Propagation by human hand
Propagating plants through human intervention is called artificial vegetative propagation.
Nothing here is biologically new. Every one of these methods takes a vegetative part of a plant and gets it to grow into a whole plant — exactly what natural vegetative propagation does. What is new is that we choose which plant, which part and when, and we can do it to plants that would never have done it themselves.
It is carried out by a few main methods:
| Method | What is planted |
|---|---|
| Cuttings | A cut piece of branch, rooted after it is separated. |
| Layering | A branch, rooted before it is separated. |
| Grafting | A bud or shoot, joined onto another plant's roots. |
| Tissue culture | A piece of living tissue, grown in a flask. |
The order is not accidental
Read down that table and the piece being planted gets smaller at every step — a branch, a branch still attached, a single bud, a few cells. The smaller the starting piece, the more control and equipment the method needs, and the more plants one parent can yield.