What Is Vegetative Propagation?

Vegetative propagation is a type of asexual reproduction used by plants to reproduce asexually. It involves using parts of the parent plant to create new plants, such as cuttings, layering, and division.

When Is It Used?

Vegetative propagation is often used when asexually reproducing plants that reproduce slowly or do not produce viable seeds. It is also used to reproduce plants that are difficult to propagate from seed, such as certain fruit trees.

Vegetative propagation is a unique attribute of plants, which is used for commercial purposes, as well as by experienced gardeners. Seeds are not always necessary for plants to grow, as vegetative methods such as grafting and budding can be used to generate new plants from the vegetative parts of older plants. This is an asexual form of reproduction, where the offspring is morphologically and genetically identical.

Table of Contents

Advantages of Vegetative Propagation

Artificial Vegetative Propagation

Layering

Grafting

The reproductive structures of non-vascular plants are gemmae and spores, whilst vascular plants use stems, tribulations, leaves and nodes for transplantation. Meristem is a special tissue that has been studied extensively in plants. It is made up of undifferentiated cells, which are responsible for the growth of plants. Different permanent tissues are formed from the meristem.

Plant growth is the cycle of breeding a crop or cultivar, which can be either sexual or asexual. This is typically done through the use of vegetative plant parts, such as leaves, stalks, and roots, to create new plants, or through the production of specific vegetative sectional plants. While many plants propagate through vegetative breeding, they rarely rely solely on this method for breeding. Vegetative reproduction does not involve genetic diversity and can lead to harmful mutations in plants. However, when it helps plants generate more offspring per resource unit than seed production, vegetative reproduction is usually preferred. Generally, it is harder to reproduce plants vegetatively than through other methods.

Vegetative dissemination is usually regarded as a form of cloning. However, root cuttings of thornless figs can return to a thorny form due to the cell’s genetically thorny adventitious firing. Blackberry without thorns is a chimaera of genetically spiny epidermal structures, but genetically thorny tissue can be found underneath. Similarly, the distribution of leaf-cutting in certain chimaera variegated species, such as a snake vine, is primarily not variegated.

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Advantages of Vegetative Propagation

1. Fast and efficient way to reproduce plants
2. Can produce exact clones of the parent plant
3. Can be used to propagate plants that are difficult to propagate through other methods
4. Allows for the preservation of rare and endangered species
5. Can be used to produce plants with desired traits quickly and efficiently

The benefits of vegetative reproduction are numerous, as the offspring of the parent plant are exact copies. This means that if the parent plant has desirable traits, this genetic information can be passed on to its progeny.

Commercial growers may benefit financially by cloning plants in order to maintain their crop yields.

Vegetative propagation is a useful tool for farmers to develop sex organs such as flowers, seeds, and fruit in plants, which can be more cost-effective and efficient than other processes. For example, when farmers are trying to create the ideal apple variety, they use grafting and cloning to ensure the new variety is compatible for market production. However, this does not always work as expected, since many plants are chimeras and the cuttings will only have the characteristics of one or some of the parent cell lines. Additionally, plants can skip the seedling stage and enter the mature stage more quickly.

It increases the likelihood of a plant maturing successfully in the wild and saves growers time and money commercially, as it allows for a faster turnaround.

Vegetative reproduction provides numerous scientific possibilities in multiple biological areas, and is applicable in the context of afforestation. Forest geneticists and tree breeders often use vegetative propagation to transfer genes from chosen trees to a suitable location, such as a gene bank, clone bench, cloning orchard, or seed garden, where the genes can be recombined with pedigrees.

Epiphyllous Bud

The leaf encourages the growth of small buds in plants like Bryophyllum or the piggyback rose. Such buds will start to form roots. As the shoots split away from the initial vine, they fall to the ground and take up the root. Cytokinins building up on the boundary of the leaves stimulates cell division into the notches for adventure shooting.

Scaly Bulbs

The bulb is the foundation of vegetative growth for plants like garlic, onions, flak, tulip, and hyacinth. Its stem is reduced to a disk, often referred to as the base plate, from which roots extend to the bottom. On the top surface of the stem, the leaf bases are attached. In subsequent years, the axillary buds that are consistently found at the node (where the blades are attached) can become new bulbs. So, if you grow a daffodil bulb, a couple of years later, there may be multiple bulbs vying for fertilizer, space, and access to light, which can reduce flowering if the gardener fails to dig and remove the competitive bulbs in late summer. If you look closely, you may even find that one onion is actually two bulbs.

Corms

“Bulbs” are nothing like the corms found inside gladiolus and crocus plants. The corm is a basal layer without the presence of a root. Roots grow on the convex (low) surface at the bottom of the corm which is disk-shaped. On the nearly concave (upper) surface, axillary and apical buds of the shooting system can be found. Each of these buds will turn into a new corm the following year, forming a clump of corms at the top surface of the original corm. To ensure that the crocus corms don’t become overcrowded, it’s important to dig them up and separate them every few years.

Tubers

The Jerusalem Artichoke and potato (Solanum tuberosum) both have tubers. During late summer, leafless, underground branches called rhizomes penetrate deep into the soil near the base of the original plant. Then, in the fall, a swollen structure called a tuber extends to the tip of the rhizomes.

It is not uncommon for the tip of a vine to be packed with apical and axilla buds, commonly referred to as “heads”. In the following year, each of these buds can grow into a new plant. In fact, a single tuber can be used to start a range of potato plants.

Stolons

Strawberries produce stolons, which are near-free divisions that come out of the ground with very small leaves. This produces a small plantlet, known as the apical palm. The crown of the plant then rises and curves the stolon towards the ground, allowing auxin to accumulate and roots to form. Eventually, the branches reach the ground and the crown roots itself into the earth.

Tip: Layer

Blackberry and Black Raspberry plants can propagate through curving shoots which eventually come into contact with the soil. Auxins are produced when the stem is rubbed against the soil and when it is laid horizontally on top of the soil. These auxins facilitate the formation of the ‘heart’ of the plant.

The twisting of archery shoots and rooting of tips in the roots that form creates a very thick, dry forest, known as a briar patch. This briar patch may become a serious obstacle to passage if rocking is introduced along the bottom, due to the multiple cytokinins present which causes additional firing.

Root Sprouts

Red raspberries and most of the shrubs produce root sprouts, which are caused by the cytokinins collected in the roots. These cytokinins are the origin of many plants, and when a new shoot starts to grow near the base of the shrub, it is classified as a “root” sprout or “sucker”. This process is seen in the wild in Connecticut wetlands, such as the spicebush and clethra alnifolia (sweet pepper bush).

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Artificial Vegetative Propagation

Vegetative propagation is a type of asexual reproduction in plants, in which a new plant originates from a parent plant fragment, root, or leaf. The following are some notable methods of artificial vegetative propagation:

Trimming

Stem Cutting: A technique used in propagation of certain plants, where a piece of stem from the parent plant, containing at least one leaf node, is partially buried in the soil, resulting in the development of new roots. Examples of plants that can be propagated through stem cutting include roses and sugar cane.

Root Cutting: A part of the root system of a plant is buried below the surface of the soil, and new shoots are encouraged to grow from it. For example, this technique is often used for propagating lemon and fig trees.

Leaf-cutting: A leaf from a Puddles plant is inserted into moist soil, resulting in the formation of both fresh stem and roots. At the base of the leaf, a new plant, such as Bryophyllum or Begonia, emerges.

Layering

Layering is a development process for roots on a stem or branch in which the rooted stalk is still attached to the parent plant. Once the roots have formed, the stalk is untied and becomes a new plant which grows on its own roots. Layering is more complicated than cutting, but has the benefit of providing the spread portion of the parent plant with water and nutrients while forming roots.

Simple Layering: A younger plant’s lower branch is attached to the base and a node is placed in the soil so that the end of the branch is exposed (6-12 inches). After a few weeks, roots will form from the buried portion of the branch and the layer can then be removed and transplanted. Examples of plants that can be propagated in this way include Rhododendron and Jasmine.

Compound Layering: Compound layering is similar to plain layering, but instead of covering the wounded nodes with soil, two or three of them are filled with soil. This helps to protect the nodes from further damage, as opposed to leaving them exposed which can result in new shoots developing above the level. Additionally, each section can be cut down along the branch, which allows for the shaping of many different plants once the roots have matured. Examples of plants that can be grown using this method include guava, raisins, and tomatoes.

Tip Layering: It is similar to a flat sheet in which a hole 3-4 inches deep is drilled and soil is deposited in the tip. The tip then goes down, curves sharply, and grows up. Roots develop at the curve, and a new plant grows above the base. By late fall or early spring, the tip layer is removed. This method is commonly used to propagate black and purple raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, and other plants.

Mound Layering: The practice of layering mounds (stools) of soil rich in organic matter over strongly branched tree fruit shrubs and rootstocks with strong structures is beneficial. During the dormant season, the plant is cut to 1 cm above the ground and new shoots are formed from dormant buds. These new shoots are then placed atop the mound of soil and the roots emerge after a few weeks at the base of the young shoots. In the dormant season, the layers are then removed and transplanted elsewhere. For example, roots of plum, magnolia, peach, and feather can be layered using this method.

Air Layering: Large over-grown house plants such as rubber plants, which lose most of their lower leaves and are difficult to bend to the ground for rooting in the soil, may be propagated through air-layering. An area on a stem (about a foot from the end) below the node should be selected, and leaves and branches on and below the stem should be removed from 3 to 4″ above this point. A 1-inch bark ring should be taken out of the tree with a sharp knife to reveal the woody internal tissue. To prevent the formation of a callus, the freshly bored ring should be scraped to eliminate the shifting tissue.

Grafting

Grafting is a planting method used to combine sections of two or more plants into one. In this technique, the top portion (scion) of one plant is grafted onto the root system (rootstock) of another. This method gives the plant the characteristics of both the scion and the rootstock, such as toughness, drought tolerance, disease resistance, and certain fruit qualities. To ensure a successful grafting, a good-quality, healthy stock-type, protected, and true-to-stock wood must be chosen, free from insects, illnesses, or winter injury.

Grafting techniques are used by nurseries and horticulture staff for plants such as strawberry, corn, peach, prune, etc. in order to align the vascular scion transition with the rootstock vascular change, thus forming a conductive tissue for the actively growing plant and stimulating tissue growth at the basal ends of many vegetative sequences before rooting.

Slice Grafting: Slice grafting is a technique used to attach a scion (stem of a desired plant) to a rootstock. This method is usually applied to herbaceous materials that easily connect, or to plants with a stem diameter of ½ inch or less. To attach the scion, the rootstock is cut off with a diagonal cut of ¾ inch to 1 inch long. The scion is then tightly bound to the rootstock with a rubber grafting band.

Whip and Tongue Grafting: This method is the most commonly used when grafting nursery crops or woody ornamentals, where the scion and stock are similar in size (no more than 1⁄2 inch in diameter). A diagonal cut is made on the material, which is four to five times longer than the width of the shell. This creates a tongue-like shape in the stock and scion. The scion is then placed on the rootstock so that the whip and tongue are interlocked, with the cambia aligned properly. Finally, a grafting strip or twine is bundled around the attachment and sealed with grafting wax or dye.

Saddle Grafting: Both the rootstock and scion should have a diameter that is equal and the cleft should have a width of no more than 1 inch.

The base material had two opposing upward strikes of the grafting knife, resulting in inverted V-shaped cuts with a surface of the cut ranging from a half-inch to a 1 inch long being removed.

The V-stick scion is inverted and placed in the saddle of the rootstock. Both the rootstock and scion cuts should be the same duration and pitch, so that the stock and pitch of the scion have a secure connection. The graft is then covered with a pair, trio, or stripe grafting cover, and sealed with grafting wax or dye.

Cleft Grafting: The rootstock should have a diameter of 1-4 inches and should be wider than the scion, which should have a diameter of at least 1/2 inch and be strong and broad enough to contain at least three buds (6-8 inches).

The clefting tool is used to create a 2 to 3 cm broken or snap wedge through the middle and down from the horizontally flat surface of the stock.

The break in the stock is available to keep the sawmills. The end of the split is equipped with a chisel form scion, the width of which is facing the wedge outside, to ensure that the cambium of any scion is in contact with the rootstock adjustment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are Natural and Artificial Vegetative Propagation?

Natural vegetative propagation is the process of vegetative plant structures arising from the stems and roots such as buds, tubers, rhizomes, bulbs, etc without any human interference. Artificial vegetative propagation is the process of vegetative reproduction induced by humans through layer, grafting and cutting.

What is Mound Layering?

Mound layering is a type of propagation technique used to propagate woody plants. It involves creating a mound of soil around a branch of the desired plant, which is then covered with soil. The branch then takes root and grows into a new plant.

Mound layering is a technique used to propagate strongly branched trees and shrubs. During the dormant season, the plants are cut back to the ground and new shoots are formed from dormant buds. These new shoots are then positioned over a mound of soil that is rich in organic matter, and the roots will emerge from the base of the shoots after a few weeks. Once the dormant season is over, the layers can be removed and transplanted to other areas.