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A plant cutting is a detached piece of a plant, such as part of a plant stem, leaf or root system, used to produce another plant by vegetative reproduction. A stem cutting must maintain a living shoot while forming new adventitious roots. Because this bypasses meiosis and fertilization, it can preserve the parental genotype, apart from mutations and pre-existing variation within the parent.

A practical example is a soft young shoot cut below a node, with lower leaves removed and its base placed in a moist, aerated medium. High humidity reduces water loss before the new root system can supply it; aeration avoids treating a rootless cutting as if it were an established waterlogged plant. The balance illustrates a physiological bottleneck: living leaves need water immediately, whereas a functional root system takes time to develop.^[ref]

Vegetative propagation is asexual reproduction of a plant from vegetative parts, such as a plant stem, leaf or root. In a common artificial example, a detached plant cutting forms new adventitious roots and becomes an independent plant. No union of gametes is needed to produce this descendant. Plant clone describes the resulting lineage; vegetative propagation describes the process.

A soft shoot presents a useful physiological problem: its leaves can lose water before it has a functioning root system. The RHS procedure therefore uses young non-flowering shoots, moist growing medium and a humid enclosure while rooting occurs, followed by gradual exposure to less humid conditions. This is a practical application of the balance between water supply and transpiration, rather than a guarantee that every detached plant stem can regenerate.^[ref]

An experimental rooting comparison should specify both the denominator and the endpoint. If six of ten plant cuttings produce visible adventitious roots by a stated day, the observed rooting fraction is $6/10=0.6$. That hypothetical result measures this protocol and starting material; it is neither a universal property of vegetative propagation nor proof that the remaining four plant cuttings are dead.