Cactus amazing will to live

[george76904]

The cutting scraps that could.

image.jpg (54.7 KiB) Viewed 497 times

I cannot cease to be amazed by how strong a cacti's will to live is. Recently I was trimming up a pereskiopsis to try and focus its energy on one main stem, but I didn't want to just throw away the tiny bits... So I put them in a pot to see what would happen, sure enough these guys are under 1cm in length and still rooted! They have since put up shoots too.
Then I was amazed again when an even smaller piece of an opuntia rooted itself. I trimmed the last 5mm or so from an opuntia seedling to prep it for a graft. I found the stem still in the pot a week later with a root coming out.
But possibly the most amazing one yet. Is the roots I found coming out of a pereskiopsis leaf yesterday. Now they weren't much in the way of roots and I'm not sure if it will make it, but a leaf fell off and sat in the pot with total neglect from me, and rooted ! I put it into damp soil in my humidity chamber, and we will see what happens from there. I know that sedums reproduce that way, but I wasn't expecting that to happen and I thought that it was pretty cool.
Thanks,
Will

The cutting scraps that could.

image.jpg (54.7 KiB) Viewed 497 times

[Onzuka]

I've had the banana like leaves of O. subulata take root, which surprised me. Strangely, they never put out a shoot, which seems wasteful, and nature isn't wasteful. Maybe there just isn't any meristem tissue present for it to grow from. Your Pereskiopsis don't surprise me. On many occasions when grafting, I've rooted pieces about the same size as yours. I don't even plant them, just stand them in a little water for 2 weeks until the roots appear.

Steve

[DaveW]

I found that with Pereskiopsis. I had a plant that kept dying back in the cold over winter and finished up with a piece 1 inch long with no leaves. The next year I planted it in warm high humidity conditions in a propagator and it immediately rooted and produced a plant about 3 inches or more high within a week or so.

If you grow Pereskiopsis in very un-cactus like "Turkish Bath" warm high humidity conditions with condensation running down the glass of the propagator they grow like mad, particularly for providing Pereskiopsis stocks to graft on.

Things like the large tubercles of Dolichothele longimamma types can also be rooted down should the main plant rot.