Hi all,
ve just looked at the bottom half of some of the stems I cut the other day, and noticed that they are sprouting several new shoots, which are growing too. By accident rather than knowing I should do, I must have cut them at the right place. So the "mother stem" is growing new shoots but has wider spaced leaves than whats growing new from being in the water.
All the leaves axils will have dormant axillary buds, normally their growth is suppressed by the hormones secreted by the terminal (apical) bud, once you've removed this, the buds aren't suppressed and they will sprout. Most plants only have buds in the leaf axils, so the new shoot will always come from these.
Have a look at the tutorial for pruning:
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Pruning - A general guide to plant maintenance | UK Aquatic Plant Society>
When the new growth is longer I just want to have them as the new plant looks better with the narrower spacing between the leaves. Would it be better to cut each one off individually and have its bottom node (like you described above) become the new root ? Or should I leave all the new stems attached to the "mother stem" and just cut that a few nodes down and let the new ones grow from that ? I am thinking cut them all off because then each new stem will develop its own root system, but thought I would check I am thinking straight
Potentially each node can grow both shoots and roots, we call these "single bud cuttings", but the danger is that smaller propagules have less biomass, and larger cut surfaces, so need really good growing conditions to avoid rotting or just running out of stored food reserves before the new leaves have started photosynthesising. Three or 4 nodes per cutting is a lot safer (plants are actually "totipotent", meaning that you can grow a whole new plant from a single cell and people have done this to grow haploid plants (n) from pollen cells).
How long the internodes are (internodes are the bits between nodes) will depend upon plant species, light intensity, nutrients and CO2, but assuming they aren't too limiting, and you don't remove too much leaf material, more pruning will create bushier plants.
cheers Darrel