Tissue culture plants (also known as in-vitro plants or micropropagation plants) are plants that are produced through an advanced method of plant propagation. This technique allows growers to produce large numbers of identical and healthy plants from a small piece of plant in an efficient and controlled manner. It's almost as if the mother plant is cloned into small baby plants! All of this happens in laboratories under completely sterile conditions, which is also why it's very important to take special care of them in the beginning, since they have not yet been able to build up resistance to bacteria and are used to 100% humidity. Failure to take this into account in the beginning will almost certainly result in the death of your plant. But don't worry, once you get through the first few weeks you can treat your plant like any other baby plant! 

There are several major advantages to tissue culture compared to normal plant propagation, which is why this process is also widely used in agriculture, for example.
Tissue culture plants are always disease-free due to the sterile cultivation and because a genetically good specimen is used for the process, it's easy to grow strong identical plants relatively quickly. Which is great for rare plants like the many with variegata that we offer! You'll never receive a plant from us that you're not sure will show variegation, as it's clearly visible in these babies! And did you know that more and more plants in plant shops are also grown from tissue culture? These have already been acclimatized and grown further by the grower, meaning you pay a large premium for them while not even knowing that you're buying tissue culture plants.

There are many interesting videos about the process on YouTube (we're big fans of Plants in Jars), but we have briefly described the process for you below.

• Step 1: Selection of the starting material: The process starts with the selection of a healthy piece of plant tissue, often a small piece of leaf, stem or root, from an adult (house) plant. Which part gives the best results varies per plant.
  
• Step 2: Sterilization: The selected tissue is carefully sterilized to ensure that it is free of bacteria, fungi and other pathogens. This is crucial to ensure a successful breeding.

• Step 3: Grow on nutrient media: The sterilized tissue is placed on a special culture medium in a sterile culture environment. These nutrient media contain all the necessary nutrients, hormones and growth factors that the tissue needs to develop.

• Step 4: Growth and Development: Under controlled conditions, the tissue begins to divide and grow. This process takes several weeks to months.

• Step 5: Root Formation: The young plants are transferred to another medium that stimulates root formation. This is an important step to ensure that the plants can grow independently when they are transferred to potting soil. In this phase the plants are sent to us and you.

• Step 6: Acclimatization: The plants gradually become accustomed to the outdoor environment. This process, also called acclimatization, is crucial to ensure that the plants can survive well outside of sterile laboratory conditions. This is the process that you will carry out yourself with our tissue culture plants.