I suppose this must be a silly question as no one has bothered to attempt an answer. I will try to answer it myself. First of all, sap can flow through a stem in either direction. Secondly, upside down leaf buds will quickly right themselves and grow upward toward sunlight. So I believe the "upside down" part of a divided layered cutting will soon straighten itself out and grow normally.

Sap can flow through the phloem in either direction, but water and nutrients flow through the xylem in only one direction, or, in some cases, only poorly in the other direction. My guess is that the "backwards" cutting will send up a shoot from its cut end to correct the orientation problem if they live.

BTW, short sections are sometimes removed and then grafted back into a plant backwards to dwarf the plant. The amount of dwarfing can be somewhat proportional to the length of the inverted section.

Thanks for the answers. I think most people wouldn't know the answer or perhaps just consider it a silly question.Your answer does seem rational.When I have read about layering it suggests that you cut the rooted cutting off the mother plant as close as possible to the ground.This would suggest to me that perhaps the vegetative area on the side of the mother plant might not be viable.

I doubt anyone thought it was silly.

I think there are three reasons people don't answer some questions quickly on Gardenweb. One is that they may not be reading the post because the title doesn't interest them and they have limited time. Another is that they may not know the answer, or be sure enough of the answer to give it in public. The last is that they are not sure of exactly how best to answer the question or think that someone else might be able to answer the question better. I have seen questions that I thought would take pages of typing to answer, and then someone answers them in a sentence or two. Sometimes it's difficult to think of a simple enough answer.

My first reaction is to not getting greedy or complicated, but just take the entire rooted section along with the normal oriented section. That's a win! You can always layer some more, or try rooting a few stem sections in a humidity chamber. I read that this years hardened growth taken in early fall is a good time to take cuttings from that plant.

However, I also read here that tip layering works with that also. That supports brandon's comment about a new shoot coming up from base of the backwards section (like raspberries do). So it may be worth dividing the rooted section (if it is long enough), leaving the base part in the ground to hopefully send up a a shoot later.

Good luck and let us know how it works,
Ron

coolvol
you could try serpentine laying, which is what i think you're attempting to do. it's not complicated, but it does require many more nodes, obviously. brandon7 is right about the water, some plants will reorient themselves, but ones with woody stems don't. you might want to just do as many single layers as possible and then next year, layer those newer ones and the mother plant.

i had two links for you, but they keep getting rejected. just do a google search