Never, never again. When I was 8 I helped myself to someone's tulips. My parents marched me to he home to apologize personally. Almost 42 years later I still squirm at the memory : P

I've taken a (very small) clipping from a Jade plant that grows along the road I walk to BART. I felt slightly guilty about it - but it's growing fine and I'll plant it in my garden (for anyone to take clippings from!).

My mother was the Queen of ill-begotten clippings. It doesn't matter where we were or who's plant it was - she'd sneak in close enough like she was looking or smelling and *clip*, she's come back with a few snippings of the plant.

I remember being mortally embarrassed as a teen about this.

not just no, but hell no.

I would never begrudge someone taking a clipping... Spread the joy and beauty!

It's a pretty tacky thing to do.

I've been tempted

I'm sometimes tempted by plants that hang significantly over their allotted space and into the sidewalk -- it would both cure the problem of a cramped sidewalk and get me a new plant. :D However I have never actually done it.

Yes, I've taken coleus and elf schefflera from landscape plantings in industrial parks where there are large multiples. Also walking around the nursery I will pick up hunks of plant that have been broken off and lying on the ground. From someone's yard? No.

We were once asked to leave the Henry Ford Museum because of my mother's cutting kleptomania.

Her trip to the UK yielded some of the most boring photos and some of the prettiest flowers.

Her excuse was that people don't 'own' plants and plants grow best when you acknowledge that truth.

Yes, I took an agave "pup" and it's now looking spectacular on my patio. It was one of hundreds sprouted up under mature agaves along a city running path, and I had seen landscape crews dig them out routinely. So I don't have the tiniest shred of remorse.

But from a store or someone's lawn, no.

i'm from Poland where according to tradition if you want the clipping to grow you have to steal it! i remember my grandmother always stealing clippings when i was a kid and so did her friends when they where over. i guess everyone sort of "expected" it.

No, but mainly because things grown from cuttings take WAAAY too long to get respectable! I want rooted preferably mature plants from the get-go, or as close to that as I can possibly afford. (If I was tempted by a cutting, I'd probably ask for permission, and only swipe it if I thought that was The Only Way -- and that it wouldn't harm the plant.)

My mother does this when she wants cut greenery for vases. She calls it playing "midnight florist"
She lives in a climate where stuff grows like crazy and lots of people don't keep up with their pruning so I think she thinks she's doing them a favor.
mmmkay.

When I was a kid my father took clippings from some historic oleander bush in Texas. I don't remember where it was, only that it was important. ::shug:: Leave it to Texans to elevate a single oleander that way.

Anyway, I drove past my childhood home last year and that clipped plant is still in the yard, almost reaching over the roof of the porch.

Any of my friends would happily share clippings if asked. I would never just take them. But in my father's case, I think it turned out to be kind of a neat thing.

I am reminded of the scene from "Harold and Maude" where Maude explains to Harold why one shouldn't "get too attached to things" (right after she stole someone's car!). I agree wit Maude in this context. If one takes a clipping without harming the plant, then why the hell not. Anyone who would be small enough not to generously say 'yes' to such a minor request doesn't deserve to be asked.

ps-- anyone who has not seen Harold and Maude should run, not walk, to their video rental. What a great movie.

i have and i would again!

I always take clippings from plants in planters and plants growing on the side of the streets in Philly. It doesn't damage the plant and really has no impact on the growth of theplant. I don't mind people taking clippings of my plants either. Just a clipping is different from someone stealing a whole plant!

I suppose it all depends on the time, place, and plant.

If it is an overgrown mass planting, of course I would!

If it is someones prize specimen planting that is mostly likely pruned to the max and obsessed over....I don't know that I would even be tempted.

I wish MORE people in my neighborhood would feel the need to swipe a few cuttings/take SOME sort of interest/care in their surroundings. Alas, 'tis the ghetto and I will have to be happy with my own guerrilla seed tossing!

I've never done it--plants tend to kill themselves in my presence--but my mother has does.

I clearly remember being at the mall with her when I was a teen and she pinched part of a plant off and put it in her purse. She said she was actually helping the plant.

There's a massive rosemary bush down the street from me that looks like it needs some pruning...been tempted, but never have.

i'm the sort of gay that would take clipping etc but its situational. just yestarday I checked out two huge magnolia branches that were fallen on Noe Street to see if they were interesting enough to drag home. turns out that they were just not very pretty but, these were fallen from a gust or whatever so they were especially guilt free.

And I'm the sort of gay that wouldn't.