Pilea peperomioides plugs have arrived!

Can you Propagate Pilea pepperomioides from leaf petiole cuttings? NOPE

UPDATE: Remember when NO ONE could get their hands on Pilea peperomioides (commonly called coin plant - Chinese money plant is really not the best common name)? And I managed to score an entire tray of plugs from an industry grower who was trying to meet sudden demand WAY back in The Time Before in 2017????

And then none of them did a DARN thing? This is a great example of what we call "Blind Cuttings". It kicks back to my teachings on totipotency. Not every cell, in every place, in every plant, can differentiate into all the new tissues a plant needs to grow and proliferate. While you can take petiole cuttings from say begonia, that doesn't work with P. peperomioides or say fiddle leaf fig. You can learn a lot more about totipotency and propagation methods if you choose to take my COURSE: Indoor Plants: Care and Maintenance Course or have my book Plant Parenting.

If you're into houseplants, you may have found yourself hunting for the ever elusive Chinese Money Plant, or Pilea peperomioides. This succulent foliage plant's popularity has exploded in Europe, but supplies are terribly limited here in the States. Even for someone like myself who works in the horticulture industry, it's been tough to get my hands on this beautiful plant.

I had to work pretty darn hard and do some serious networking to finally score some babies...but they are here! Thanks to D.S. Cole Growers, I'm now coaxing along some pilea plugs in the indoor plant lab.

The plugs were rooted out, but according to their source, were being a bit stubborn about putting on any new growth. So I bumped them into 2" pots and put them under HO T5 supplemental lighting for 12-hours a day.

The little buggers are still being stubborn for me too...but hopefully soon we'll see some plantlets sprouting. Stay tuned!

So What Happened?

And NOPE, they never produced new bud shoots. Petioles will produce new root tissue just bine. But you need just at least a small section of the stem tissue attached to the petiole in order to get BOTH root shoots and bud shoots! Now, based on research, it may be possible that over a very long period of time a new bud shoot may initiate, but I suspect that's because there are a few stem cells attached to the petiole cutting!