Cutting, rooted or grafted: what turns up in the box

One listing arrives as a dry stick you must not water. One arrives with roots and behaves like an ordinary potted plant. One is two plants stuck together. The prices are often within a few dollars of each other, so the price will not tell you which is which — the listing has to.

Cuttings — what Cutting means, rooted plants, grafted — what Graft means plants, seedlings and seed. Four of those five are offered as broadly comparable things, so what you are really choosing between is how much work has already been done to the plant rather than a ladder of grades. Seedlings are the one class the community treats as the cheap way in.

Two things to know before you read on. Rooted plants normally travel bare root — what Bare root means, with the soil shaken off, and a good listing says so out loud. Seedlings ship bare root too and often arrive floppy at the base; they firm up again once they are replanted.

Any long column can be divided into three kinds of piece, and they behave differently once you get them home.

A mid roots and grows every bit as well as a tip and is a standard product, not a lesser one. The single thing it asks of you is that you plant it the right way up. Look for the notch above each areole — what Areole means: it reads as a seagull, and the seagulls fly upward. Planted the wrong way round it never grows at all.

Prices tell two stories here, and it is worth knowing both. A nursery selling cut to order — what Cut to order means usually asks a little more for a tip than for a mid of the same length. Out in the open community market, once you compare pieces of the same length, that gap all but disappears. The stump — what Stump (base cut) means is the one part of the column that is discounted outright.

Every unrooted cutting you will ever buy is somewhere on this track, and knowing where it is on the day it lands makes the whole first year make sense.

The cut. A wet open face, and flesh that shrinks as it dries. It has to heal over before it goes anywhere near soil.

The callus — what Callus means, and why it has no fixed date. The face pulls in, goes tan, and finishes hard, dry and shiny, and that finish is the only thing that says it is done. The budget is about a week of drying for every inch of stem thickness, which works out at two to three weeks for an ordinary cutting; a slim pup — what Pup means can be ready in a few days and a fat column takes longer than either. Where growers give two figures, take the longer one, because drying too long is a far smaller problem than not drying enough.

Where the drying happens is a cosmetic choice, not a survival one. Indoors on a rack, no rain, dew or dust ever lands on the wound, so the callus finishes clean enough to photograph. Outdoors the moving air is the better mould insurance, and the scar just looks a little more lived-in. Either way the plant is equally healthy — the difference shows in how the scar looks, not in how it grows.

The shrivel, weeks three to eight. The column thins visibly while it lives off its own stored water. This is the stage that makes people reach for the watering can, and that is how most first cuttings are lost.

Roots, around two months. White roots come out of the base and the ribs start to fill out again.

A pup, around six months. Enough roots by now to behave like any other potted plant. The buried green skin — what Epidermis means takes roughly a year to turn to bark, and once it has, it can no longer rot — what Rot means easily.

Where you buy in on that track is what the price difference is for. A cutting is stage two. A rooted plant is stage five, with six months of somebody else's patience already spent on it.

A grafted plant is two plants: the top you chose, and a different, faster plant underneath supplying the roots. That rootstock — what Rootstock (stock) means energy makes the top grow quicker and fatter and pup sooner than the same piece would on its own roots — what Own roots means, and in some clones — what Clone means it looks different too.

Two things follow for you. Any pups appearing on the rootstock below the join have to come off, or they starve the plant you actually paid for. And on a Trichocereus — what Trichocereus means rootstock a graft never has to be separated — the base will carry it indefinitely. Grafts ship healed, roughly two weeks after they were made.