Doing the Brug. happy dance!!!

My B. sanguinea that I started from seed last year finally opened its first bud today. The blooms are beautiful but the bush that it is on is the ugliest brug. plant I have. So now that I have seen the bloom, I am going to make cuttings and try to root them. I have heard that they are hard to root. Does anyone out there have any special techniques to share?

Patricia, way to go!! I'm starting from scratch again with another sang or two. Maybe this year I'll be lucky. Hope you have good luck with rooting them. I just read something recently about rooting sangs and the type of weather they do best in, but I'd have to go back through some threads either here or BGI to figure out what was said. I'm not ready for rooting yet....I'm still working on getting one to live.

They grow very easily from seed for me. But now that I have this one that I am going to have to either just tear out or start all over from seed I would much rather be able to root cuttings off of it. I am going to give it a shot anyway.

Jerodsmom,
They can take some time to root. The best parts is semi-wood cuttings and put in clean, moist gravel or sand. It will spped up the process if you apply a rooting hormone. I didn`t, so it took about 2 months + to root.

Thanks Tonny, you triggered me out of a brain freeze. :-) I remember now that I read that sang cuttings don't like as much moisture as regular brug cuttings, so they would like to be, probably, just barely damp. I don't know about temps for them either. Wishing you good luck.

Thanks Tonny, I will give it a try. If anyone does know about the temps. they like when they are rooting, I would love to have that information too.

Ohhh - I love these, why do you think they are ugly? And if you think they are ugly why are you rooting them?
Cover your ears Dennis, she didn't say they were UGLY. Really -- she didn't mean it.

Congrats Patrica. I am hoping to be able to grow one from LIz's heat tolerant seeds.

HI Liz, I didn't mean to say that I think the B. sanguinea flowers are ugly. I think they are so cool looking. It is the way my plant grew that I don't like. Because we can get very hot weather in the summer, I planted it in partial shade. This winter it got even more shade and the branches started reaching for the sun, so the bush itself has a very ugly shape.

The ones I rooted I cut off side shoots,dipped them in shultz starter,and put in vermiculite that had been watered with shultz diluted.I put them in the mini greenhouse(it was summer and warm out)not sure how long they took to root,but 3 out of 6 rooted......