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Propagating Sarracenia....by Growth Point cutting!

petmantis

ermahgerd
Every now and then, Sarracenia rhizomes may create a new growth point close to the main growth point. After a few weeks, this growth point will make a few pitchers; these pitchers may be the size equivalent to those of Sarracenia seedlings. If left alone, in a few years this growth point will grow to make its own mature pitchers.

Propagating Sarracenia by leaf cuttings seems pretty hard to do, and for the most part, it's unsuccessful. However, one day when I was repotting a S. purpurea, that had a few of these mini growth points on it, I accidentally ripped it off. When I noticed it, I decided to not throw it in the trash, but to plant it in soaking Peat moss with some other Sarracenia seedlings. The growth point had no roots what so ever, but it did have 2 tiny leaves.

Keeping it in very high humidity, and bright light for about 2 months, I ignored it, but every time I did notice it with the seedlings I saw that it still had its old little leaves. After a while, I decided to see if it had made roots, and, miraculously, it had! This tiny cutting has now produced 2 tiny pitchers ever since it was planted with the other seedlings, and is growing big.

I have the feeling that this method of propagation is a bit like rooting Darlingtonia stolons, since it’s faster than growing from seed, but unfortunately, like Darlingtonia stolons, the original Sarracenia plant must initiate this.

Right now I’m trying this method with a few S. x catesbaei growth points that are emerging from the rhizome of the parent plant.

Does anyone else use this method for propagating Sarracenia? Any ideas on how to speed up the rooting process or the growth point? I'm pretty sure others have done it before, just haven't seen any articles on how to do it. it seems interesting to me...

Thanks!


BTW: I am pretty sure this could be just like cutting up large rhizomes to produce new plants, but this method is supposed to use just growth points, not so much as the actual rhizome of the plant to propagate.
 
S. purpurea and I believe some of the other short sarracenia are known to propagate successfully via leaf pullings. I'm not sure if this charcteristic carries over to purpurea hybrids or not.

EDIT: Here's a link with a little more info, under vegetative propagation: http://www.sarracenia.com/faq/faq5552.html

Jason
 
From pulling weeds out over the years, there's probably been 5-6 times I pulled a leaf off my accident, with a tiny bit of root attached. I would just stick in the soil next to the plant it came from and they always survived. They were always upright varieties. This year, it happened on a 1-year old seedling, an open-pollinated oreophila x alabamensis. I just stuck it back in the sphagnum and it is thriving. I never do it deliberately, but I guess with a 100% success rate so far, maybe it's something that should be explored more.
 
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