It’s been a busy month getting the grafted adenium plants ready for spring. The early release of the desert rose 3 flowers in 1 plants this week resulted many questions. What flower types will be on the adenium 3-in-1 plant?
Is there a difference between a grafted adenium plant and non-grafted plant? What size are the caudex (fat part of the plant)? How deep should I plant the adenium caudex or how much caudex should I expose?
Grafted adenium plants
Adenium plants are very popular due to the varied flower types. In nature, you will not see rosy desert rose flowers. Rosy adeniums are ones with multiple layers of petals. Rosy desert rose plants are hybrid created using cross pollination for the most part to get the usual colors and petals. Yes, sometimes a regular adenium seed will produce a non-standard flower type but it’s very unusual.
Be careful of companies selling seeds showing a hybrid plant as reference. 93% of the time seeds will not produce the hybrid flower type shown. The only way to make new plants to produce a particular flower type is by grafting.
Grafting is taking a branch from a know flower type adenium plant and attaching it to a standard adenium root stock (base). The flowers from the grafted branch will produce the same flowers as the parent desert rose plant. A Parent plant is where you obtained the cutting to graft. If you let branches grow below the graft line then the flower type from that area will be the type of the base/root stock. Force more growth above the graft area be removing any branches below the graft line.
3-in-1 Flower Types
3-in-1 plants received from Thailand are labeled with three single letters (r, y, w, p, or v). Over the years we know not to believe the letters on the labels. Desert rose plants marked R could mean red, red stripe, red shades, red with violet, red with white, yellow with red, etc. The same holds true with the other letters. AdeniumRose Company does not guarantee the flower types on the 3-in-1 adeniums. 3-in-1’s adeniums will have three different types on each plant. If we waited for them to all bloom it would greatly increase the cost of the plants due to time involvement, individual plant tracking, imaging and labeling.
3-in-1 adenium plants are created on 4..5 year old root stock with caudexes of 4″ to 7″ wide. Desert roses are seasoned (additional growing after receiving form Thailand) at our nursery approximately 4 to 6 months before releasing them on our site. Yes, they are grafted adenium plants.
Planting grafted adenium plants for bonsai
Several clients have asked, “how deep do I plant my adeniums”. On the average, AdeniumRose Company plants 1/3 to 1/2 of the root system (2″ to 3″) below the ground. Lift up adeniums plants to expose more root/caudex every 6 months during the growing season or at least once a year.
To widen the base (caudex) use shallow pots. Force the roots outwards using rocks under the center of the desert rose plant. Use small non porous balls (golf, ping pong) non cloth/leather balls to the roots spread out not down. Crop long branches to fatten the lower branches and trunk.