 |
If your plant is a very nice specimen, the best thing you can do for it is to find it a new home. Perhaps a shopping mall, local business, or conservatory in your area that could handle a plant this size, and would willingly take care of it.
I am suggesting this because this is not an easy plant to propagate, and once the stem- tip is removed, the area just below the cut on the parent plant will send up multiple branches or leaders which will ruin the shape of the tree. If the stem-tip cutting fails to root, you will be no further ahead. Successful cuttings require a lot of rooting hormone (good quality stuff) and lots of luck. In fact, most producers today propagate new plants from seed. Side branch tips or shoots can not be used to make cuttings, as they will continue to grow sideways, never upwards.
If, however, you can not find a new home for the plant, it may be worth trying to root the tip. The cutting is made by slicing the stem off just below the first tier of branches (usually 5 or 7 branches in a tier). The prepared cutting should have the top leader, the one tier of branches and a bit of stem under them. Next, snip off two of the branches from the cutting. Dip the bottom of the cutting and the two wounded surfaces (where you cut off the two branches) in a good quality rooting hormone - be sure they are well coated with the hormone. They root best with room temperatures of 60 degrees F. Provide indirect light (a north or east window) until they have rooted. The cutting should be inserted in moist sand or any commercially packaged rooting medium made for the purpose of rooting cuttings. The tip cutting, pot and all should be placed into a large clear plastic bag with a few pin holes poked into the bag in order to keep the cutting and atmoshpere around the cutting moist. The rooting media must never be allowed to dry out, or remain too soggy.
As for rooting the cutting in water, this practice is not recommended for any type of plant, as those so called 'water roots' will just die once they are put into potting media in any case. The plant then has to concentrate on putting out brand new soil roots, if it has the strength left to do so. By the time the plant has developed those new soil roots, it could have been quite a size if it had been rooted in a proper rooting media in the first place. It is also very unlikely that a Norfolk Island pine cutting would develop roots in water.
