Adenium seeds and desert rose seedling growing – the Truth

Question: 1) I want to buy a 5-pack, looked at gallery, way too many choices, thought I’d never get to the end without fainting over the beautiful flowers. I don’t know much about these flowers. Are they easy to grow? Don’t mind under watering?

Questions 2: I saw people selling seeds on eBay. I hate growing anything from seeds, never works. But I was curious, can they be grown from seed successfully?

Question 3) But don’t adeniums have to be grafted into another plant in order to grow? I saw a couple colors you don’t have so I’m wondering if it’s possible to grow from seed and what it might entail because I know I can’t graft anything.

Question  4) It will take me a week to figure out which 5 adenium plants I want. We’re below freezing here now. When could the desert rose plants be shipped safely?

Answer: 1) Adeniums and other similar succulents or cactus are water thrifty plants. It’s better to under water them than to over water them.

Answer 2) You can grow adeniums by seed. Adenium seeds are slow growers when compared to annuals and other non desert plants. Adenium seeds once grown are NOT TRUE to their mother plant flowers 80% of the time! On the average, adeniums take 3 years to bloom from seed if grown right.  Just about all adenium seed sellers on EBay do not tell you the truth. They show you a flower type but fail to tell you that the adenium hybrid seed resulting plant 80% of the time flower will NOT look like the hybrid flower they show you. We offer seedlings, not seeds at the present time.  Epicgrower Company seedling description is 100% clear we do no guarantee flower type from the seedlings. We have at any one time 3,000 to 4,000 seedlings growing.

Answer 3) Grafted plants are the only way to guaranteed that the flowers are true. However, again many people on EBay show modified images of flowers and many times what you get is not the flower as shown. Epicgrower Company gets plants directly from Thailand (we are a licenses importer of the plants and seeds) and until we see them flower we mark them NOT proven. Not proven means the image from the Thailand grower is not always 100% accurate. AdeniumRose Company has changed plant suppliers a little over a year ago. The current suppliers are much more accurate in the images they supply to us.  Presently, the Not Proven adenium grafted plants are 93% accurate to what we actually see when they bloom here in the USA.

Answer 4) We ship adenium plants and other succulent / cactus plants in winter using  72 heat packs to cold locations. Depending upon your location we hold succulent plant shipments for Monday for locations further than 3 days away. However, you must be at your location to receive the adenium and other plants to protect them from the outside weather. In the summer it’s 100% opposite – we put holes in the boxes, use paper instead of plastic (plastic retains heat) and again try to time our shipments so we plants are not harmed due to excessive heat.

10 Replies to “Adenium seeds and desert rose seedling growing – the Truth”

  1. I am planning on ordering a Adenium but after looking at the available fertilizers am wondering what I should be feeding the plant initially as we’re heading into spring. What is the best fertilizer to start with?

    1. I would need more details on your area. If you in a area that gets lots of summer rain them use the time released (twice a year) and the Dyna-Grow (once a month unless you have a automatic fertilizing system). Before planting use a root building fertilizer Dyna-Gro K-L-N. There are other fertilizers to do more things depending upon your growing environment. We Use more items including Dyna-Bloom starting in January and continue until we see buds which in our area (South Florida) already happened.

  2. I also live in South Florida (Palm Beach Cty). My DR flower throughout the year. Right now (Spring) they are gorgeous. I am having a problem with a large plant that was here at my house when I bought it in 1995 so I have no idea how old it is. It was in shade this past winter during some construction and didn’t flower. It is now flowering but the flowers a very small and the leaves are curled upwards. I fertilized it and put superthrive on it. How long will these plant live and Is it maybe just an old plant?

    1. Adeniums can live hundred of years. Curled leaves usually means a deficiency in some minerals.s We do no use superthrive any more what so ever. It’s missing some vital nutrients. Dyan-grow Grow is better. Also, you may want to consider some Tekt – it may be missing silica. when was the last time you re-potted it?

  3. I purchased seeds from a seller. they were supposed to be black flowers but they are a deep red. the seller did say that he couldn’t guarantee that the seeds would come out black. do we need a specific soil type to get the black colour?
    thank you

    1. No – hybrid seeds are not true to the parent plant. There are no such thing as a Black adenium. They are dark red. May people are fooled on eBay and other site that do not tell the truth before you buy. They doctor the image to make you thing you are getting black. This is true for seedlings too. There is a seller who sells a lot of seedling on eBay (and other cactus) and they show fancy images but they do not say the seeds are not true to the image in the description. We sell seedlings on our website and on Ebay (Ebay id: Azurite)and in the description it clearly states there is no way to guarantee the flower type. The seedlings on the website are much larger.

  4. Hi,

    My Adenium Obesum seed just germinated and it has 3 cotyledons (tricotyledon), what can i expect from this oddity? Will the tree be different to a regular tree? Is it a rare occurrence, some say it’s a twin?

    Kind Regards
    Deni

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