Month: October 2012

Q: I have a desert rose plant that has done very well until the heavy rains this summer. I have it planted in a 20 gallon bucket. The leaves are turning yellow and falling off. The leaves also get brown spots on them. I re-potted the plant about 2 weeks ago changed  out the soil to a well draining mix. I had been told that it is possibly getting to much water so I have controlled when it gets watered. This is affecting new growth as well as old. It won’t be long before all the leaves drop. PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN…

A: The plants are starting to go into their dormant phase in South Florida. You will loose leaves and they will grow back.  Did you use super thrive when you re-potted the adenium plant to give it a growth boost? 20 gallon pot (if a true bucket I hope you made drain holes in it) seems very large unless the plant has a very large caudex (10″ or large across).

The spots are normal for our area due to high humidity and tons of rain. Our plant racks start at 45″ above the ground to help prevent brown spots (less moisture from the ground). However, due to our very heavy rains this year over 80+ inches you will get some brown spotting. Now that we are so called dry season; I would remove all the adenium plants leaves that have spots on them now. Then over the next couple months the leaves will grow back and them start flowering in Jan/Feb/march time frame. Our office is in Doral but the adenium nursery is in Homestead. We lease a portion of a wholesale palm nursery land to grow the desert rose plants so we are not allow to do retail sales from the nursery. When we grow larger we will open a retail location.Do not worry about loosing all your leaves they will grow back if you properly care for he adenium plant.

Mike

I have a pink Desert Rose, it began getting white raised spots on the leaves. Lowe’s sold me volck oil to mix and spray-on. The leaves are turning brown.Will I be able to save my plant?
Thank You, Terressa

First, the white raised spots are most likely spider mites. When treating adenium plants for pests we do not recommend any OIL based product. Lowe’s good for common plants, however, cactus and succulents are a bit different when treating for them bugs. OIL based products will kill all leaves on adenium desert rose plants. Use a soap based product or create you own by dissolving soap powder with a water based pesticide. In previous posts we gave some names of soap based products to take care of adenium bug problems. The purpose of the soap is to make the insecticide to sick to the plant and not wast off the desert roses due to water. I would go ahead an remove all leaves and any oil residue on the adenium. Also, you may want to re-pot the plant using new soil and dipping the roots in super thrive for a few minutes first.

The last post showed a adenium hybrid flower type with images from Thailand and images of the actual flower once it bloomed in our AdeniumRose Company nursery in South Florida. This is a continual problem with images received form growers in Thailand and other parts of the world. The adenium plants flowers images are greatly changed, enhanced and distorted to get you to buy plants from them. It’s a buyer beware when purchasing from most foreign desert rose plant growers.

Here is another example of two images of adenium flowers. The desert rose plant image with the stripes is the one sent to us by a grower in Thailand. Its a good looking flower; however the problem is that the actual flower looks

much, much different! Either Thailand mislabeled about 100 plants or then just plain lied about the flower type.

Look at the yellow actual flower image of the desert rose adenium plant.  It’s a true yellow with pink on edges and sometimes on different areas of the petals.  We received these desert rose pants in June 2012. They are starting to bloom now (so far 8 have bloomed) and all are yellow with either pink edges or pink on the first layer of this triple layer adenium plants flowers.  this is one adenium plant flower type we are not complaining about to the grower because rich solid yellows are one of he rarest hybrids and most wanted by collectors in the USA.