Month: June 2012

Question about the adenium plant seeds. I have what looks like seed pods on my plant for the first time in about 12 years these seem to appear after I planted new adenium plant near by in pots. One question is did this happen due to knew plants in the area. If i plant the pods how will i go about starting a plant from seeds.    – Carolyn  (I put your question on the blog for all to hear the answer about adenium growing).

Answer: Yes and no.  The same plant can pollinate its own flowers to produce adenium seeds. You can cross pollinate one flower with another to create a new hybrid flower. Most of the time adenium plants need to be many years old before they produce seed pots. We have had a few adenium plants produce seeds as young as 4 years old, however, most are 8 years and older before the desert rose plant start to producing viable seed pods.

Depending upon your growing location, soil, water and other things will all effect whether an adenium plant produces viable seeds. Usually the younger the desert rose plant the less likely the seeds will produce healthy plants. Your adenium plant is 15yrs old so the seeds should be easy to grow.  if you plan to collect the adenium seeds we highly recommend that you do NOT take the pod off the plant. Instead wrap plastic around the pod before it splits open to catch the seeds before they go airborne. The adenium seeds from the pods have whiskers to help them float away in the wind once the desert rose seed pod splits.Also, remember that the adenium seeds do not always produce the same flowers as the mother plant if the mother plant is a hybrid adenium plants.

Now is the time to start your summer adenium plant bonsai training. Ideally you adenium plant is beyond the flowering period if you are in the Southern USA or near the end of the flowering period further north in USA. Yes, some adenium pants flower more than one time per year depending upon your growing environment, plant treatment and weather. Making you adenium plant flower more than once per year will be another topic in the near future. One of the great benefits of growing adeniums is the ability to train them into a adenium bonsai plant.

The plant shown above is an adenium plant already in bonsai partial form.  Adeniumrose company started to create this bonsai when the plant was 3 years old by cropping the top of the plant to force large caudex formation and many branches.  the caudex is approximately 8″ across and 6″ high. You will notice this adenium bonsai has the beginnings of a canopy. Now would be the time to start wiring the branches as they grow out words (not up) in all directions to form true canopy adenium bonsai plant.

When you wire the branches make sure you use thick bonsai wire and do NOT WRAP the branches tightly. You want room for the branch to grow without impressing the wire marks on the branches of the adenium desert rose bonsai plant.  As your desert rose bonsai plant branches grow extend them to cover the caudex in size. One they are as wide or wider than the caudex crop them so new branches will start to grow.

Look at the image to the left and notice the canopy extends outward beyond the adenium plant caudex. This plant is 6+ years old and just needs a little more cropping to make the adenium bonsai canopy fuller. The first image will grow a thicker canopy faster than the second adenium plant image because of more branching at the caudex. Sorry both of the above plants are already sold to customers.

There is confusion concerning adenium plant flower names in the market.  Many growers in Thailand and other parts of the world do not conform to any standards in naming adenium desert rose plants flowers. Plus, many adenium hybrid lowers look very similar but are different due to size difference, slight pedal shape and even leaf shape or size difference.

Here on this post are two different named adenium plant flower hybrids one called white house and the other Nafta. If you look quickly they will like almost like the same adenium desert rose plant.

However, if you look closely at the Adenium plant White House triple layer white flower the pedal shape of the adenium plant you will see a different in how the pedals are layered and the edges.  Now this is not to say that many growers use different names for adenium flower types. If you look on ebay you will see the exact same flower with different names from different growers.

The AdeniumRose company uses the name provided by the actual grower (Nursery) of the plant. The only time we modify the name is when a name conflicts with USA trademark and copyright laws: Case in point: there is a adenium plant sold by many Thailand adenium plant growers name “Lady Gaga” which I know is a trade marked name by the performer. I know they did not get permission to use her name on the desert rose plant so we renamed the desert rose plant to Lady Gatong.

Over the past year we only renamed a plant 3 times due to conflicts with other names given by growers of adenium plants.  Yes, we keep a image and name log on all names to make sure we are consistent with the desert roses.