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I love fuchsias and am wintering one over indoors for the first time. It's doing great (3 months in), but when I trimmed it I had to prune the roots as well as the leaves and so I was wondering if it was possible to grow fuchsias from root cuttings because I have had more success with root cuttings than stem cuttings in other plants.

Viola Sororia
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  • I did manage to get a stem cutting to root and it did live for several months but I had a bad draft come in and kill the majority of my poor little house plants, including my baby fuchsia, – Viola Sororia Feb 08 '17 at 16:29

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Propagating garden mint from root cuttings is easy since the plants have a thick root system, and many of the thicker roots contain cells that are able to organize a new stem if and when required. In effect more than half of the growth of the mint happens underground close to the surface; the plant can use the shoot/roots to create top growth or root growth. Fuchsias in general are different - they have fibrous root systems that don't have this ability to switch from being roots to being stems.

On the other hand, the stems can strike roots readily, and this is how much of the propagation of Fuchsias happens. In fact they root so easily that we don't normally search for other methods. Spring is coming, catch the wave and as the weather warms up take a few cuttings. See for example this discussion on rooting cuttings if you need a confidence boost.

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Colin Beckingham
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