Quote Originally Posted by mspofford032579
....how many cfls would be needed to sustain a mother plant which would never be flowered, ONLY used for cuttings/clones for a screen of green method inside a rubbermaid box? Would two 26W cool white cfl bulbs (putting out 3200 lumens) be enough to pull this off?...
WEll lesse, are you making a SCROG mom? Never seen one, hm! But the 2 cfls while they may keep your plant ALIVE, won't really give you enough light energy to harvest clones off regularly. My moms live under a MH400 and aren't allowed to get more than 20 inches tall. The least light I would go with for a mother plant or 2 of that size would be 4 BIG badass cfls hung around her. But that's just me. I guess it depends upon what your clone-production goals are.

Quote Originally Posted by mspofford032579
..........would stay stable, unflowered, and periodicly shed some leaves which would be replaced, from time to time, and live that way indefinitely, possibly "years." Just cuious if one of these never-flowered mothers would require less light to simply stay alive and dormant...
The answer is yes, to stay alive the plant does not need as much light, but if it's dormant, the flip side is that it is producing little to no fresh growth.. thus not truly a mother, just an archived plant, lol. I keep my breeding males in the least-lit corners of my veg closet so they can just chill and not get outta control big.
You will have to watch for signs of too little light, namely, lower leaves being shed faster than they are replaced at the growing tip.
Also a plant in this state requires a careful hand with water and nutes!!!! Overwatering and over ferting are NOT good.... just think... if you want a plant to chill out and do nothing, you can't give it very much fertilizer at all, expecially nitrogen, because then it's going to want to grow new foliage, but if it is sitting there in the shade with little light or water, that is not good.