Best Media for Leaf pullings...

[Noddy]

Hi all...

I have some plant that's a wish to clone since I have lost a few this winter...

I have not had much success in the past in doing this I know you need the white fleshy part...

I was wondering if it was the media that's causing the problem...

Is there a prefered method of doing this that has a higher success rate.

Thanks Noddy

 

[Joseph Clemens]

I like laying the severed leaves on the surface of a dry paper towel, then seal it inside a plastic bag, or just pile them in the bottom of a small plastic cup, and kept in a humid location. No media, until after the leaves have formed plantlets.

Perhaps this thread will help.

*******************************

Or, if you are actually referring to Dionaea muscipula leaf pullings, though you didn't say so, then I just use the same media as actively growing plants, and treat the leaf pulling the same as if they were plants. I've even taken the bits and pieces of Dionaea muscipula that were left over after I potted up a batch of newly acquired plants - just mixed them in with 100% peat moss, placed it into a ziploc plastic sandwich container (without a lid), put enough water in so everything was submerged in a thin layer of water, then checked it regularly, to make sure it always stayed that wet, kind of semi-aquatic. In a few months the tray was full of plants and a few months after that the tray was a jungle of Dionaea muscipula plants.

 

[Presto]

I had very good success just putting leaves in a tray of distilled water, and keeping it in a warm window/terrarium.

 

[jimscott]

And I've had success with live LFS, under lights.

 

[jonnyq]

If memory serves, Emily actually wrote a very helpful article (with pictures!) on the distilled water method in the Oct 2010 Newsletter of the NECPS...

(Emily, Am I allowed to re-post the text of the article?)

 

[Presto]

Yeah, feel free Jonny! I just looked for that newsletter in the archives on the NECPS website, but it looks like a couple months are missing..

 

[jonnyq]

Thanks! (I didn't want to re-post it without permission.)

Grow Tips for October: Taking Venus flytrap Leaf
Pullings
By: Emily Troiano
This is a great time of year to find Venus Flytraps for sale at supermarkets and
hardware stores. Some stores will get large shipments in for Halloween. After
one of our annual shows, I bought one of these VFTs for a few dollars, and
decided to experiment with propagating it.
When I got home, I uprooted the plant. I think the VFT rhizome looks sort of like
a head of garlic. Each leaf is connected to a “clove”. By pulling downwards on
each leaf, I was able to separate it from the plant, along with its piece of white
rhizome. I did this for every single leaf on the plant.
Then, I simply put all the leaves in a dish of distilled water, covered it with plastic
wrap, and left it in a warm terrarium. If the water evaporated, I gently added
more. Eventually the leaves started turning brown and ugly. But after a month or
two…just when I was about to give up…green growth started to appear!
Once these new plants started to grow, I added long-fibered sphagnum to the
bottom of the tray and removed the plastic wrap. I allowed the leaves to settle
into the sphagnum as the water evaporated over the course of weeks. I kept this
sphagnum constantly wet.
By spring, the plantlets had grown and started to produce traps:
When I transplanted them, I was surprised to find that there were LOTS of plants
in this 5” x 5” container:
In all, there were 49 baby VFTs…from one original plant!
Forty-nine Venus flytraps! There were plenty to keep, as well as plenty to give away.
Friends and neighbors who were fascinated by my carnivorous plants got to take
home their own. There were also plenty of plants to donate at the next annual show.
One of the great joys of our hobby is being able to share these plants with one
another. This was a simple, inexpensive way to not only increase my own collection,
but to allow dozens of other people to grow a carnivorous plant. I encourage you to
give it a try!

 

[Noddy]

I have tried in peat media the but they did not work out, only a dieing plant with two leafs did.

But I did not have high humidity, so it that the key to this ...

I have not tried it in spag yet..

Noddy

 

[jonnyq]

Not sure if Noddy's still reading or not, but I did want to follow up on my earlier post... With Presto's kind advice, I took the plunge about a month ago with her plain-distilled-water method...

So, I split up a flytrap at the end of April. They're growing under a fluorescent desk lamp with a CFT daylight bulb, 14 hrs/day. Here are some pictures...

(Note: I've circled certain plant segments in black so that you can follow their progress a bit more easily.)

April 20.

May 7.

May 25.

Here's a zoomed in shot of the lower circled plant segment...

Not unexpectedly, those segments that still had roots attached seem to be the farthest along (not having to grow roots from nothing but undifferentiated rhizome tissue.)

The upper, larger circled segment was the core/center of what was the original plant after I had removed the leaves. It just continued growing as if little had happened.

The lower, smaller circled segment has grown one (two?) plantlet(s) from the base of the remaining rhizome.

No root growth yet on the non-rooted leaves, but I remain optimistic...

Thanks again to Presto for the great article and the continued advice!

 

[jonnyq]

Quick update... Having pretty good success with the leaves I started in distilled water...

So, this is a little over four months since I started the leaves in water... Added LFS a little at a time about a month ago... Somebody more experienced would likely have had better results, but hey, I'm glad enough to have the progress that I do...

And by the way, I'm reasonably certain that one of the plantlets has a flower stalk coming up...??

If memory serves, I'm not the first to have had this happen (I recall that somebody else posted a similar pic a few months back?) but at least we know it's reproducible...

Here's a shot of a different clone that I started propagating about a month after I started the other pullings... I had a few setbacks with these leaves, but I count at least eight plantlets progressing so far... Not bad for a beginner...

(The stalk cuttings in the pics were added to the bowls earlier today. One is from a dentate trap, the other three are from a cupped trap...)