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Efficacy or Inefficacy of Willow Water

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Post  AK_Panama Fri May 06, 2011 2:29 pm

For those of you who do not know about this topic, you are welcome to read the following article by Harry Harrington: http://www.bonsai4me.com/AdvTech/ATwillow%20water.html

Let´s get the debate started! Does this work, or not?
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Post  Guest Fri May 06, 2011 2:55 pm

Okay
well since I'm partially to blame for this Very Happy I'll start it out.

I have played around with willow water for the past few years and have had interesting results;

The salicylic acid that is released into the water from willow cuttings definitely helps willows root, but thats not hard to begin with.
Sticking other cuttings in with a bunch of willow cuttings seems to swell the lenticels of the other cuttings considerably.
ONCE I had a standard apple cutting throw out a root when stuck in a vase with a group of pussy willow cuttings that I was enjoying indoors in early spring, That Apple has now become Bonsai and I have read that apple do not readily produce roots in water, so It might have helped.

Other than that I have observed little difference in using vs. not using willow water. I believe I read that The Salicylic acid in the water acts as an anti-callousing agent, a vascular dilator of sorts, Much as it does in your body in the form of aspirin. So Cuttings that need to callus in order to root would probably be hindered by willow water. In fact I'm experimenting this year with trying to strike the same cuttings from the same trees I tried last year in willow water, but this year I'm just sticking them in a rooting medium with no willow water to see if I get better results.

I would love some botanist to fully explore this issue and do a good study, but that so far is my experience with Willow water.
-MOTM


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Post  Liserd Fri May 06, 2011 4:33 pm

Hello all

I have no experience with willow water, but the more common willow in Portugal (Salix Babylonica) is a mean rooting machine.
You can basically plant any type of cutting and it will root 99% sure.
Ancient people here in my area say that it´s roots so easilly that you could plant the cuttting up side down. Laughing

I found that exactlly one of the main reasons i don´t like them for Bonsai it´s the huge amount of roots it develops.
Either you repot it twice a year or you plant it in a big pot because if you don´t, the plant will be rootbound in a question of months and will rapidly die-back.
It´s just one of those plants that you basically have to start over every year, that´s why i´ve given up on them.

I guess it´s plausible to say that willow water will help on rooting other species cuttings, but like i´ve said i have no experience at all with willow water.

Greetings
Mário

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Post  JimLewis Fri May 06, 2011 9:09 pm

If you are going to try this you need to do a bit more than sticking a cutting in a glass with a bunch of willow stems..

See here: http://www.ehow.com/how_172766_make-rooting-tonic.html

For a pretty good set of directions for making a fairly good rooting bath. Still, Rootone is probably easier.
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Post  Guest Fri May 06, 2011 10:31 pm

Ehow indicates that willow tea will contain Indole-3-butyric acid- I find that surprising. I've made willow tea before and found it rotted out even in the fridge after a week.

Rootone contains 1-Naphthaleneacetamide and I find it to be a far superior rooting product than those containing IBA This conclusion is through personal experience of years worth of cloning.

As far as sticking a cutting in a glass with a bunch of willow stems, That particular method has worked very well on green wood cuttings of all sorts of things for me from roses to elms, but not on Hardwood cuttings, except as I say for the one Apple I had. The water soon becomes almost gelatinous from the salicylic acid the willows secrete.

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Post  Russell Coker Sun May 08, 2011 6:34 pm

In the early 1980's, back when I was in high school I tried this as an experiment. I cut up weeping willow branches into pieces and boiled them in a big pot of water. Stank up the whole house, mom was furious. Anyway, I poured the stinky "tea" into a wash tub and filled it the rest of the way with water. I cut some big branches off a Japanese maple, cut them into pieces about 1 foot long and let them soak overnight. This was in December or January, and the biggest maple branches were over one inch thick. Next, I dug a trench and stood the pieces upright planting them about 6 inches deep. About 90% of them rooted and the next year I dug them up, potted them and gave a bunch away. One is still growing in my parents' yard and is now a huge tree. I also gave one to friends down the street and it is still growing in their front yard.

That's my story.

R
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Post  AlainK Mon May 09, 2011 2:57 pm

A very interseting sory indeed, Russel.

I've never tried boiling it, just left cut branches in a bucket of water to reproduce a twisted form, and I used the water when repotting other plants. So my experience is very limited since it was only a side-use of the product, just to help the rooting of transpanted trees...
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