Does it form a new leader,or is it going to be a leaf for life?

I've never done this with a lyrata so who knows...maybe something to it(sure hope so!).

Rooting ficus leaves in terrariums,I too had extensive rooting occur but never anything up top.

I COULD just be jinxed though. lol

Transferred it to soil, waiting for it to get established before I make any judgments. Anybody know of a magic way to force a new shoot from a leaf cutting?

Some kind of auxin therapy maybe?

Al(Tapla) knows much about the chemistry of these things...hopefully he will make an appearance!

No sign of any new growth yet, how would I go about doing the auxin therapy? Just scrape a bit of the skin off the petiole and apply some rooting hormone powder and maybe some sphagnum to keep it moist?

How did things end up turning out with this? I am all in favor of experiments. :)

I've followed these instructions and one leaf did not make it, it got very clogged up with bacteria because I didn't have the jar really clean, but the other one had a little nub of a taproot coming out at week 6. Aquafina spring water worked great. After 3 months (I did this in winter so maybe that's why it was so slow) it finally looks like the picture. I'm going to try some more leaf propagation. Also, my leaves were so much bigger than the jar I used that I sealed a ziploc bag around them, it worked fine.

I'll let you know what happens but I suspect that you need a more developed root system in soil before it starts putting out shoots.

I'm not sure I understand this topic. It read "let me share a foolproof method" but it seemed like the OP had never tried this before and it also didn't seem to even work.

Also, I do not believe you can use cuttings that are just a leaf. You have to take an actual branch.

The way it looks they took a heal of a leaf, much like you'd use for a tree graft which theoretically would start new growth but I don't see ficus as all that hard to propagate if done at the proper time of year. Why they would just use a leaf heal is confusing to me.

Sounds like OP was taking the leaf off a plant anyway, so decided to try and propagate it - a worthy endeavor, fun experiment if nothing else. I have a hard time throwing away anything I trim from my plants ;)

Ficus is easy to propagate with cuttings that include some stem. Never tried a leaf, but, in general you can't believe "the internet" when it comes to propagation - I've found many untrue things written on Gardenweb and other places about what can and can't be done with leafs of various plants.

That said I have no idea if a ficus leaf will ever send out a shoot. Not a botanist either, but I think auxin isn't what you need. Auxin is produced by shoots, and travels down the plant towards the roots. It helps keep energy focused on apical shoots by suppressing shoots from poking out lower. Hence, the practice of pruning/pinching shoots to cause backbudding - remove the auxin source. Would be interested in a more correct/better explanation.. and insight into whether this leaf has what's necessary at a cellular level to turn into a growing tree.

Agree "foolproof" claim is perhaps a bit optimistic given that success is hard to claim at this early stage and it appears this is the first attempt by OP.

Daniel

I agree that the addition of anything containing auxin woild be counter-productive.

I think that eventually, a shoot would form. The leaf petiole has a vascular cambium, which means that meristematic tissues are present. In order for a shoot to form, differentiated tissues must dedifferentiate, or undifferentiated tissues must differentiate to form an apical meristem. The leaf is definitely capable of this process, but I have no idea how long it might take.

I once tried to start a leaf cutting from a schefflera. I drilled a hole in a feather stone, set the stone in a tray of water, and inserted the leaf into the stone. My hope was that a shoot would form and expand to fill the hole, which would cut off the flow of water and nutrients to the top of the plant. I reasoned that roots would form immediately above where the stem entered the hole from the top and grow over the surface of the wet feather stone, so I would end up with a root over rock composition like:

But after about 18 months. all I had to show for my efforts was a single leaf and a tray full of roots - no shoot, so I scrapped the idea.

I'm curious about how the experiment ended - if it was a success or not. Hopefully, the OP is getting notices of our posts to his thread and will take the time to post a picture of the success or let us know if things didn't work out as hoped.

Al

Out of curiosity, was the schefflera cutting just the leaf and the petiole, or was it a heel cutting? I've been told that heel cuttings on schefflera work, but I've never tried it.

Unless the OP has had to change their account like I did, they haven't posted since 2009. I think we've lost them.

Not a heel or mallet cutting.

Al

Was not familiar with heel and mallet cuttings but just looked them up - so thx! Interesting stuff.

Mentha, not sure how you came to that conclusion - this thread was started in 2014 so whoever posted it (OP) was active on Gardenweb in 2014.

Daniel

I clicked on their profile page and the last activity was 2009. I didn't even think to look at the post's date. Note to self profile pages are deceptive.

Wow, I wasn't expecting this thread to suddenly come back to life after so long. Unfortunately the rooted leaf stayed a leaf for ever, eventually the leaf started to die and I gave up on the whole thing. I guess there just wasn't enough undifferentiated tissue left on the leaf heel to grow anything besides some rudimentary roots. This is by no means foolproof, I apologize for my overzealousness.

I pretty much try to root anything I cut off of a plant just to see what happens. This one definitely didn't work.

Thanks for all the interest in my post! Sorry I don't have better news about the leaf. I think part of the issue was its reluctance to form a solid root structure, after many months when I finally pulled it out of the dirt it had not expanded roots much past the initial growth.

Thanks for an update. I'm sure had you taken a heal cutting you might have been more successful.

Here is my fun experiment with rooting a ficus leaf, similar to what some of you have tried :

Youtube videos :

Rooting a ficus leaf cutting - Part 1

Rooting a ficus leaf cutting - Part 2

It seems that woody plants cannot be propagated by leaf cuttings, though they might grow roots. The leaf eventually dies, as it did in my case. I am aware that cuttings and air-layered cuttings are a better way to clone a ficus but this experiment is NOT about cloning but trying to understand why the leaf roots when it cannot multiply like this. I plan to do more experiments again on this, in soil and water. I want to know whether the roots can form a new plant if the leaf stalk is cut off after a point. Even if the leaf cannot multiply without a stem node, shouldn't the roots be able to produce a new plant ? The roots of a leaf cutting seems identical to the stem cuttings i rooted in water. Is there a difference in their structure and function, internally ?

Many woody plants can be propagated from leaf cuttings. The delineating point is whether or not the propagule is capable of forming adventitious buds. Some plants have groups of cells that descend directly from embryonic cells engaged in meristematic activity. These cell groups can differentiate into buds/shoots from foliar embryos that formed as the leaf was forming. More commonly though, wound-induced secondary meristems can form when existing tissues already acting as part of an organ dedifferentiate into NEW meristematic regions (de novo regeneration), then redifferentiate into new organs (buds).

If you want to be fairly certain that you'll be successful in your ficus cloning attempts, make sure you include the latent axillary bud located just above where the leaf is attached to the stem. The downside to propagating from stem cuttings with a singular leaf in water is that often the bud is destroyed by rot, and/or, the type of root tissue that forms in water is physiologically very different from root tissue that forms in a solid, well-aerated medium. This difference is made manifest in the water-formed roots being very poor at taking up water from a solid medium, along with the fact that water roots are very delicate, almost brittle. As such, they handle the transition from water to soil poorly.

Al

Thank you very much, Tapla!

You're very welcome, Kat - my pleasure. I hope you and all the plants you repotted are faring well. Nice to see you're still active on the forums!

Edited to say: I'm sorry - I had you mixed up with a different 'Kat' from Europe that I helped with some guidance through several repots. I beg a pardon.

Al

Mine took about 4 months to root! I thought that, maybe it was not going to root for me. However, the leaf remained green and healthy the whole time. I didn’t give up on it, and sure enough a root appeared; quickly followed by many roots. I didn’t use a rooting solution, or honey. I used tap water, and started the process at the begging of the winter (rooting began just as spring approaches). So, maybe these reasons are why it took so long to happen for me. Patience paid off.

What’s next, When do I plant, and what conditions do they like?

Thanks ahead of time!

I have tried rooting this plant from leaf. It's still in water but the roots have become thicker every day. I was hoping since the petoile was thick and woody that it will transition to soil and start new buds. Wish me luck.

This is my progress so far.. it's been about 4 weeks

Root and shoot initiation/development in leaf cuttings are independent of adventitious bud and shoot initiation/development, so it doesn't necessarily follow that shoots will automatically give rise to shoots. Not all plants are capable of forming an adventitious bud from leaf petiole tissues, ficus being one of those. Axillary buds are found in leaf axils (crotch formed by leaf and branch), which are found on the stem immediately above the point where the leaf petiole (stem) attaches to the branch. Below, you see axillary shoots that were generated by the activation of dormant buds on the stem. Ficus leaf cuttings need to have the portion of the stem that has axillary buds to be successful.

Instead of a leaf cutting, you need a leaf-bud cutting.

Ideally, you would include at least 2 nodes when taking your cuttings - 3 would be better. Strip leaves (cut with scissors tight to the stem) off the lower 2 nodes. The leaf stays on the upper node, but cut it in half across the veins. Stick (plant) the cutting in a fast-draining medium so both the lower nodes are covered by moist (NEVER WET OR SOGGY) soil. Keep the soil moist only. Site the cutting in open shade outdoors out of wind.

The Mexican petunia cutting below is prepared in such a manner.

Also, you might read what I said above on 3/10/19 @ 9:16PM

Al

I guess that explains why a shoot hasn't generated from my leaf. Someone gave me a leaf with node, I put it in water, took about 4 months to root, but once it did the roots grew like wild flower. I've had it potted now for about 5 months, and still no shoot. The planted leaf is healthy, beautiful, but no shoot. Are you saying it may never shoot if it wasn't clipped properly?

Thanks,

Dani

Pics above in my former post. Looks exactly the same, except now it's in soil.

Yes, your leaf will likely stay a leaf.

You need an actual stem or branch cutting, not just a leaf.

I think it's actually possible to grow it from a leaf cutting, you just have to try multiple times. If plants like the African violet can be propagated using leaf cutting, why not for the ficus also? I've done leaf cuttings from African violets, and sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes the leaves don't grow roots at all, some do grow roots but never produce a meristem from which the new plant develops, and then you get the leaves that are successful and do become new plants. It's kind of difficult to tell the success rate of leaf cuttings unless you do a lot of them to experiment. And seeing as how the OP only did one, it's not a great indication of whether this method of propagation is possible or whether it is successful or not. To be successful as deemed by the scientific methods, the end result has to be replicable. To me OP's experiment is half a success, we know the leaf has the capability to grow a root, and others have corroborated with replicable results of leaves producing roots. Now we just have to wait for it see if somebody can actually get it to produce an apical meristem.

Comparing an African Violet leaf to a Ficus Lyrata leaf is comparing apples to oranges.

Those two plants have no similarities and just because one can root from a leaf cutting does not mean the other can if you try really hard.

All plants in the plant kindgom share characteristics and all descended from one genus. It’s not far fetched to say African violets could be distantly related to ficuses. Read up on plant genome research. You don’t know if you don’t keep trying. That’s all I’m saying. A one time experiment doesn’t prove anything. Doing this method 20-30 times is more in the realm of an experiment where you can gauge the success or failure rate of such a method. Don’t be such a dunce.

In the same vein that, "All plants in the plant kindgon [sic] share characteristics", they also share about the same number of dissimilarities, ...... and let's not ignore the reality that the kitchen table or the back deck is not a lab.

In science, 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent.' One might "think" or posit that tomorrow, apples might begin to rise when they abscise from the tree (which is essentially what you've done), but that possibility doesn't merit time in physics classrooms equal to that devoted to Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation. One person musing that one event should or could follow another means nothing to nature. Both F lyrata and F elastica petioles will readily produce roots to form 'blind cuttings', which means they are incapable of forming the adventitious buds which are prerequisite to shoot formation.

If you want to propagate F lyrata or elastica, you'd best bring an existing bud along for the ride or be ready for a disappointment. Blind cuttings can live for years, but eventually they collapse for no conspicuous reason.

Al

That's not the only way to propagate actually. My parents own a microbiology laboratory. Plant tissue culture is a way to grow just about any kind of plant from just a singular plant cell, though the most commonly used type of cells in this process are meristematic tissue such as the root tip and axillary bud tips. All plants have this kind of tissue. To have such a narrow-minded field of thought is a detriment only to yourselves. Tissue culture is actually better anyway, so you don't have to destroy an entire bud and root tissue is always plentiful. It also has a higher success rate than when you just try to propagate at home. The tissue culture process can easily be replicated at home as long as a sterile environment is provided. All you really need is a medium to suspend the tissue culture in such as agar, in a temperature controlled environment. Though the suspension medium differs greatly from what kind of plant is being produced. Orchids, for example, require higher levels of malto-detrixin and banana powder to successfully grow. Since there's not much tissue culture done of Ficus lyrata, it would be necessary to find the right suspension medium that yields the highest rates of cell division.

Lmao, I don’t need to save face. I happen to have a pretty good one, and the credentials to back it up. Who are you but just a contractor?

I'm just a contractor, no one special, but I understand that and don't mind that you pointed it out. One thing I am though, is prescient enough to have predicted the direction you would take.

Al

Andrew, just because your parents run a micropropagation lab doesnt mean you understand what it takes to clone ficus lyrata. I used to have my own tabletop laminar flow hood to sow orchid seeds which was pretty easy.

To clone plants, it takes a piece of meristematic tissue that are treated with auxins so you get a mass of undifferentiated cells that are cut up again and grown out with more auxins once you have enough, they are treated again with a different hormone to initiate differentiation into roots and stems.

Some plants are easier than others. But generally it all starts off with an actual growth bud that is sliced and diced until you get to the the meristem. Roots tips also have meristematic tissue but it rarely works for cloning.