Leaf Bud Cutting Propagation of Hibiscus

Has anyone tried to use leaf bud cuttings (http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/hil/hil-8700.html; http://www.google.com/images?q=Leaf+Bud+Cutting) to propagate hardy or tropical Hibiscus? I would be interested in any reports of success or failure. The serious Hibiscus websites and scientific research databases make no mention of using the technique on Hibiscus. I suspect that the reason for this is that it is so easy to propagate Hibiscus using stem cuttings, root divisions and grafting that there is no need to go into anything more elaborate unless tissue cultures are used for bulk propagation. The few references I did find using leaf bud cutting to propagate Hibiscus are ether so generic as to be useless or Web-SPAM designed attract Internet traffic to advertising content, as in: “Get Rich Quick Propagating Hibiscus With Leaf Bud Cutting”.

I have two projects coming up this summer where I would like to clone hardy Hibiscus using as few cells as possible. As I have hardy Hibiscus growing indoors this winter, I am planning to run a few tests in the next week but the numbers of cuttings I can take are limited until this summer. If this doesn’t work, I may have to start looking into the hobbyist tissue culture websites but that will be a project for 2012.

Any insights would be appreciated,

Mike