I want to try leaf cuttings!!

My Ping Weser has small leaves from I believe it's dormancy during Winter but I want to try reproducing more from leaf cuttings. I would like to know what medium I should be using if it's any different to repotting a fully grown plant.

I prefer using a mix of perlite:vermiculite in a 1:1 ratio for mex. pinguicula leaf cuttings. Other mediums with peat, sand, perlite, vermiculite that the parent plant grows in work well too.

Do I need to wet the medium? Or put it ina tray of water> can I just moisten the soil (planning to use vermulite (sp?))?

Practice, lots of practice: I have found, for me, that Mexican Ping leaf cuttings rot if they are "too wet" and shrivel up if they are "too dry". If the moisture, humidity, temperature, and light are also at the right level, then you will soon see small plantlets form on the basal end of the severed leaves.

Sometimes if the moisture level is just a little more than optimum you will get small plants to form quickly while the parent leaf quickly rots away.

</span><table border="0" align="center" width="95%" cellpadding="3" cellspacing="1"><tr><td>Quote (PinguiculaMan @ Sep. 29 2003,8:11)</td></tr><tr><td id="QUOTE">Sometimes if the moisture level is just a little more than optimum you will get small plants to form quickly while the parent leaf quickly rots away.[/QUOTE]<span id='postcolor'>
Great now I'm jinxed. I've just been sticking the leaves in whatever potting mix was on hand, 50:50, pure peat, or anything else I could lay my grubby hands on. Then stuck the pot in a tray of water under my fluorescent lights. I've even got ping leaves to root that broke off from some other ping leaves I was rooting and had tried to seperate into seperate plants (Didn't work to well. Plantlets stayed bunched together except for one that lost three of its four leaves. They all rooted ) My blind (& dumb) luck has probably run out .

I'll keep doing it this way just to be stubborn though. (I can hear the ladies saying "Typical man!!")

I find that many ping leaf cuttings will root well on the same substrate as the parent plant, I produce hundreds of plants each year by just laying them on the compost at the sides of the pot in which the parent plants live. They will also do fine on vermiculite. However, by far the fastest medium to use is live sphagnum. All of my nepenthes and Queensland sundews grow under high humidity in terrariums with a top dressing of live sphagnum. Laying the leaves on the surface of this sphagnum (with a label in of course! ) is the method that works best for me, particularly with larger leaves, such as those of P. gigantea and P, agnata. Remove the plantlets and pot them into their final compost mix as soon as the produce a good root system, they won't like growing in sphagnum for long.

Vic

I just got a jaumavensis in the mail today and a summer leaf fell off so i'm going to try to root it. You can still root summer leaves right? Also i didn't have any extra perlite around so i planted it in a nepenthes mix of peat, perlite and orchid bark and i was wondering if it is ok to plant it in this mix.

i would try sphagnum

Long fiber sphagnum right? And to grow it in or root it in?

Matti you`r using a pic of my cat as an avvy!

Didn't someone have success by putting the leaf in a baggie(no compost) and then putting the baggie in a sock drawer until it budded?

Joe

Dunno about the sock drawer part. I would think that the leaf would want some light. I've had luck with planting it in the same medium but putting it in a ziplock to increase the humidity. The best method for me so far has been to use lfs damp but not wet in a ziplock under lights.