Green Girl Daily: Water Propagation

I brought home my Peperomia Jayde or Peperomia Raindrop (Peperomia Polybotrya) sometime in June. I was immediately attracted to its dark green, heart-shaped, succulent leaves that grow upright much like the "Pancake plant'. Peperomia Jayde is also commonly called Coin Leaf Peperomia for its thick, coin-like leaves. Initially, I thought it was the Pilea Peperomioides (Chinese money plant) but later on learned that despite their resemblance, they are two different plants from different families. Peperomias are from family Piperaceae, while the Pilea is from Urticaceae family. Also, the leaves of Peperomia Jayde have pointed tips while the Pilea Peperomioides' are round.

One day, one of the leaves of my Peperomia Jayde fell off. It was still very green and I couldn't bear to just throw it away so i put it right back in the soil, in the same pot where the mother plant is. A week after, the leaf still hasn't rot. There was barely any change. Then, I learned about water propagation on Instagram, and how lots of plantpeople would put cuttings in a bottle of water to let them root. And so, I decided to try it too. I put this leaf in a glass of water and after a couple weeks, voila! I saw roots!
After about 3 weeks in our room, the leaves started to fall off on their own despite looking healthy and green. I wondered what was wrong, and suspected that it might be an early sign of root-rot. At that time, the stalks were slowly turning brown instead of green, and although I have only watered it once since I got it, it looks like the soil is not completely drying out. I did my research and found out that this plant does not like to sit in soggy soil. By the time I realised my mistake - I had put it in planter too big , all the stalks of each plant have started to rot, the plant look very unhappy, and soon all the leaves fell off. I tried dividing the mother plant by planting stems into smaller pots but not a single plant recovered.

The fact that the one leaf I had put in water continued to grow roots made me think that I should just put all the fallen leaves in water. The first few ones rotted. And I realised that it's because I had put them in water too soon instead of letting them callous. So for the other leaves, I let them sit for a day or two before putting them in water, and that really worked. Now, I have a couple of Peperomia Raindrops rooting in water. On this post, I'm sharing photos of the first leaf I've successfully rooted in water. Looking back now, it took about 1 month or so for the stem to grow roots. And after two months, it began to grow a tiny leaf as well! This got me really excited! Then the tiny leaves keep emerging as the roots grew longer and white roots start to appear. I wasn't sure whether to put it in soil or just leave be as it seemed to doing well submerged in water. All in all, it took about six months before I decided to finally plant it in soil (the original broken leaf still there).

I'm still waiting for the tiny leaves to grow bigger, until it's big enough to be called a houseplant. I really do hope it makes it! In the meantime, these photos are of the plant's progression - from a single fallen leaf, to the development of the roots, the emergence of new leaves, and being planted back to soil.