Yew Dell Botanical Gardens Nursery & Greenhouse Manager Jeffrey
Margreiter explains how within the nursery, we have an impressive collection of fascinating plants that we maintain in large pots as “stock plants.” Many species that originate as a single plant will, over time, expand. Sometimes it’s underground (rhizomes, tubers, or bulbs). Other times they will expand aboveground via stolons or create clonal bulblets on their foliage. Either way, that original plant will fill up the pot with a great number of clones that we then divide and move into many individual pots. Take the 𝘚𝘢𝘹𝘪𝘧𝘳𝘢𝘨𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘪𝘧𝘦𝘳𝘢, also known as the Strawberry Begonia (it is neither a strawberry or begonia by the way). Stunning red stolons expand out from the center of the plant, appearing as long, leafless stems. But at the tip of each of these stolons, there is a miniature, brand-new clone which finds an uncrowded spot of soil to take root. After dividing out a few hundred of these smaller clones, we inserted them into plug flats with aerial root-pruning bottoms to help stimulate healthy root systems. Once they fill out their individual cells above and below ground, these plugs are then potted up into larger pots of their own and will soon be available for purchase. What originated as a single large pot has now been divided into an abundance of individual Strawberry Begonias- each with the capability to start a whole new “stock plant!”