Alocasia Rhizome Propagation

I can confirm from my personal experience that you can chop up the rhizome of an Alocasia into pieces and regrow new plants like the motherf*ing goddess of nature you were born to be. A rhizome is the name of the type of thick, main stem that the Alocasia has. Above the potting substrate line, petioles grow from it holding beautiful leaves. Below the substrate line, the rhizome of an Alocasia grows roots, corms, and eventually more little baby Alocasias sprout up. Before making this post originally, I had never seen this done on a Jewel Alocasia before, but the best way to learn about plants is to experiment and I was feeling frisky. Since this post was made a few years ago, I’ve seen many people be successful with Alocasia rhizome propagation and I continue to learn new techniques every day from the community!

Since pictures speak 1,000 words, I’ll show you how I did it below (doesn’t #4 look like a little one-eyed monster with it’s arms up and hairy armpits?):

Some notes:

Step 1: Uproot your plant. Remove any funky looking roots. ALL black, brown and mush must go go go.

Step 2: Sterilized cutting instrument (just wipe wipe with rubbing alcohol). Cut as many pieces as you want. Pieces with roots will grow more healthy roots and shoots faster for you. Not alI pieces without roots will make it. Try anyway.

If the cut area will be exposed to air on top of the propagation pot/cup the entire time during rooting, as in step 3, and there is no cut on bottom, you can skip callusing. However, if there is a cut on bottom that will be placed in substrate during rooting, after making your cut, you will want to let it harden off for a couple hours before planting to reduce chances of rot / mold during rooting. If it has roots, keep the roots dipped in water / moist while the cuts harden off. I recommend using rooting hormone gel, such as Clonex.

Step 3: Place your rhizome piece in moist substrate, whether it be moist sphagnum moss, fluval stratum and perlite (often my new go-to), or simply just perlite. Then, place the entire pot in 80-100% humidity and NEVER LET IT DRY OUT for the entire rooting process. Give lots of light.

Step 4&5: I could have potted it up at stage 4, I didn’t need to wait until stage 5. As long as the roots are 1.5 inches long, you’re good to go! The new shoots will continue to grow.

Step 6: Don’t Move your plant to lower humidity immediately after potting it up into a new substrate. Gradually move it to lower humidity environments until it’s in its final spot (or gradually open the lid to the prop box.

For more houseplant propagation tips, check out my book The Ultimate Guide to Houseplant Propagation!