agar medium

The scent of damp earth and the whisper of hope filled the air as I dipped the semi-hardwood cutting of Acacia cultriformis, the Knife-leaf Wattle, into the rooting hormone. Each tiny leaf, a crescent moon of jade, held the promise of a miniature, sickle-shaped landscape. The stubborn refusal of its seeds to germinate had tested my patience, but the cuttings, carefully nurtured under a humid dome, offered a fragile, incandescent lifeline. Days bled into weeks, a dance of anxieties and cautious optimism, before the first tentative root hair appeared, a silver thread binding the plant to its new life. The reward – a flourishing sprig of the vibrant wattle, mirroring the parent’s elegance – felt like a hard-won victory, a testament to perseverance and a whisper of the Australian outback in my own garden.