How to Propagate a Schefflera from Cuttings and Air Layering

Propagate when you prune

The pieces you cut off a leggy schefflera are the propagating material, so the sensible time to propagate is the moment you cut the plant back. That means late spring through midsummer, when the room is warm and the plant is growing, because rooting effectively stops below about 68F (20C) and cuttings taken in a cold room rot before they callus.

You have three methods, and which you pick depends on what you are trying to save.

Schefflera sap contains calcium oxalate and irritates skin and mouths. Wear gloves when cutting, and keep the trimmings away from children and pets.

Taking a tip cutting

A tip cutting is a growing point with four to six inches (10 to 15 cm) of stem below it. It roots readily given warmth and a mix that stays damp rather than wet.

1. Cut just below a node Use clean, sharp pruners and cut immediately below the point where a leaf stalk joins the stem. Roots form most reliably at and just below a node, so a cut halfway between nodes is slower and less certain.
2. Strip the lower leaves Remove the leaves from the bottom half of the cutting so nothing sits below the compost. Leave two or three leaves at the top, and if those leaves are very large, cut each one back by half to reduce water loss.
3. Dip and insert Rooting hormone is optional but it improves the strike rate noticeably on woodier cuttings. Push the cutting two inches (5 cm) into a free draining mix of equal parts potting mix and perlite, and firm it so it does not rock.
4. Keep it warm, humid and out of direct sun Cover with a clear bag held off the leaves by a couple of sticks, or use a propagator. Aim for 72 to 79F (22 to 26C) and bright indirect light. Direct sun inside a bag cooks the cutting.
5. Judge rooting by resistance, not by looking After about a month, tug the cutting very gently. Resistance means roots. Do not pull it out to check, and do not pot it up the moment it resists: give it another two or three weeks to build a usable root ball.

Rooting in water

The same cutting will root in a jar of water, and the advantage is simply that you can see what is happening, which makes this the easiest method to learn on. Keep the leaves out of the water, change the water every three or four days, and stand the jar somewhere bright but out of direct sun.

Move the cutting into compost once the roots are about two inches (5 cm) long. Water roots are structurally different from soil roots and a cutting left floating for months struggles badly at potting time, often losing every leaf. Early is better than late.

If the stem end goes soft and brown in the water, the water was changed too rarely or the room was too cold. Recut above the rot into clean tissue and start again in fresh water.

Air layering a bare stem

Air layering is the method for the classic problem: a schefflera five feet tall with leaves only at the top and three feet of naked stem below. Rather than cutting the top off and hoping it roots, you make it root while it is still attached to and fed by the parent plant.

It takes longer than a cutting but it almost never fails, and it gives you a large, already-shaped plant instead of a small one. The stump left behind will usually shoot again from lower down, so you end up with two plants.

1. Choose the point Pick a spot on the bare stem where you would like the new plant's roots to be, typically four to eight inches (10 to 20 cm) below the lowest leaves. Everything above that point becomes the new plant.
2. Wound the stem With a clean knife, remove a ring of bark about half an inch (1 cm) wide all the way round, cutting only through the bark and not into the wood. Alternatively make a shallow upward slanting cut a third of the way through and wedge it open with a matchstick.
3. Wrap with damp moss Squeeze a handful of sphagnum moss so it is damp but not dripping, pack it around the wound as a ball roughly the size of an orange, and wrap it in clear plastic film sealed with tape or twist ties at both ends. Clear film lets you see the roots arrive.
4. Keep the moss damp Check every week or two. If the moss looks pale and dry, open one end, add a little water with a syringe or a small bottle, and reseal. Moss that dries out stops the process dead.
5. Cut below the roots when the ball is full When white roots are visible against the film all round, usually after six to twelve weeks, cut the stem just below the moss ball. Remove the film but leave the moss in place, and pot the whole thing into a pot only slightly larger than the root ball.
6. Nurse the new plant for a month Keep it out of direct sun, water sparingly, and do not feed for four weeks. The root ball is small relative to the top, so remove a few of the largest leaves to reduce the load while it establishes.

Growing on the new plants

A rooted cutting is not yet a good-looking plant. What decides that is what you do in the first year, and the two decisions that matter are how many cuttings go in a pot and when you first pinch them.

Three cuttings in one pot make a full plant far faster than one cutting ever will, and a schefflera looks better as a multi-stemmed clump than as a single stick. Pinch the growing tip out once each cutting has made three or four new leaves, and it branches instead of running straight up.

Do not pot a small rooted cutting straight into a large pot. The compost it cannot reach stays wet and the young roots rot, which is the commonest way a successful cutting is lost.

Why cuttings fail, and what to write down

There are only four common reasons a schefflera cutting fails. It was taken when the room was below about 68F (20C). It was left with too much leaf area and dried out before it could root. It was kept soaking wet rather than damp, so the base rotted. Or it was taken from thin, weak, light-starved growth, which roots poorly compared with a firm shoot.

Record the date you took each batch, how many you took, the method, roughly how warm the room was, and the date the first one rooted. Note also which parent stem each one came from. After two seasons that record tells you your own reliable window, which is often a good deal narrower than the general advice, and it tells you whether firm growth or soft growth strikes better in your conditions.

The single most useful number in that record is the strike rate: eight rooted out of ten taken tells you to take a few spares next time and stop worrying. Two out of ten tells you something in the method needs changing before you take another batch.