Cloning - Easier Than You Thought!

Cloning animals - next to impossible. Cloning plants - exceptionally easy (for many types of plants) and pretty much foolproof! Oftentimes, it is impossible to get plants to stop cloning themselves! A perfect example: Your lawn.


Human beings have a fascination with the concept of cloning. The idea of taking an exceptionally complex organism with billions of DNA strands and reproducing an exact replica, is really quite profound! For the most part, cloning of animals is rare, except in the case of identical twins and the odd sheep that scientists offend God with by cloning...

A Kalanchoe with clones growing
on the leaf margins (edges).

With many plants, cloning is a primary form of reproduction. They do this by means of 'vegetative propagation'. This can be accomplished in a multitude of ways: offsets (clones that grow right off the base of the parent), stolons (modified roots that grow along the soil surface and grow clones along the way - think of Spider Plants), and some even grow clones right on the edges of their leaves which then drop off and root themselves. Imagine if we grew our children on our arms and they just dropped off and started living their lives as we went about our day. Simple and efficient, none of this 20+ years of raising offspring! Oh... To be a plant.

One of the strangest ways to clone a plant is to just cut off a piece and stick it in water or soil. Imagine if we could do that with animals! Just break off a finger, stick it in a glass of water and grow a whole new you! Creepy, actually...


When vegetatively propagating plants from 'cuttings', many plants are picky when it comes to where they will grow new root tissue. Plants have cells in what is called the meristematic tissue, and these cells are akin to stem cells in us. They have no assigned role yet, and can become a leaf cell, a root cell, a stem cell (a plant stem), etc.. Meristems are located all over plants and are concentrated at the growing tips (where most of the new tissue is produced) along with different hormones that are controlling exactly what is going on. When attempting to root a cutting, it is often these meristems that we want to use to ensure the best chance of root cells developing.


There is an entire industry that now revolves around 'Meristematic Tissue Culture'. This is a microscopic procedure where scientists or botanists or whomever (even the layperson can now do this) removes meristematic tissue cells and places them in a sugar-rich environment (plant sugars or plant food) in a petri dish. In this environment, these cells multiply and begin differentiating the cells to become every part of a whole new plant clone. The orchid industry has flourished with this type of propagation as it is easer than producing new orchids from seed (a microscopic venture of its own) and few orchids breed true to their parent's genetics. The best way to get a replica of an orchid is with meristematic tissue culture, and harvesting even one meristematic tip of an orchid can produce hundreds if not thousands of tiny microscopic clones!


Next time you pass an African Violet, break off a leaf and stick it in a glass of water or pot of soil. A whole new plant, or two or three, will grow from it! Before you know it, you could be overrun with a small army of plants! Not really, but I smell a sequel to Little Shop of Horrors...






NEXT BLOG - If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's usually not a duck.

Coral - Plant or Animal? More of a... Planimal.