You can't be fully captured by a thought-form you're observing arise. The Stoics called it the inner citadel; Zen calls it the space between stimulus and response.

Temporary Immersion Systems (TIS) — these are the sweet spot for small-scale automation. Vessels periodically flood with liquid medium then drain, giving the benefits of liquid culture without the hyperhydricity problems (plantlets getting waterlogged and glassy). The RITA system is commercial, but DIY versions using air pumps and timers are very buildable. Once set up, multiplication happens with minimal intervention.

There's a 400+ year old specimen of Lomatia tasmanica in Tasmania that's been propagating clonally for an estimated 43,000 years

Stage 4 — Acclimatization (hardening off). Plantlets are moved from sterile, high-humidity, low-light conditions to the real world. This is often the highest-mortality stage — the plants have weak cuticles, non-functional stomata, and are adapted to heterotrophic or mixotrophic growth (feeding on sugars in the medium rather than pure photosynthesis).

Stage 3 — Rooting. Medium is switched to higher auxin ratios. Shoots develop root systems.

Stage 2 — Multiplication. This is where the magic happens. Cytokinins in the medium suppress apical dominance, causing axillary buds to proliferate. One shoot becomes many. These can be subdivided and subcultured repeatedly — this is the exponential growth phase.

Stage 1 — Initiation/Establishment. Tissue is surface-sterilized (typically bleach solution) and placed on nutrient medium. The explant (cutting) is usually a nodal section, shoot tip, or meristem. The goal is to get clean, living tissue established without contamination.

Stage 0 — Mother plant selection and preparation. Healthy, actively growing tissue is chosen.

Opus 4.5: 'Micropropagation exploits a property called totipotency — plant cells, unlike most animal cells, retain the ability to dedifferentiate and become any cell type. A single cell from a leaf can theoretically regenerate an entire plant. This is fundamentally different from animal biology and is why plants can regenerate from cuttings in the first place.'

studying plant micropropagation