Two or More for the Price of One - Propagating Euphorbia Lipstick

Late last summer a small, bright pink flowered succulent, Euphorbia Lipstick, found its way into my trolley during a visit to our local nursery. Autumn, winter, spring,  summer, this eye-catching plant has not been without a flower. Growing to a maximum height of one metre, this is a lovely compact plant that has done particularly well for me in Sydney.

So I started thinking, wondering how hard it would be to take some cuttings and have even more of these wonderful plants with their stunning hot pink flowers and glossy leaves; so sun-hardy and almost welcoming neglect, although in winter they prefer to remain a little on the dry side.





As a child, my first propagating effort was carnations. I was allowed to plant some offshoots pulled from the stems of a bunch of cut flowers after the flowers had started to wither. I stuck these tiny branches into small, disposable plastic drinking cups filled with soil from the garden. Almost miraculously many of these cuttings took. I’m not sure how, I was quite young at the time and can’t imagine I would have remember to water them regularly, perhaps we had good rainfall.

Anyway, time to consult the leading authority in all things - GOOGLE - to find out how to take cuttings from an Euphorbia. A summary of the advice is as follows:

Ensure you are wearing gloves at all time when handling Euphorbias to protect your hands from the thorns and also from the sap.

Take an old serrated knife and carefully cut away the lower offshoots from the plant, or take a cutting from the top of the plant if there are no offshoots on your plant (this sounded a little harsh). Wash off all the milky, white sap that bleeds from the cut pieces and allow the cut ends to dry thoroughly. Then place in a pot filled with a commercial propagating mix and enclose each pot in a plastic bag and seal the bag.

In addition to the above I  also dipped each cut end into a root promoting hormone gel before placing into the potting mix. I'm not sure whether this was strictly necessary but I thought it may increase my success rate.

 

My plants were ready for potting up approximately 5-8 week later and I was thrilled. It was a relatively simple process and I achieved a 100% strike rate.

A couple of my new plants.