A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Burgundy Rubber Plant

I have a 5 year old burgundy rubber plant that has 5 separate trunks. I want to prune it back, and was wondering if I can root one of the cuttings.

You can root them all! I'm not sure of the details, someone else will be along to tell you, but I've read here many times that they will root easily.

what i do with my rubber trees is put the part i'm trying to root in the pot with the "mother" and water accordingly. that way i don't over water or under water the baby.

pruning will make it branch, and potting the prunings will give you more plants.

I'm glad this came up too. I cut my small 10 inch rubber plant in half a little over a month ago. (I'm always doing something to my poor plants. No guts no glory, right?) I didn't like all the bare "legginess" it had at the bottom, with three or four leaves at the top.

I put the top part in the pot with the lower half. The lower half definitely has some teeny tiny branchiness (Is that a word?). The top hasn't had any new growth yet, but I'm sure it will eventually. I haven't checked it to see if it rooted. I'm always afraid that tugging at cuttings will cause the roots to break. It hasn't lost any of it's leaves, though, so I'll take that as a good sign.

BTW, I have my rubber plant in an east window that gets very hot in the summer. Will it be ok for me to leave it there?

it will be fine. mine usually go outside in the summer.

top them triss, do it, they'll thank you for it and the tops will grow nicely too!

triss, the plants think of it like you trim your toenails or hair, it only hurts us, not them!

just one of the two.

Go for it, Triss! We're all behind you.

Well, I'm pretty darn impresssed, Triss. Good for you! Now, in the pot where you used to have one pretty dracaena, you have two instead.

My mother has a dracaena she let me cut recently. I think it was a janet craig compacta. It was the ugliest plant she owned because of the way it was dipping over and leaning. By cutting it down, I was able to get three more plants. I kept one.

Also, I had rooted my lucky bamboos (also dracaenas) and they were growing really well until I accidentally spilled some cleaning water in the pot. The stalks were yellowing from the bottom up and the bottom leaves were also yellowing. When those bottom leaves came off, I saw that they were attached to tiny stems. So to salvage what I could, I cut them off and rooted them. They've been doing well since the fall. But...

Last weekend I decided it wanted to fill the pot in little more. So I cut the leafy tops off, and am now rooting them. I only did that with two of them. I'm hoping that the leafless stalks I left behind will put out some leaves. I treat my plants like science experiments, I guess.

my ruuber plant has hit the 9 foot ceiling and just wants to get taller. And it is definitely not because my thumb is green. My rubber plant is just a long stalk and no branches. It has grown bark about 5 feet up. Is it OK to cut the trunk where there is bark? How could I encourage branching at the lower half of the plant?

Rtree I answered your question in the thread you started!!