Dave Nelson wrote regarding Penstemon cuttings: "The dried cuttings were placed overnight in a refrigerator at 400F" "500F today with similar good weather for a week".
Dave, you must live some place very close to the sun with temperatures that high, no wonder your cuttings didn't take root! I would consider 500F a trifle too hot to call good weather ;-)
Seriously though, Penstemon cuttings should strike readily, I've have good luck in the past. I take short cuttings from the semi-ripened terminal growth of woody species, just a few inches long; for about 1/3 to 1/2 the stem remove the lower leaves, I usually scrape off a thin sliver of "bark" or outer tissue of the stem base using a razor blade, dip in common commercially available rooting powder (Rootone) and insert in a 60-40 or 75-25 blend of horticultural grade perlite to shredded peat, the mix moistened before inserting cuttings. I have experimented with heating cables, and they can expedite rooting, but aren't absolutely necessary. The cuttings can be loosely covered with plastic to retard foliage dessication. I do sprinkle the cutting mix occasionally. For more herbaceous types of Penstemons, removing basal shoots & stems earlier in the seasion and treating as cutting similarly works well.
Back in the 1980s, I actually ran a "cutting exchange" by mail for 2 years, as part of the American Penstemon Society, and it worked very well for a large number of species and cultivars tried.
Mark McDonough Alpine-L list-owner [email protected] Massachusetts, USA ***your Alpine-L account settings*** http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l ***Alpine-L archive message links*** http://mailman.science.uu.nl/pipermail/alpine-l/ http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/index.html
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