On Fri, 30 Apr 2004 00:20:12 +0100, "David Hill"
wrote:

Can anyone tell me how to succeed with camellia cuttings, they are one of
the few plants that seem to defy all my attempts at propagation.

Perhaps I'm lucky, but I don't have any great problem. I take the
standard semi-ripe cuttings with a heel, about 3 in. or so long
without a flower bud on it, usually in late summer, say mid-late
August. Cut the larger leaves in half transversely to reduce
transpiration. Dip the heel into some ridiculously out-of-date hormone
rooting powder, and then dibble into the rooting compost. This usually
a mix of peat and perlite, roughly 50:50. Say three into a 3 in. pot.
Swish with water, cover with a single-pot propagator (as in bottomless
plastic fizzy drink bottle), stick under the staging in the shade and
forget them. No bottom heat, no misting, no nothing (well OK, in
really hot weather I might squirt a spray of water down through the
top once or twice a week, and I may remove obviously mouldy/rotted
ones). About six months later I have a look to see what's happened.
Some will have died, some just developed a nobbly callous and some
will have rooted. The last get potted on, while those with a callous
get the callous scraped with a fingernail and stuck back in again but
probably without the cover. Success rate say 30 - 50% I should think.

At other times I've been successful with leaf-bud cuttings (a small
sliver of stem and a growth bud, rather like the bud used for budding
roses, and a leaf cut in half as above), and I've even rooted a
cutting in the spring, taken from a table decoration in a restaurant
complete with flower (with permission, I should add)!

Sacha, your customer's camellia that was trashed by cows should have
re-sprouted quite readily from the stump, if one was left.


--
Chris

E-mail: christopher[dot]hogg[at]virgin[dot]net