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Concept
Cutting (plant)
Summary
A plant cutting is a piece of a plant that is used in horticulture for vegetative (asexual) propagation. A piece of the stem or root of the source plant is placed in a suitable medium such as moist soil. If the conditions are suitable, the plant piece will begin to grow as a new plant independent of the parent, a process known as striking. A stem cutting produces new roots, and a root cutting produces new stems. Some plants can be grown from leaf pieces, called leaf cuttings, which produce both stems and roots. The scions used in grafting are also called cuttings.
Propagating plants from cuttings is an ancient form of cloning. There are several advantages of cuttings, mainly that the produced offspring are practically clones of their parent plants. If a plant has favorable traits, it can continue to pass down its advantageous genetic information to its offspring. This is especially economically advantageous as it allows commercial growers to clone a certain plant to ensure consistency throughout their crops.
Cuttings are used as a method of asexual reproduction in succulent horticulture, commonly referred to as vegetative reproduction. A cutting can also be referred to as a propagule. Succulents have evolved with the ability to use adventitious root formation in reproduction to increase fitness in stressful environments. Succulents grow in shallow soils, rocky soils, and desert soils. Seedlings from sexual reproduction have a low survival rate; however, plantlets from the excised stem cuttings and leaf cuttings, broken off in the natural environment, are more successful.
Cuttings have both water and carbon stored and available, which are resources needed for plant establishment. The detached part of the plant remains physiologically active, allowing mitotic activity and new root structures to form for water and nutrient uptake. Asexual reproduction of plants is also evolutionarily advantageous as it allows plantlets to be better suited to their environment through retention of epigenetic memory, heritable patterns of phenotypic differences that are not due to changes in DNA but rather histone modification and DNA methylation.
Official source
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