PIECING TOGETHER PLANTS

TOTIPOTENCE REFERS TO the potential ability of any part of a plant — except reproductive cells (egg and sperm) within a flower — to give rise to any other part of a plant, or even to a whole new plant. That’s because all of a plant’s cells (with some exceptions) house identical genetic information. Depending on the cellular environment and other influences, a cell may become a root, a petal, or any part of a plant.

I’ve made plenty of use of totipotence to multiply a favorite houseplant or shrub, sometimes doing nothing more than dropping some fantail willow stems into a glass of water and waiting for roots and shoots to sprout. Such asexual propagation, so-named because it bypasses using seeds (except in the case of apomictic seeds, such as those borne by citrus), results in new plants that are genetically identical to each other and to the mother plant. Totipotence lets gardeners start whole new plants from pieces of stems, roots, leaves, or even just a few cells from the growing tip