EverGreenCoin Gardens
Propagation & Cloning
Propagation & Cloning
Plant propagation: is the process of creating new plants from a variety of sources: seeds, cuttings, bulbs and other plant parts. Plant propagation can also refer to the artificial or natural dispersal of plants.
Plant propagation is generally used to grow plant from plants you already have. Using leaves, roots, or cutting from a plant you may already have and then growing it. For instance taking a cutting from a tree and then propagating it to grow another tree. You may have heard of it as cloning.
There are two types of propagation: sexual and asexual.
Sexual Propagation
Sexual propagation involves the union of the pollen (male) with the egg (female) to produce a seed. The seed is made up of three parts: the outer seed coat, which protects the seed; the endosperm, which is a food reserve; and the embryo, which is the young plant itself. When a seed is mature and put in a favorable environment, it will germinate (begin active growth). In the following section, seed germination and transplanting of seeds will be discussed.
Asexual Propagation
Asexual propagation, as mentioned earlier, is the best way to maintain some species, particularly an individual that best represents that species. Clones are groups of plants that are identical to their one parent and that can only be propagated asexually. The Bartlett pear (1770) and the Delicious apple (1870) are two examples of clones that have been asexually propagated for many years.
The major methods of asexual propagation are cuttings, layering, division, budding and grafting. Cuttings involve rooting a severed piece of the parent plant; layering involves rooting a part of the parent and then severing it; and budding and grafting is joining two plant parts from different varieties.
