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.

--
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk

David Hill30/4/04 12:20

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.

Rays says take nodal shoot cuttings 4" long of the current year's growth in
June or July. Scrape a bit off the bottom of the cutting to 'wound' it and
put it into moss peat. Keep them under mist or on a warm bench with plastic
over them if you haven't got misting. Good luck! Ray reckons they take
around 7 weeks to strike and says he thinks the moss peat is important. I
think they can be a bit tricky and temperamental but wonder if timing has a
lot to do with it. A customer brought us in a branch of a precious old
variety of hers last year. Cows had got into her garden and trampled the
Camellia to death. Unhappily it was earlier in the year and despite Ray's
best efforts, not one cutting took.
--
Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
(remove the weeds to email me)

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 Dip the heel into some ridiculously out-of-date hormone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

Message from , David Hill
on Fri, 30 Apr 2004: &t:
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.

I succeeded with leaf cuttings. The strips were horizontal across the
leaf, about two inches wide. I inserted one side, about an inch deep,
into regular ericaceous compost and kept them in a heated propagator.
Of the four cuttings two browned after a few months but the other two
sent up a shoot about one or two years after potting. One plantlet
eventually died, the other is now a single whip about 16 inches high, it
must be about four or five years old and bore its first two (full size)
flowers this spring. It is still in ericaceous compost in a five-inch
pot.

Cheers, Joe
--
J M Farrugia

We used to take near-ripe cuttings with 3 or 4 good leaves, just below
a leaf node (if you get my meaning). These were 'wounded' (removing
a thin sliver of bark) opposite the lowermost leaf bud and inserted in
deep trays of 50:50 moss peat during September. They were kept
lightly moist and in a cool humid environment (a poly-tent inside a
greenhouse kept to a winter minimum of 4C). A commercial rooting
hormone was used to speed up rooting and help prevent fungal problems.
Generally there was a 70% or higher 'take' with young plants ready for
potting during late spring.

Leaf bud cuttings can be taken when available material is very
limited. These are best taken at the end of the growing season, when
the new wood has had a chance to ripen somewhat. Using a very sharp,
sterilised knife (I've always found disposable scalpels best) careful
cut about 5mm. below the bud, up and into the stem to 5mm. past the
bud. This way you get a leaf and bud with a decent sliver of the stem
attached. Treat as above, although very gentle base heat will give
slightly better results. The risk of failure through fungal infection
is higher with this method, so a good drench of fungicide is advised.

I've had about 50%+ 'take' using this method, but it produces slightly
weaker plants that need an extra season for growing on. If you need
to build up stock quickly, its a good method, but if not, go for the
more conventional cuttings.

Dave Poole
Torquay, Coastal South Devon UK
Winter min -2°C. Summer max 34°C.
Growing season: March - November
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