I have a few cuttings that are dehydrated and I'd like to plump them up a bit. Jim Little's book (Growing Plumerias in Hawaii and Around the World) says to stick them in water for a few days. OK, done and they look a bit better and are more firm. So, do I now set them out to callous, and possibly dehydrate a bit, or go ahead and stick them into my rooting medium? My thought is to callous them, but I wanted to see if anyone else had experience with this. Thoughts?

We're they not calloused already? I would think if the were cuttings and dehydrated, they should already be. Some pics may help.

I'd say they were partially calloused as they had been cut within 3-7 days of being put into the water (some of the trees they came from were not in perfect shape to begin with and were partially dehydrated when cut - beggars can't be choosers). I did question whether putting them in water at this point was the right decision, so I didn't put them all in the water - I didn't want to ruin all my cuttings if my thought process was off!

Using the same thought process, I pulled a few out of the water last night and dipped them into rooting hormone and will wait for them to callous. A couple that felt like they could use another day or two, I left in.

I will say that the centers of the cuttings left in the water have softened some, while the edges have stayed relatively firm. The overall cuttings have firmed even though some of the wrinkles remain.

@Danoh any updates?

So far so good. I didn't lose a single cutting, so it's seems that either way works. Nothing has rooted. They're almost all from different mother trees, so I won't be able to say whether there was any impact to the speed at which they rooted (unless one group suddenly starts to root before the other). Now I just keep waiting, and waiting, and waiting and watching ;-)

Good! Bottom heat is important to speed up the rooting process.

As DrDawg said, which makes sense to me now, in his observation middle cutting is the hardest to root since it is trying to do two things at the same time.