Monday, November 19, 2007

Random plant event: Peperomia caperata sprouts

I broke some leaves off of a Peperomia caperata at work maybe a couple months ago, by accident. I figured I could try to salvage something by planting them, since Peperomia, like Begonia and Saintpaulia (African violet), are supposed to have the ability to generate new plants from single leaves, though I'd never tried it before and was kind of skeptical about whether it would work. (So many things we try at work, propagation-wise, don't work out that well, so anymore I just assume everything is doomed when I start it.) In fact, the leaf in the picture here nearly got thrown away a time or two, because it wasn't moving fast enough to suit me, but last week I was looking around in the cuttings table, and lo and behold -- sprouting!


So I am now a believer. This also makes me like the Peperomia genus a little better, too: I was not previously a fan, owing to some bad experiences many years ago.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Very cool!!

Unknown said...

Where did you cut? Did u leave stem or did u cut the leaf in half?

mr_subjunctive said...

Unknown:

Neither. I cut the petiole where it attaches to the leaf, so there was no stump, but left the leaf itself intact.