What a sap!

How would you keep a plant cutting alive? Ideally, instead of sticking it in water or in hydroponic nutrient solution, it should think it's still on the plant-- it should be in artificial sap. So what's in sap? How do you make artificial sap? I figured one could just find a cookbook recipe online.

I was wrong! I could find references to "cellular sap", but I don't think that's the same thing as the sap that flows through a plant's "veins". Let's see.... Plants have the two systems, xylem for transporting water and phloem for nutrients. But apparently that's not the end of the story. Xylem sap contains minerals and nutrients. According to the paper I skimmed, it's really difficult to monitor the composition of the xylem sap-- the best technique appears to be analyzing the stuff that runs out the rear end of a bug (like an aphid) that's sucking on the plant. Seems to me that the bug would be stealing some nutrients-- maybe one should just cut off its head?

I found another paper(later)on the composition of maple syrup and its progenitor, maple sap. The organic component of maple sap is 98-100% sucrose. As for the mineral content, the paper only showed after being made into syrup, not before My goodness, what a difference another skim makes! Mineral content was in the text, not the tables. Still, this is maple sap. How are roses going to fare in another species' blood? So divide by the volume change?

So how to put cut flowers on life support? At this point, I guess I can't do much better than sugar and an asprin, maybe with some dilute hydroponic solution for NPK. Or-- dilute maple syrup! To a plant, it probably tastes burnt. Looks like this one needs more research, maybe an interview with a plant physiologist.