Can I do anything with this flowering stem? Broke off my echeveria cubic frost before I even got it home!

Be patient while waiting for replies. Not all members live in your time zone. Posting the same question an hour later makes no sense. Too bad you lost that flower stem. Be more careful next time. I cannot think of any way to save it, sorry. Gene

I didn't post it twice because I am impatient, if you read the first one I said I would post a picture and I did. Also it wasn't an hour later. It was just a few minutes later, long enough for me to take a picture. I am just curious as to can I propagate this or throw it away .

Shymaiden, in the future, you can edit the same post instead of creating a new thread. I think that's what Gasrocks was trying to tell you. Just go to your original post and click Edit at the bottom right hand corner and add the photo. I'm sorry I can not answer your question either, but I do know how you feel about losing the stem. You guys sure are early birds. Hopefully someone else will come along with a more positive answer.

I've heard some people have been able to propagate from the leaves of a flower stem. You can save the stem and put it in a little vase. The flowers last a long time and should continue to bloom if they haven't opened up yet. I've cut the flower stems off of my echeverias in the past and set them on my kitchen table to enjoy.

Yes, you can treat some of these inflorescences as cut flowers. I would usually wait until they are further along but that's an idea to bear in mind.

Some photos here of how to propagate Echeverias from leaves off a flower stem.

http://garden.org/thread/view_...

If I were you I would not be optimistic about the possibilities of doing this with your plant, given how tiny the leaves on the stalk are. Generally bigger and fatter leaves give better results. If you do try, be sure to provide protection from the sun while the leaves are rootless.

For what it's worth, I cut the flower stems off all my Echeverias except for one of each kind (sometimes not even that) in order to favor vegetative growth and lower the chance of bugs moving in. So there may be some advantages early on to a flower-less plant, even though it provides less of a show.

Hi Kim, it will be a nice experiment to do, to see if the leaves from the flower stalk will thrive, the only thing is, the leaves looks too young, since the plant was really pushing all its energy towards the buds, not sure if there is enough energy on the leaves there. Keep us posted if it will do so, set those leaves in a warm, part shade are and see if it will root.

I normally just ignore those leaves, since the mother plant often makes new growth in between leaves or near the base of mother plant, or sometimes a rosette on the bloom stalk itself.

How does your mother plant look like right now, maybe it can still grow a new bloomstalk, sometimes it is generous to push out one more stalk.

Regarding the age of the leaves, they are basically maximum size by the time the flowers open. The ones in the picture were not going to get any larger. I like to time my propagations for when the flowers are young (about to open or just having opened) as the late-stage inflorescences give inferior results. The other thing related to timing is that you want to try to get the leaves started when they are as plump as possible (ideally 2-3 days after watering the plant). In the case of the one pictured in the OP, now is the time, not later. You do not necessarily need to do surgery, sometimes the leaves come right off the stalk by pulling. The key is to get the base of the leaf intact because that's where the new plantlets come from.

I wonder if treating it like a cutting would work better. Cut the stem into segments, each with at least one leaf. Lets the ends scab over and lay them on damp cactus potting soil. push the stems down so the leaf nodes make contact with the soil.

That way, the leaves would have the added nutrients stored in the plant stem while they attemp to root.

Just a thought. I've never tried it.

It sounds like that would be worth a try. I've never done it either.

If you're going to go that way, why not just lay the bottom 80-90% of the flower stalk (the part without actual flowers) intact on soil, so that 5 or 6 leaves are in contact with the soil... could work out well.

I cut it up because my imaginary pot wasn't big enough.