn't paying much attention to it at the time, but in hindsight, I guess it could have either been green or narrow leaf khat. If the 44 types refers to phenotypes though, I guess it could have a been something altogether different.

As for air layering, it definitely works and even seems to be a natural process.

[planthelper]

we got 4 wild forms:

red

green aka vienna white

narrowleaved

green aka sherman {high chance that name is wrong, sab used to sell this strain, it's a green which looks quite different(stronger serration??!) to the more common green aka vienna white}

1 cultivar:

planthelper

i have spent a lot of time looking through qat pic's on the net and i could never spot anything looking very different from what we have got in oz.

i have seen qat sold in england and it was the red strain.

more wild material would be handsome if one would try to create a super strain!!

Edited December 23, 2010 by planthelper

[Torsten]

I am only aware of the various shades of red, which also covers pink [vienna white] in the northern regions, while narrow leaf is only grown in the south [much more cold hardy]. The narrow leaf behaves so differently in propagation that I have trouble accepting it as a member of the species.

The white [ie plain green] is from otj via greenman and to be honest it is the only time I have come across this form.

[CunningPlatypus]

Many moons ago, I had the good fortune of living in Ethiopia as a volunteer. I was there for the better part of a year, in a smallish, dusty city called Gondar. Khat (or chat, as it’s locally called) is chewed in tremendous quantities all over Eastern Africa. Come mid-day, when the chat shipments mysteriously arrived (seemingly out of thin air – one minute the kiosks were empty, and the next they had garbage-bags full of greenery), the streets would quiet down dramatically, as the chewers moved inside to chew chat and drink bunna (coffee) in peace.

I used to chew it regularly, after work, and consider it one of the finest substances known (if not the best) to focus the mind. For anyone out there needing a productive study session, khat blows anything else out of the water.

Since the slant of this thread has moved on to khat varieties, let me say that the Catha chewed in Ethiopia is, to the best of my knowledge, the same as (or very similar to) what’s commonly called the ‘white’ or broad-leaf variety.

[Torsten]

Narrow being difficult to propagate is a myth. It is just as easy to strike as the other types.

 

we get a strike rate of about 95% on red & pink khat, 40% on white [ie green], and 0.3% on narrow leaf. we have tried many methods and certainly always use high hormone cuttings [ie recently propagated]. We have had about 10 people propagating the narrow leaf, all with their own methods and ideas, yet none did any better.

I am not saying that it doesn't propagate, but it certainly did not do it for us in our climate with our methods.

NL also doesn't graft onto red khat.

[tripsis]

I've seen a fairly mature NL khat plant naturally air layering, rooting down where its branches had come into contact with the soil. I took two rooted cuttings from it and they both transplanted fine.

[Torsten]

I've seen a fairly mature NL khat plant naturally air layering, rooting down where its branches had come into contact with the soil. I took two rooted cuttings from it and they both transplanted fine.

 

and if you had a climate or location listed in your profile then this information may actually be of benefit to someone, but as you haven't it is useless.

[tripsis]

As per the forum rules, I've now listed my climate/location.

Edit: I never said that where I saw it is in the region I reside. This does happen to be the case, but making an assumption like that could lead to misinformation.

Edited December 26, 2010 by tripsis

[Sola]

Does anyone have any photos of an old specimen they might be able to post or send via email? I'm interested to know what the trunk does in old/ older age.

As I'm sure many of you do, I keep a look out for thnobotanical specimens everywhere I go. Sometimes you find some truly amazing things, hence I would like to

confirm if the trunk becomes ngarled and twisted on a truly old specimen as I have found something that could quite possibly be khat but is a true tree. The

flowers are tiny, white with a tiny bit of pink on some of them. I'll try to get a photo, sorry it is a bit off topic but if it is khat some serious propagation is in order.

Cheers

[planthelper]

i get the same strike rate with all cathas which is around 75 and more, if i can use my prefered material of the plants for probagation.

problem is, the NL and the PH does mature much faster, and that's why some people have a low strike rate with NL and PH, it simply does not strike as well with old growth wood, as with juvinile growth pattern.

note, i'm not talking about how old the growth is, but if it shows mature or juvenile growth pattern.

[inpsyght]

didn't want to start a new thread, so figured i'd post these pics of the various varieties of known strains here,

i've supplied seasonal info as they tend to vary in colouration over the temperate year, especially the reds.

red - (early spring)

red - (mid summer)

narrowleaf - (spring)

planthelper - (spring)

green - (mid summer)

green - (early spring)

[planthelper]

nice effort, thx for uploading!

[mira]

catha edulis showes two differnet types of leaf formation, spiral alternating for young growth and binniate for mature growth. binniate is no good for cuttings, but with the broad leaved ones still works pretty well. however the narrowleaved strikes pretty much only if you use cuttings which have leaves in the spiral alternating fashion.

 

This phenomenon was described over 100 years ago. I've attached a journal article that may be of interest.

Economic_Botany-Krikorian_Catha_edulis-1985(39)_4_514-521.pdf

In the description of the striking rate based on alternate vs. opposite growth, it is claimed that only branches with opposite growth flower and fruit. Does this match with your observations, planthelper?

Economic_Botany-Krikorian_Catha_edulis-1985(39)_4_514-521.pdf

Economic_Botany-Krikorian_Catha_edulis-1985(39)_4_514-521.pdf

[planter]

damn thats really interesting

I noticed the changing leaf pattern from alternate to opposite long ago, but when I first began striking cuttings I never payed attention to what tips or growth I was using, and from my attempts I had concluded it was simply that the herbaceous growth was not developed enough to produce adventitious roots (the pericycle was not developed enough to produce roots due to the lack of secondary growth). After those attempts I tried some cuts that were gettin semi-woody and woody and they were able to root, but I found that simply propagating the suckers (and inducing them with BAP applications to the base of the stem at the soil level) was the easiest way, as long as you get the sucker off with some woody growth at the base, and having a rootlet or two on it helps a lot

but now i will def have to re-investigate this phenomena myself....maybe i just have to pay attention to which leaf pattern i try to clone....

[klip247]

Is it possible to root red catha (broadleaf) in water only?

This is the mother plant that ill be taking the cuttings from; It's getting quite large, will have to transplant soon, what do you guys do to keep the size small?

Edited September 2, 2012 by klip247

[etherealdrifter]

in oz spring ,i'd just tip each terminal branch and let the laterals grow over summer for a more bushy, leafy plant

edit

as for propagation, tipping forces more sprouts from the soil which could be theoretically ripped out and propagated for more babies....theoretically

Edited September 2, 2012 by etherealdrifter