Vegetative reproduction of Mexican Pinguicula

At the beginning of spring, our Mexican Pinguicula will soon produce their summer carnivorous leaves. It is the best time to start cuttings using the numerous succulent winter leaves. Winter leaves give the best chances to produce new plants from cuttings.

This small Pinguicula X "Bailly", though far from his adult size, but with many small winter leaves, is a good candidate for cuttings.

First of all, you have to dig out the plant, and clean off the old dead leaves in order to reach more easily the living ones to be used for cuttings.

Then, carefully tear out some leaves at the periphery of the rosette. Take care to take the totality of the leaf including the white base as the plantlets will sprout from this area.

You can take half of the leaves of the plant without any risk.

Some Mexican Pinguicula like Pinguicula esseriana can gives you spontaneously some broken leaves when you take the plant in your fingers.

Even if you work carefully, there is necessarily a wound at the base of the leaf.

It is better, for the cicatrization of the broken area, to keep the leaves for about 15 to 30 minutes on a dry and clean area.

This free time gives you the opportunity to prepare your box. You can use second hand materials for example, on this picture, a cake box (after a good wash !)

The choice of the media is not very important. During the first weeks, the plantlets will use to grow the nutriments contained in the mother leaves.

Vermiculit is a good choice but you can also use perlite or sand or even the media you are using for the adult plants. (If the media is safe of parasits or moulds).

Pinguicula don’t have real roots and furthermore, they will not stay there long enough to produce an healthy root system. This mean that few centimetres of media are quite enough to produce a good moistness.

The leaves must lay horizontally, not buried, at the surface of the media.

The box must be closed and installed in a half-shade location without direct sun light.

Two weeks later, you can observe the first signs of sprouting as an enlargement of the meristem areas at the base of the leaves.

You can note that some leaves can give more that one plantlet !

One more week : the growth is fast and some of the mother leaves begin to die.

Another week have passed : all the leaves are now dead. The plantlets have now to live by themselves.


One week later, the first real leaves are well developed (with good eyes !)