Clint, Didn't mean to imply you were complaining. It is discussion and sometimes disagreements that help us all learn.
Having said that, I would like to comment on the "umbilical" reference above, especially the implications in relationship to rooting. It's been my experience that different varieties of semps work differently with regard to the stolons and offsets. This has been discussed in detail in some of the earlier posts in this forum. The stolons on some varieties never die off, regardless of the size of the offsets or their rooting status. While stolons do help the offset to gain size, once the offset has grown into a young rosette, it is fairly independent. You can have multiple generations of offsets/rosettes, all still connected. For this reason, I consider the offset to be an independent plant once it gets to about 1/2" (varies with the innate size of the typical rosette, of course). The offsets are not dependent upon the survival of the stolon. Rather I believe the stolon is simply a strategy of producing more plants further from the mother rosette (In other words, send the stolon out away from the home, before producing the baby plant) Not all semps do this. (Heuffelii rarely produce any stolons, but I have seen them on stressed plants)
Some other observations regarding stolons and offsets:
1) As a propagation technique, if you sever the offset from the stolon very close to the offset, the offset will grow independently and the stolon has a high likelihood of creating additional offsets on the stolon. If you sever the offset from the stolon closer to the mother rosette, then the stolon is more likely to die off and not produce additional offsets on that stolon.
2) If the offsets remain on the stolons when the mother rosette blooms, then there is an increased likelihood that the offset rosettes will also flower. This is not desirable since you could easily lose the variety. I have seen this happen a number of times, but not done any experimentation to demonstrate this. It seems to be more probable when the stolons are thicker and healthier, which varies with variety.
3) Rosettes that are not allowed to produce a stolon (or do not produce them) or offsets will tend to live longer than rosettes that mature their stolons and produce offsets. While it is difficult to stop the process of creating stolons, this can sometimes be done by cutting the rosette back severely and removing the growing tip. In may cases, however, this will also trigger offset production, the opposite of what you are trying to do.
I'd really like to argue against the idea that offsets need to or should remain on the stolon until they develop roots. This belief is very common, but I don't feel it is necessary nor actually desirable. Along this line, I really don't care if plants sent to me are rooted on not, as long as they are healthy. Really, with semps it doesn't matter much.
