Toti What?

If ever you have fancied yourself as a cloning engineer, totipotency allows you to clone the plant's equivalent of 'Dolly-the-Sheep' and produce new plants either from a single cell or group of cells.

Cells contained in the meristems of plants (those areas of cell division and active growth) have this ability. Because the meristems are at the shoot and root tips, and also in the leaf axils (where the leaf joins the stem), we select these parts for our cutting material. The whole process is controlled by hormones

This pair of fuchsia leaves (stem cutting) has produced roots, stem, leaves and even flowers. And all this without a propagator. This is the cutting outlined earlier, which was just pushed into soil and grown with the lettuce.

It has taken rather a long time (about 8 weeks) but there is definitely a new plant here. The other cutting has survived as well.