Please help, tell me how this is possible?

Question

A few years ago my husband pruned an apple tree which is located on a remote piece of our property. As one of the limbs fell (that he had completely cut off) it became wedged in some other branches.

The next summer he called me out to look at the tree and the completely severed branch (still wedged in the tree) was covered in green leaves and apples. We could hardly believe our eyes.

The next year it did the same thing - was covered with leaves and apples. But after that, the one branch died and has not produced leaves or fruit since.

How on earth is this possible?

Thanks in advance for your answers

Answer 1

Vegetative reproduction is a type of asexual reproduction found in plants, and is also called vegetative propagation or vegetative multiplication. It is a process by which new plant "individuals" arise or are obtained without production of seeds or spores. It is both a natural process in many plant species (including organisms that may or may not be considered "plants", such as bacteria and fungi) and one utilized or encouraged by horticulturists to obtain quantities of economically valuable plants.

Vegetative propagation is usually considered a cloning method. However, there are several cases where vegetatively propagated plants are not genetically identical. Rooted stem cuttings of thornless blackberries will revert to thorny type because the adventitious shoot develops from a cell that is genetically thorny. Thornless blackberry is a chimera, with the epidermal layers genetically thornless but the tissue beneath it genetically thorny. Leaf cutting propagation of certain chimeral variegated plants, such as snake plant, will produce mainly nonvariegated plants.

Grafting is often not a complete cloning method because sexual seedlings are used as rootstocks. In that case only the top of the plant is clonal. In some crops, particularly apples, the rootstocks are vegetatively propagated so the entire graft can be clonal if the scion and rootstock are both clones.

Answer 2

Mother nature does some strange things to propagate the species.I WORKED IN THE ECUADORIAN JUNGLE . WE HAD SOME CATTLE GETTING ON OUR ROADS AND GETTING KILLED. THEY PUT UP A FENCE.The limbs were cut off of some trees . In a few months the limbs had sprouted and in about a year the cattle could walk under the fence.