The growth and form of potted mother plants of Eucalyptus globulus Labill. ssp. globulus in relation to the rooting ability of stem cuttings

Abstract

SummaryClonal mother plants of Eucalyptus globulus were grown in 10 l pots in a Portuguese nursery and lightly harvested for stem cuttings every 2±4 weeks. Shoot length, within a crown size and across crown sizes, was poorly related to the rooting ability of derivative cuttings. The chronological age of mother plants, at least up to two years, also had little effect on the propagation traits of cuttings, and variation between individual mother plants was generally non-significant. Rooting of cuttings was strongly related to pre-harvest shoot extension rates (cm per shoot per week), the cuttings productivity of mother plants in the previous interval (cuttings per plant per week), and to the reciprocal of a shoot dominance index at harvest (principal shoot length/number of cuttings harvested). These variables were easy to measure and accounted for nearly all of the variation in rooting ability between harvests of cuttings within the clone.