Short answer
Yes, an autoflower cutting will root, but it's rarely worth it. The clone carries on flowering on its parent's clock, so it flowers while it's still rooting and finishes as one small bud. You can't keep an auto as a mother either. Grower practice: almost nobody does it twice.
Why
An auto flowers by age, not by night length. Autoflowering is a recessive trait at a mapped locus, Autoflower1: plants with two copies flower even under continuous light [1]. Gene dosage at that locus changes flowering time [3], but no light schedule switches it off.
A cutting is as old as its donor. Cannabis passes from a juvenile to an adult, flower-ready stage on its own [2]. A cutting from a 4-week-old auto is already adult, so it starts flowering as soon as it can, with no veg to build a frame.
Photoperiod clones work differently. Under 18/6 a photoperiod cutting stays in veg as long as you like, which is why mothers and clone-only cuts exist at all.
The numbers
|
Autoflower cutting |
Photoperiod cutting |
| Rooting time |
~7–14 days |
~7–14 days |
| Veg time you control |
None |
As long as you like |
| Can be kept as a mother |
No |
Yes, for years |
| Typical result |
One small bud |
A full plant |
What to do
- To repeat a great auto, grow more seed of the same line.
- To keep its genetics, pollinate it with a good auto male and grow the seed out.
- To make a photoperiod version, cross to a photo and select from the F2 (about 1 in 4 autos reappear).
- If you clone one out of curiosity, take it early, from a healthy plant, and expect a novelty, not a harvest.
Common mistakes
- Taking cuttings in flower and expecting a full plant.
- Putting an auto under 12/12 or 24/0 to "hold" it as a mother.
- Crossing an auto to a photo and expecting auto seed in the F1.
A day-neutral cannabis plant that starts flowering by age, usually a few weeks after germination, regardless of light schedule; the trait is mainly recessive.A recessive allele only shows its effect when a plant carries two copies of it; in a single copy it is masked by a dominant allele and carried silently.A locus is the fixed position on a chromosome where a particular gene or DNA marker sits; the plural is loci.24/0 means lights on 24 hours a day with no dark period; GenetixBay endorses it for veg, as cannabis does not need a sleep period before flowering.A gene is a stretch of DNA that carries the instructions for one functional product, usually a protein such as an enzyme, and is the basic unit of inheritance.The daily length of light versus dark; photoperiod cannabis flowers when nights grow long enough, rather than at a fixed age.18/6 is the standard vegetative light schedule: 18 hours of light and 6 hours of darkness each day, keeping photoperiod cannabis from flowering.A mother plant is a female kept permanently in vegetative growth to supply cuttings, so a selected genotype can be propagated as clones indefinitely.A clone-only is a cultivar that exists only as cuttings from one original plant, with no seed line that reliably reproduces it.Veg time is how long a photoperiod plant is kept in vegetative growth under long days before being flipped to flower, which largely sets its final size.Pollination is the transfer of pollen onto a female flower's stigmas; in cannabis it is usually by wind, or by hand when breeders pollinate chosen branches to make seed.F2 is the second filial generation, made by crossing or selfing F1 plants; it shows the widest segregation, bringing back hidden recessives and new combinations.Cloning is propagating a plant by rooting cuttings from it, producing new plants that are genetically identical to the donor.12/12 is the classic flowering schedule for photoperiod cannabis: 12 hours of light and 12 hours of uninterrupted darkness, which triggers and sustains flowering.F1 is the first generation of offspring from crossing two parents; if the parents are inbred and different, F1 plants are uniform and often show hybrid vigour.
