Gosh, Will, that's a awful lot of trouble to go to with the hope of getting a rooted cutting. My understanding is that this broken central stem is pretty much all new, green growth. I have never, ever had success in rooting stems such as this. Believe me, in the 25+ yr. of growing this "mother" fiddle leaf ficus, I have tried every thing in the book to root cuttings. I switched to air-layering years ago and it got to the point that 100% of what I air-layered, rooted. I have probably sold almost 100 of these rooted cuttings, some almost 4' tall, in the last 5 yr. Propagation is what I do.
