Why are you able to propagate some plants in water, but cut flowers always die eventually?
In: Biology
Cuttings of plants typically use an intact piece of the main stem, and even then this is not possible with all plants as some simply don’t have the type of tissue and growth patterns needed to grow new roots from cuttings. On the opposite end, some plants don’t even need stems for propagation, they can do it from just intact leaves, growing roots and a stem.
Most cuttings are kept in water because the cuttings are prone to drying out before they can root in just soil. However others are kept in wet soil or even dry soil in the case of many succulents.
Flowers and the stalks that they come off of don’t have this tissue or potential for regrowth, *usually*. A notable exception to this is Dionaea Muscipula, aka the Venus Flytrap, which can be readily propagated from cut flower stalks. Another sort of exception are certain types of Orchids, such as Phalaenopsis(the most common type seen in stores), which can’t reproduce from the actual stalk if cut, but produce clones of the parent known as Keikis along the stalk.
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