What would you say to someone asking about rooting cuttings from a pine

bwaynef

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Not seedling-cuttings. Cuttings.

A man I’ve never known to lie to me called me around to a part of his yard and pointed with a knowing grin. “Take a look at these,” he said. I looked at a nearly empty flat with a few spindly maple volunteers, from the rubrum nearby, nestled alongside 5 young pines with a little more stem thickness than would be expected. The game of 20 questions began. “Are these mikawa seedlings?” “Huh uh.” “Did you do some seedling cuttings this year and only got those few to root?” With each question I was a little further away. Mercifully, he stopped me with, “Those are cuttings of JBP I did last year, from those over there next to the greenhouse.” I pulled em out of the tray insert and sure enough they were full of roots.

I asked him all the questions and he assured me he hadn’t gone to any great lengths beyond what he normally does for his cuttings.

When I was there today looking around I wanted to see them again. He pointed me in their direction and said, “Why don’t you just take them with you. I know you like pines.” He’d made up his mind and insisted they be received as a gift.

Now I’ve been doing this long enough to know that the boilerplate answer when someone asks how to root jbp from anything besides a seedling is just to start them from seed. They don't root from cutting. Sometimes someone will say to graft new roots on, but without pointing them to any meaningful resources ...they’re back to seeds.

I recall a post on this board YEARS ago from folks who were very active then but have long since stopped posting here. They were chasing the grail of jbp cuttings. One went to all the trouble of buying pure talc and mixing hormone to specific strengths. Another talked of humidistats.

Here I just happened on to 5 perfectly nice JBP rooted cuttings. I nor he knows if he’d be able to get any more to root or why he was successful with these. Truth be told, exactly zero percent of the JRP he tried to root at the same time, in the same flat, were successful. Of the 5 jbp that were, none had less than 75% radial roots and only one had multiple levels of roots.

Sorry I didn’t get pictures of all of them. I got kind of excited when I got the roots untangled.
 

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leatherback

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Hm.. I am trying my hand at cork bark JBP at the moment. Was told in my school to expect 10% rooting under normal conditions. Which is not good enough for commercial growers, which is why they are mostly grown through grafting.

What triggered me was the large corkbark pine in the Washington arboretum, which was tagged as "grown from cutting".
 

KiwiPlantGuy

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Hi,
Here is a list of things needed as I see it to get Pines, including JBP to root. My experience is as follows -
1. JBP Trees from which cuttings are taken from need to be 5 years or younger.
2. Humidity is needed but not too wet, as the needles will drop etc. I used a plastic tent over my prop tray and kept well drained media moist etc.
3. Hormone needed to increase % rooting at 1%. I tried 3% and didn’t perform any better.
4. Material from current season’s growth. Eg. Grows in the Spring and cuttings taken at longest day kind of thing.
5. Real slow in my climate- like a few months before I was tempted to move them into a drier environment.

After all of that, I could only manage 30% success, but not all of my cuttings were equal. Even as I work as a propagator!! Probably a waste of time as seedlings grow fast, although cloning a really good seedling might be helpful.
I am tagging @Shibui, as he has more success than me and will have a different perspective.
Hope that helps somewhat.
Charles
 

Shibui

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I've been growing JBP, JRP, JWP and mugho pines from cuttings for around 20 years.
My first was a mugho cutting taken home after a workshop way back before anyone told me it was impossible. They told me that after it had roots and was growing happily.
Some more info came when I discovered that most of Australia's agroforestry is base on cutting grown Pinus radiata. Millions are grown every year from selected fast growing clones with superior characteristics.
I've modified the commercial cutting techniques to suit small scale growing. Strike rates are not high. I usually get between 10 and 50% but that's still acceptable as seed is hard for us to source due to strong quarantine measures prohibiting import of any pine material here.

Most of my successful cuttings have been from 1 year wood taken in late winter/ early spring but I will try some summer cuttings this year to see if that has any bearing on strike rates as someone recently commented they had better success from summer cuttings.
Best results are with juvenile shoots. I can get closer to 90% success with juvenile shoots. Juvenile shoots can be taken from seedlings but often when an older tree is pruned severely it will respond with some or all juvenile shoots which can be used as cuttings. I have a quiet chuckle to myself when I see people being very pedantic that seedling cuttings MUST be cut at precisely the right spot. Reality is they will root wherever you cut them from root level right up to the leaves. At seedling stage pines are programmed to replace lost roots to survive so nothing special to making pine seedling cuttings.
I have not been able to get roots on soft candles. They have always collapsed and died well before roots can form.
 

leatherback

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I have not been able to get roots on soft candles. They have always collapsed and died well before roots can form.
So.. semi-hardwood cuttings, late summer is what you aim for this year?
 

Shibui

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So.. semi-hardwood cuttings, late summer is what you aim for this year?
Correct.
I have not tried pine cuttings in summer so it is high time to make a comparison with the usual late winter trials. Just need to wait for the new shoots to mature.
I will also try some older shoots to see if they might also strike.
 

meushi

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'Sup Wayne! I seem to recall we discussed this ages ago on the BSG chat.

The Kyosuke Gun book on JBP shows two methods:
-Candle cutting project on page 101. Basically in Spring (March in his book) you perform metsumi, fill culture pots with vermiculite, use a clean razor blade to have a clean cut 3 to 4 cm from the tip of the candle. Use a chopstick to create small holes for the candles and plant them in. Water the pot, then spray the candles on a regular basis. They can be repotted the following year in April
-Shoot cutting on page 127 is to prepare root stock for nishiki grafts. In March, using healthy shoots from the previous year, you cut the needles on the first 15mm of the shoot, dip it in rooting hormones and then plant it in your culture pot. The cutting can then be repotted in March 2 years later and will be ready for a low graft in February the next year.

"盆栽専科 - クロマツ、ニシキマツ、ゴヨウマツ" ("Bonsai Special Class - kuromatsu, nishikimatsu, goyoumatsu") has a few pages on JBP from cuttings so it's definitely considered possible in Japan.

"The Reference Manual of Woody Plant Propagation" mentions successful cutting-grown Scots pines and mugo pines, but has no mention of cuttings on JBP, JWP or JRP.
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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I have only done mugo with a 60% or so success rate.
I used last years shoots before they broke bud, dipped them in high strength rooting gel and placed them in sphagnum.

The idea to do it before bud break was to use the stored auxins, and the auxin generation that follows bud break, to invest in roots.

I remember from literature that most pines do well with a shock & deplete approach: dip them in high strength rooting hormones, let them absorb it for a couple days, then dip them in activated charcoal and plant them out. Keep them moist at all times. The charcoal absorbs the auxins and most phenols that inhibit rooting, giving higher rooting percentages.
I have yet to try this out myself, but I know it's a common practice in some types of plants.
 

MaciekA

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I have only done mugo with a 60% or so success rate.
I used last years shoots before they broke bud, dipped them in high strength rooting gel and placed them in sphagnum.

The idea to do it before bud break was to use the stored auxins, and the auxin generation that follows bud break, to invest in roots.

I remember from literature that most pines do well with a shock & deplete approach: dip them in high strength rooting hormones, let them absorb it for a couple days, then dip them in activated charcoal and plant them out. Keep them moist at all times. The charcoal absorbs the auxins and most phenols that inhibit rooting, giving higher rooting percentages.
I have yet to try this out myself, but I know it's a common practice in some types of plants.
That's a neat idea re: stored auxin.

Where along the shoot did you cut the previous-year-shoot? Close to the tip or farther out? (any idea if it mattered?)

Did anything about the buds themselves suggest success (i.e. larger buds -> better success?)

What was the aftercare like for these cuttings, aside from placing sphagnum? Any misting, bottom heat, protection from sun / exposure to sun?
 

Wires_Guy_wires

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That's a neat idea re: stored auxin.

Where along the shoot did you cut the previous-year-shoot? Close to the tip or farther out? (any idea if it mattered?)

Did anything about the buds themselves suggest success (i.e. larger buds -> better success?)

What was the aftercare like for these cuttings, aside from placing sphagnum? Any misting, bottom heat, protection from sun / exposure to sun?
I cut them on the node, usually when nodes occur there are more pluripotent cells, it's also where the highest amount of buds are able to grow because of this.
In some plants however, the nodes have poor healing capabilities because they have a wider base.

I observed no difference in bud size nor the effects they had, because I wasn't paying attention to those.
I didn't protect them at all, just watered them daily in full sun.
They rooted nicely, then the birds came in and took the moss to build nests, while leaving the cuttings to bake in the sun.
I did find that the pumillo cultivar had a higher striking rate than the mughus type.
 

sorce

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Happy tiny Christmas!

Nice.

Sorce
 

Leo in N E Illinois

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I kept a cutting from JBP "Kyokko Yatsubusa' alive and green for 4 years. During that time it formed callus, but never rooted. It would add a few pairs of needles each year, but never really grew. In the 4th summer, it turned brown and died. Never rooted at all.
 

PA_Penjing

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I have rooted JBP from cutting, exactly 1 cutting struck, but I only tried one cuttings haha. 100% success rate. If I knew that it would get me the kind of bragging rights it has I would've done a few more. I used honey as a rooting stimulant and kept it in an aquarium greenhouse over the winter until it rooted. There's photo evidence of it somewhere on this forum from a few years ago. There was a memeber on here .. very briefly, who turned me onto using raw honey as a rooting hormone. This memeber claimed not only to grow JBP from cutting but also to grow them succesfully in Maine. I can't rmeember their name, it was years ago. Don't rmeember if they ever offered photographic evidence of their success, but considering the advice worked. I have no reason to doubt it
 

Shibui

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I potted up some JBP cuttings last week - late spring down here.
Roots were coming out the drain holes of the cutting pots so that's a sure sign it is time.
IMGP0974.JPGIMGP0975.JPGIMGP0976.JPGIMGP0977.JPG

More than half had roots this time but they were cuttings of juvenile shoots which occurred after hard pruning some developing young trees. I did not date these cuttings so not sure when these were put in. My feeling is they would have been summer cuttings of shoots that grew after spring pruning.

Main point is that cuttings from pines are definitely possible.
 

leatherback

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I did not date these cuttings so not sure when these were put in. My feeling is they would have been summer cuttings of shoots that grew after spring pruning.
Do you know whether it was last year, or longer ago?
 

Shibui

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No date on the label so my bad. Not so good on records here. Typically these juvenile shoots are reasonably quick to root so probably only last summer.
More mature wood can live for much longer. I have had some pine cuttings and juniper cuttings that have stayed green for nearly 2 years.
 
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