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Alliances of microbiota with plants are masked by the inability of in vitro cultivation of their bulk. Pure cultures piled in international centers originated from dissimilar environments/hosts. Reporting that plant root/leaf-based culture media support the organ-specific growth of microbiota, it was of interest to further investigate if a plant-based medium prepared from homologous (maize) supports specific/adapted microbiota compared to another prepared from heterologous plants (sunflower). The culture-independent community of maize phyllosphere was compared to communities cross-cultivated on plant broth-based media: CFU counts and taxa prevalence (PCR-DGGE; Illumina MiSeq amplicon sequencing). Similar to total maize phyllospheric microbiota, culture-dependent communities were overwhelmed by Proteobacteria (>94.3–98.3%); followed by Firmicutes (>1.3–3.7%), Bacteroidetes (>0.01–1.58%) and Actinobacteria (>0.06–0.34%). Differential in vitro growth on homologous versus heterologous plant-media enriched/restricted various taxa. In contrast, homologous cultivation over represented members of Proteobacteria (ca. > 98.0%), mainly Pseudomonadaceae and Moraxellaceae; heterologous cultivation and R2A enriched Firmicutes (ca. > 3.0%). The present strategy simulates/fingerprints the chemical composition of host plants to expand the culturomics of plant microbiota, advance real-time in vitro cultivation and lab-keeping of compatible plant microbiota, and identify preferential pairing of plant-microbe partners toward future synthetic community (SynComs) research and use in agriculture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]