Mid-Atlantic Gardening: Begonias Anonymous - Attention Addicts and Enablers, 1 by hcmcdole

hcmcdole wrote:
I usually leave the petiole on (about an inch) but it depends on the leaf. A big leaf that is tough I may cut the petiole off completely and lay the leaf flat. Smaller leaves I usually try to keep the leaf from touching the surface.

If you are talking about a slit across the major veins and laying the leaf flat on the media then again it depends on the size of the leaf. Usually small leaves I never see any results - a lot of times it tends to rot but bigger leaves I have had it root and make new plants. Some of the leaves from last year that this worked on were Challenger, Caribbean King, Bashful Bandit, and Big Mac.

Here is a strange one I experimented with last year - Art Hodes. I did tip cuttings and leaf cuttings. Tip cuttings naturally had the biggest begonia in a short time compared to leaf cuttings but the leaf cuttings eventually caught up later in summer. The other strange effect I saw with Art Hodes is I trimmed the outer 3 inches from 3 leaves and instead of throwing this part away I started them in another pan of perlite - laid flat on the perlite. At the major veins I got rootings from most of the 3 leaves. I think I may have lost one leaf or just had one plant come up from it. The plantlets were a lot smaller than the leaf with the petiole but eventually they all caught up in size.

Here are two Art Hodes side by side - the bigger one started by tip cuttings and the smaller one from leaf cuttings.