What should you do after buying an old stem succulent and bringing it home? Here is the right approach

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Images: Curator

Almost every day, fellow plant lovers come to ask about rooting old stems. It seems those old stems with their powerful long stalks are really very appealing to everyone. But why are old stems always associated with rooting? This is indeed a strange phenomenon. Old stem succulents have grown for many years, so by rights they should have well-developed and sturdy root systems. Why would they still need to be rooted? This has to start with where old stems come from.

First of all, some of the old stems we see are not actually old stems at all. They are just a thick branch segment cut from a true old stem. According to the principle of beheading succulents, the best place to cut is in the middle of the leaves. That is to say, after beheading, when a small number of healthy leaves remain on the bottom branch, the cut-off head is most likely to take root and survive.

So why do Korean succulent farms cut such a long branch segment? It looks puzzling, right? The farm owners should not lack this common knowledge. True, they certainly understand that the bottom of a branch does not root easily. There are two reasons they cut an extra length of branch for you: first, a thick branch contains a lot of nutrients, so the succulent will not wither easily and can be kept for a long time while staying fresh. Second, perhaps you are not buying the succulent to keep it alive, but merely to decorate your room, in which case a long stalk makes it convenient for you to put it in a vase or fix it somewhere.

But you will surely say, what I paid a high price for is that long stalk. If the first thing I do after buying it is cut off the rosette at the top, then my money will have been wasted.

All right, since that is the case, let me describe a method that can root it safely without cutting off the stalk.

First find a deep container, deep enough to bury the entire stalk. Then use vermiculite (you can mix in a certain amount of rooting powder) to plant the whole stalk into the container, leaving only the rosette part of the succulent exposed. If the branch has multiple heads, try to bury as much of the branch as possible in the vermiculite.

Water it, and keep the vermiculite moist for the next month. A small amount of carbendazim can be added to the water to control fungal growth, so you do not need to worry about rot occurring. During the rooting period, give the succulent plenty of bright indirect light. If there is not enough bright indirect light, then place it by a window to get some sun; growing it in shade is not good for rooting.

After one month, dig the succulent out. I believe that by this time the part near the rosette will certainly have rooted successfully, and fibrous roots may also have grown from the upper-middle part of the stalk. But that is not what you want. You want the very bottom of the stalk to be able to root, right?

We replant the succulent in the vermiculite. This time it can be planted a bit shallower, with more of the stalk exposed, as long as a very small amount of the root system remains in contact with the vermiculite, so that these roots can supply nutrients to the succulent. Then wait another month.

When you dig it out again after a month, some new roots may have grown lower down. If you are still not satisfied with the position of the new roots, then repeat the steps above and use another month to induce the roots to grow downward.

This method is called tissue activation. The tissue that originally served as the branch, aside from storing nutrients and loosening nutrients, has already lost the ability to root and sprout. After we successfully root the upper part, auxin will move toward the lower part. At this point, gradually reducing the depth of burial may allow the lower stalk to root.

If you are satisfied with the rooting position and the length of stalk exposed when planting, then it can leave the vermiculite environment and be formally potted. Before potting, you can cut off the section of stalk at the bottom that still has not rooted, then let it dry in the air for a few days before potting. In this way, it will be easier for well-developed roots to grow around that fresh cut surface.

Another type of succulent is a true old stem, not a branch segment as mentioned earlier. You can clearly see that the roots of the old stem are right there. However, on the roots of the old stem there are no fibrous roots, only a few thick main roots.

This situation is mostly caused by the succulent spending too long in the market and having no chance to be potted and recover its roots. If there are no soft fibrous roots left on the old roots, then the difficulty of rooting may be similar to that of a long branch. For the treatment method, you can refer to the rooting method for long branches above: first let the old stem succulent root at the base of the rosette and on the relatively fresh branch, then gradually move the position of the newly grown roots downward.

Why is it not easy for lignified epidermis to root? We often call the place where a succulent grows leaves the growth point (this is a misused term; botanically this position is called the bud point). No matter what it is called, the cells here are active and multifunctional, and side buds, flower buds (flower stalks), or roots can grow here as needed. Interestingly, as long as the leaf here falls off, a leaf will never grow again from this spot.

Lignification is the process by which a succulent protects important tissues in order to better support or defend itself, such as protecting against sunlight, repairing damaged wounds, or preventing fungal invasion. Of course, lignified tissue also has a waterproofing effect. When the epidermal tissue of a succulent becomes lignified, those very vigorous bud point epidermal cells are protected behind the lignified shell and become less likely to root. The method I provided above is to make the distribution of auxin move downward by rooting gradually from top to bottom, thereby achieving the goal of activating the old stem.

Finally, there is one very important thing that needs to be said. That is, many old stems and old roots may already be in a semi-rotted state. Because they have no root system, there is no flow of water in the vessels, so they avoid complete black rot. But the rotted parts no longer have any life activity and cannot possibly root.

Because of full lignification, from the outside of the stalk you probably find it very hard to tell whether the tissue inside has already necrotized. If necrotic tissue becomes further lignified due to lack of water, it may even become harder, but you certainly will not be able to wait for it to root. Let us summarize.

1. After buying an old stem, you can cut a little from the bottom to see whether the tissue at the root or stem is fresh. If it has already necrotized, continue cutting until fresh tissue is exposed.

2. Dry the wound thoroughly

3. Bury it deep in vermiculite to root, so that any position on the stalk has a chance to root.

4. After successful rooting, reduce the depth of burial so that other positions have a chance to continue rooting.

However, no matter what, buying a healthy old stem with a good root system is the real solution. It is best that before you buy it, that old stem has been growing right there all along, so that none of the above troubles exist at all.

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