Autoflowering marijuana plant cuttings? Autoflowering cannabis plants are called as such because they trigger flowering and vegetation with age rather than light/dark manipulations. The plants “autoflower” because they’re genetically bred that way, thus you won’t have to go through the shenanigans of, for example, 12-hour darkness triggering from regular strains (an 18-hour light cycle will suffice, which means even the photo-period plant will flower as long as you grow it properly). They’re on a timer, in a manner of speaking, so taking cuttings from them are worthless because of autos flower from the day they germinate.
Can You Take Cuttings off an Auto Plant?
No. Well, technically you can, but what would be the point? You also can take cuttings from a regular, non-auto plant because it’s affected more by the light cycle than its shorter-lived but automatic flowering counterpart strains. More to the point, because autos can get 18 hours light and 6 hours of darkness or 20 hours of light and 4 hours of darkness yet still vegetate and flower anyway, it’s pointless to go the cutting route. Why bother? Autos can’t be re-vegetated and the cutting would be the same age as the originating plant.
Think about it. Autos “autoflower” regardless of light-dark conditions, while cutting is what you do for the sake of “re-vegetating” your cannabis and induce a new growth spurt from there rather than the seed. Because of the lifespan of an autoflowering strain (the reason why it autoflowers is that it propagates through time not through light-darkness exposure, thus its increased growth rate also means it grows “older” faster, meaning it dries quicker than regular strains), and autoflower cutting will finish growing roots as the same time as its mother.
Can You Clone an Autoflowering Marijuana Plant Cuttings?
No. Autoflower strains don’t clone and the cutting takes root, propagate, and die at roughly the same time as its highly vegetative mother, so there’s literally no rhyme or reason to bother with cutting. This is also the reason why seed banks love them. The best way to deal with these feminized, autoflowering strains is to propagate them from 7-8 weeks through regular growing methods without having to watch out for how much darkness or light it receives.
To reiterate, autoflowers seed only. That’s how these cannabis plant variants get their vegetation time. Also, again, cloning is impractical in terms of lifespan. Autoflowers have such a high growth rate because even their lifespan is predetermined, thus they grow faster than regular strains because they also die faster than regular strains. If you wish for a regular supply of Mary Jane, the cutting-friendly regular strain is your best bet. For faster-growing strains with ready delivery of pot, stick to autoflowers.