pereskiopsis propagation

[Prophet]

I was reading somewhere that pereskiopsis can be propagated by leaf cuttings. Anyone had experience with this? how well does it work?

[Moses]

no luck here i've tried about 60 in different ways

with spines/without,

with humidity/without,

bottom heat/no heat

only did this once and gave up so it may be possible i just didnt do it.

[DuG]

I've had heaps of leaves send out roots but never anything else. but i keep trying

[Dodie]

Heard of it but never tried it..

I'm not going to bother tryin though, always find with cuttings the smaller they are, the slower they grow, could imagine how long a leaf cutting would take to grow..I now always take cuttings atleast 1 1/2 - 2 inches long...they grow pretty quickly like this..

[Hellonasty]

It is really difficult. I have never had a leaf cutting form a plant.

I have tried a few times but there is really no point seeing as 2 plants can be

turned into 20 in just a few months.

[kadakuda]

they may make roots but dont cacti need an areole to sprout a pup?

[Pisgah]

This is a good question. I usually let my tip cuts and leaves fall to the dirt below. They always root, and I noticed new sprouts coming up, but I've never checked to see if the sprouts popping up are from tip clips or leaves. Both can root for sure, but I'll have to look to see if leaves alone can set plantlets.

[hooksbooks]

I have tried and have seen occasional roots, If you attatch a bit of stem with the leaf, it will root and form a plant, but grow very slow. I have found the best way to propogate many of them is to start with just a few cuttings, grow em well and big, then chop em down into 2 or 3 inch sections and put into a seedling tray. I like BC hyrdroponics grow plugs for this, they root well in them, especially under a humidity dome. THen I take out the plugs and plant about 30 in a 5"X30" self watering planter. If you want thicker plants, its best to only collect plant apexes to root into the plugs.

[hooksbooks]

Edited March 16, 2007 by hooksbooks

[bogfrog]

Okay so i only just found out that you can take leaf cuttings from pereskiopsis,

All the above posts didn't seem too encouraging, but i suppose 6 years have passed,

Perhaps someone has worked out an easy way to do it by now?

Thats what i'm hoping for anyway.

I'm desperately low on peres with so many seedlings it makes my heart pang to think of all the grafting i could be doing right now if i had the stock.

Leaf cuttings: worth the effort? or not?

Edited August 2, 2013 by bogfrog

[Optimystic]

I had a little bowl of rooted leaflets I just pulled out the other day.. I had stuck some little half inch tips that I pulled off to do some grafting and they grew into some nice tall thick plants that came in handy for more grafting... but the leaves just grew more and more roots... I was gonna replant them in the yard somwhere just for kicks but they are probably dried out by now laff

once you get going on propagating pereskies, the extra bowl of rooted leaves just gets in the way, so IMO, Leaf rooting is NOT WORTH THE EFFORT, not for anything more than experimentation, which is something I couldn't resist laff... I even tried some with pieces of stem and they just rooted.... about 30 or 40 total and just leaves that stayed alive with roots ... at least for several months... now , if you want some extra tips down the road don't toss the little tips off prevously grafted stock but plant them in a container.. i've been doing that and they come in handy.. even though they're small they still thicken up and grow regular by the time they are grafting size... it does take 2 or 3 months tho... im getting to the point where I don't need to mess with that anymore... though the ones I just remembered came in handy with these little monsters

the best way is just give your pereskies alot of organic nutes especially nitrogen... Im feeding mine every other time with a half dose of botanicare progrow and sometimes a little extra kelp... If you feed them adequately, and propagate often, then you'll end up in a few months time, WITH TOO MANY PERESKIES! if you get too lazy to prepare a bunch, then just throw a bunch of tips in a cup with kelp a.k.a. seasol, give plenty of light, and remember to shake the cup every couple days to oxygenate the water.. (thats my lazy way of not changing the water so often, but do change the water after a while too haha) it works wonders... and then later you can plant the ones you need or graft on to them right in the cup! only thing that sux is they bend a little but not so much that they don't fit later into pots, just maybe not as centered as i'd like them to be eh .. They can get a little gooeyness which is okay just change the water solution... once they get going, if theres a bunch of them they'll just drink up the water... so you should make sure keep the water levels up for a couple cycles but its not long before they're ready to plant.. of course change water to remove stalesness and rotting debris... then when grafting make sure to let them dry for several hours so they're not runny... anyways...

happy propagating

***LOL I totally missed how old this thread is... probably the one I read through in the past year or two... anyways... I pretty much agree with everyone else after doing my own experiment... xcuse the redundancy pls eh

Edited August 3, 2013 by Spine Collector

[goodude]

heres a question. what could one do with this rooted leaf? maybe it could be grafted onto a ultra fast growing tricho aeriol? or wat else... ?

[Rum and Monkeys]

I would love to see someone graft the leaf onto a Trichocereus

[planthelper]

as said leaves easely, form root, but that's it, they will not grow into plants.

and even if some would grow into plants, it would be very time consuming so totally useless!!

peres, will strike without problems, even if you use very small cuttings, and this is what you have to do if you start of with little, and need quickly a lot of plants.

teo, was the first, I know of who reported, using the tiny tip, you cut off a peres when you graft them, meaning a peres cutting can be only 2mm long or so.

every part of a peres will form roots with ease, that means, you can slice many cuttings, from a single stem.

I would say 2 node cuttings are long enough.

but, small cuttings, will establish themselves quite slow (the rough common rule is, small cuttings, less and shorter root formation),

so it's really the best to only use tip cuttings, of around 5cm lengh.

those tip cuttings will grow roots fast and long, and you wont have to graft onto a side shoot, so they are aesthetic.

longer cuttings than 5cm will work too. some people like to graft onto long sections of peres, and the reason is that they, will produce a more vigorous stock. so if you grow for a competition, or need maximum growth, go for long sections of peres stock, up to 15cm or more.

but, with age those grafts start to bend downwards, with the weight of the heavy loph, so I avoid those these days.