Part of Chapter 11 of "African Violets for Everyone"

A Little Bit of Magic - Cloning for African Violets

Growing an African violet from a leaf

OK. It is one of those things that “Everyone knows . . .” You just stick a leaf in a jar of water, and soon enough there is a new plant. Well, not quite so easy, perhaps. Rooting your leaf in water is possible, but it isn’t the best way to do it.

It is possible to propagate your African violet from various parts of the mother plant, but from leaf is the easiest and most successful way. It is a reliable method for growing new plants of most types of African violets except the most unstable of fantasies and bicolours. It is unsuitable for growing chimeras. In general, propagate from leaf unless a particular plant has demonstrated that it is too unreliable to be grown that way.

How to do it:
The leaf you grow from should be fresh and healthy. It is a common mistake to try to grow a new violet from an old outside leaf from the mother plant. Un­fortunately such leaves, although the plants can most easily spare them, are often too old to have babies. If they are really old they may root but never put up a plantlet at all. It is also best not to use the leaves from near the centre of the mother plant. They would grow well, but their removal will mar the original plant. Maximise your chances of success by choosing a leaf that is neither the oldest nor the youngest on the plant. For a variegated leaf African violet choose a leaf showing a lot of green.

Prepare the leaf by checking that it is healthy and clean, cut the stem to a length of 10-20 mm, cutting at an angle so that the cut edge, from which all roots and plantlets will come, is maximised. If the leaf is wilted or soft, recut and submerge in water for an hour or so to make it crisp again.

Plant your leaf in good quality African violet potting mix. Only place the cut end about 10 mm under the surface of the mix. You may need to support the leaf with a plant label or similar. If too large cut of the top. While a leaf will root successfully in water, it will later have to be moved to potting mix, or any plantlets it does produce will be weak and possibly lack the strength to grow on to satisfactory mature plants.

Occasionally new growers may find that leaves rot when grown in potting mix. If you find this a problem, dilute the mix with extra perlite and vermiculite, or try a mix of those two ingredients alone.
Hormone rooting powders and solu­tions are unnecessary as African violets produce roots and shoots with ease.

Only use a small pot for your leaf. A 60 to 70 mm pot is plenty big enough. To propagate miniatures, use the smallest size. Leaves under propagation need water, and light just like full grown plants so place accordingly and set up with a wick if that is how you intend to water. Don’t fertilise for the first couple of weeks, until you believe the leaf has produced roots. You can determine that by lightly tugging to see if there is any resistance. After that fertilise, ei­ther with the standard African violet fertiliser, or with a higher nitrogen fer­tiliser to promote more rapid growth.

Don’t try to propagate in the coldest months of the year, unless your grow­ing area is really warm. This particularly applies to variegated leafed African violets. If their leaves are planted in late autumn or during winter, they may produce plantlets that are all white. Of course, if you are given a leaf of a cultivar that you would really like to grow, you will accept and plant it, no matter what the season. Growing the leaf in terrarium-like conditions (even if that just means covered with a plastic bag) may help to keep it from suffering from the cold weather.

If the worst happens, and you start spring with a pot full of little white plantlets that simply won’t colour up, repot the lot, including the mother leaf, into a larger pot, removing a little of the old potting mix when you do so. This will encourage new growth in the clump of plantlets and that growth will be greener in the warmer season.

Pot the plantlets out when the clump has an overall height of 60 to 80 mm or the largest leaves are about the size of the top joint of your thumb.

There may be many plantlets or only one, but choose just a few to pot out and keep. Those with the strongest root systems will be your best choice. To avoid an overpopulation of African violets discard the excess plants unless you have a definite home for them.

Give each plant its own small pot; one about 60 mm is large enough. Trim off any weak outside leaves from the plantlet, then plant with the lowest leaves at the level of the potting mix.
When the plant grows and fills the pot with roots, repot it into a larger pot (say 80 mm for a standard), and then to its final pot of 100 mm in which it can re­main for nine to twelve months. See Chapter 12 for more details about pot­ting. Miniatures should not be repotted into pots larger than 50 mm, and semiminiatures to 65 or 70 mm.

Throughout all of this, from planting the leaf to having a large plant with flowers on, do label the pot with the name of the plant, if indeed it has a name. There are many thousands of wonderful named cultivars, but if you lose the name it may be impossible to ever again work out what the plant is. Add the date of potting to the label for convenience in deciding when to repot.

There is a photographic sequence showing some of these steps on p. 28. (Reproduced here in the small size suitable for the website. It appears in large size printed in the book, and as a file on the CD.)

Can the leaf be used a second time for propagation?
Yes, if the leaf is in good condition, it can be replanted in the same way, after re­cutting the end of the stem. If it is still crisp and vigorous with a rich green colour it should be perfectly possible to grow a second crop of plantlets, although they are unlikely to be as numerous as the first lot. I am not sure that the average home grower needs dozens of the same cultivar, however, when there are so many other beauties to enjoy.

Difficulties in propagating from leaf:
In my early African violet days I tried planting a leaf in a rich, high quality garden soil. It was given the best of light, water and fertiliser for at least eight­een months and did nothing. There was no sign of even the tiniest plantlet even though the leaf was green and crisp and had produced some roots. I finally discov­ered that a much lighter potting mix is needed. How much lighter? Well, as men­tioned above, you can easily propagate in a mix of half and half perlite and vermicu­lite, or a mix of your normal African violet mix and a perlite/vermiculite combina­tion, and using these often will work where potting mix seems to give some trouble. The other reason I got no plant­lets could have been that my leaf was too mature.

Why does a leaf just rot away instead of producing plantlets?
This can happen when the mix is too wet or of too solid a consistency or if perhaps the leaf wasn’t a healthy one to start with. If it was already deteriorating on the mother plant, the chances are that it will continue to do so.

This chapter goes on to discuss ways of propagating from side-shoot, from flower stems and from seed. African violets produce new plants very easily!

Here is how part of the sequence on propagation appears in the presentation on the CD.