When taking cuttings, it's possible to preserve the ontological age (phase of maturity) of some plants in regard to specific individual cuttings. Meaning one could propagate the sexually mature part of some plants and produce a sexually mature plant almost immediately.
I've seen this with Portulaca, in general. If I take various cuttings from a same mama plant and put them adjacent to each other in the same piece of ground, those already blooming keep blooming and usually initial growth of secondary branches is a bit more slow. Those stems not already blooming pop out more secondary growth before they get around to blooming, generally.
Also seen regarding arrowhead vine (Syngonium podophyllum.) One can grow a juvenile-stage specimen for decades in a pot and it might never reach its' mature, split-leaf stage. But interestingly, a cutting of a stem with mature form foliage can be propagated and maintain the mature state.
And just thought of Zinnias. Cuttings of blooming Zinnia stems keep blooming while they take root.
All of these examples are general, conditions permitting and probably varying degrees of serendipity.
Is this not one reason people seek Plumeria cuttings instead of seeds? To assuage the impatience of waiting much longer for a seed to mature into a blooming plant?
I couldn't find any links to add to this discussion that weren't super-technical and jargon-ated. I wish this was something more common in propagation discussions. I'd like to know much more about it!
But I did find this link that's so interesting but confusing as heck. Does anybody understand this and want to provide a nutshell explanation of what these folks are doing? Is this site useful to anyone in the realm of what gardeners/plant hobbyists do besides using the glossary of plant anatomy terms?
http://www.plantontology.org/
