Hi Misty,

If you carefully lift up the stems around the outside of the plant, have any of them rooted into the soil? If any of them have you could cut those pieces from the main plant and dig and replant or pot them. If none of them have rooted, I don't believe you can divide the main plant--but I'd need to see it to be sure about that. It would be a matter of looking to see if the main plant has developed multiple rooted crown sections, or if all the growth/stems are still coming out of the original main crown.

If there isn't a cluster of separate rooted crowns, the best you can do is to try to cut it back to get a smaller, compact plant again. I've never grown one in my yard, but from my experience in caring for them when I was selling them, sunrose/Helianthemum tend to wind up with long stems that have little foliage left on them along the stems, but seldom root along the stems where they're against the soil. Is that what's happened? And if so, are there any "shorter" stems coming out of the center of the plant--that sort of lay on top of the longer stems and cover up the bare part of the older stems?

With a couple answers I "may" be able to help you--not positive, but I'll give it a try if I can get a better picture of what's going on with it.

A few pics if possible, or as much of a description as you can of the current crown(s), rooted stem sections, and the length and "state" of the existing stems--any foliage, or bare, or what.

Skybird

I took a look a bit this evening, and took a couple of pics. From what I can tell, it only has the main stalk/crown. It doesn't look like any of the branches have taken root. And yes, the top layer of branches is laying on top of the underlying ones, which are dry and brittle. But it looks so green and lush on top!

I posted these on picasa, but with their new changes I don't think you can zoom in anymore. And you used to be able to change the size of the pic, but that feature is gone now, too! Only way I can figure out how to get the link to it is to right click over it and choose 'copy image location'. It works, but just not as nice as it used to be :( But maybe you can tell a bit from them.

Here's the top view:

And here's a view where I've pulled back the top layer so you can see underneath:

A couple of days ago, I accidentally broke off a couple of it's stems. So I plopped them in a glass of water to see it they'll grow roots. Not sure they will, but thought it worth the try!

Thanks for your help!
Marj

Hi Misty,

What you found is pretty much what I thought you'd find! And that's part of the reason I've never grown any myself, even tho they can be very pretty when they bloom!

But I do have a couple other things that have the "same problem," and when I "fixed" one of them a few years back I documented it in pics so I'd be able to help here if this situation ever came up for somebody! As they say: A picture is worth a...................

The plant I used to show how to cut back something that gets long, leggy, bare stems, like your Helianthemum has done, is Geranium dalmaticum 'Compact Rose'.

The first pic is of it blooming in 2007, a year or two after I put it in. In 2008 I cut it back for the first time, but didn't document it!

By 2009 it was bigger, and while some of the stems do eventually root if they're buried in enough soil and stay wet enough, most of the stems wind up bare and just laying on top of the soil/mulch. This first pic may not be too clear because I cut ALL of the bigger leaves off of the plant just to make it easier to see what I was doing, but if you look closely at the center third of the plant you can see that all the LONG stems have been cut all the way down. The green growth remaining in the center of the plant is the new, young stems that had already started to form before I cut it down. The green growth that's visible around the outside of the plant is the very tips of the long bare stems--which I leave attached to the plant in the first step!

02.25.09

The next pic is a couple weeks later where you can see that the new growth in the center of the plant is getting bigger--and the "bare stem" growth, which is eventually going to get cut off, is also starting to grow again!

03.09.09

A week later the growth both in the center and around the edges is slightly more developed!

03.17.09

Same date! Now that the center growth is obviously starting to develop and I have no doubt that the plant is going to survive, I cut off all the long, bare stems around the outside of the plant! (Where you still see little bits of "green" around the outside of the plant is where there were stems that had started to root a little bit, so I left them there to see if they'd develop into new plants. But I DO cut off the bare stem between the main plant and the "new" plant!)

03.17.09

The next pic is almost a month later when the center of the plant is obviously developing into a new, compact plant that will be neat and pretty looking when it blooms the next year, and some new growth is starting to show where it's developing where the stems were cut off in the "second step." (You can also still see where some new small plants are trying to grow around the outside edges of the main plant. I don't remember if any of those made it or not, but if they did I probably brought them to one of the swaps!)

04.14.09

Another month later and you can see what a nice plant it's gonna be the next year!

05.17.09

Finis! [And I have to admit I was a little bit surprised that I kept remembering to go back and take more pics to document the whole process!!!]

So, what I do in cases where a plant has developed long, bare stems is to cut somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the plant down first, leaving the foliage on the remaining part of the plant to support the regeneration for the part that was cut down. With this particular Geranium I'm pretty sure it would make it even if I did cut it ALL down at the same time, but it's something I don't want to take a chance on, so I continue to do it half first and then the other half after I can see for sure it's gonna be ok!

With your Helianthemum I believe it's even more important to cut it down part by part. With some things it works to cut either the outside OR the inside down first (and I have already gone in three "steps" for a couple things I wasn't sure at all about the first time), but when you cut the outside down first, if there are fairly long stems in the center they tend to lay down on top of what you've cut off and block out the sun, so, especially in this case, I recommend you do it the way I did with the Geranium and cut the center--about a third I think--down first.

Looking at your second pic--and for you, looking directly at the plant!--you can see some small new growth starting to develop in the very center of the plant. Cut all the stems in the center down to about a half inch above the soil, no more than an inch or the new growth will come out of the ENDS of the cut stems and you'll be starting with "bare stems" from the very beginning. For the stems you can find that have the new small growth starting, if that new growth is less than an inch above the soil, cut just above the new growth (1/8-1/4" above). If it's more than an inch above the soil, cut even the new growth off! Leave ALL the long outer stems on, with all the foliage on them intact! (I had cut my Geranium down at least once before I took the pics, so I knew it would be ok if I cut most of the larger leaves off! When I cut it down the first time, I left ALL the leaves on the remaining stems!)

It's gonna look pretty weird/awful for a while, but if you want to try to "reconstitute" it, that's just the way it's gonna have to be! It's hard to know how long it might take with the weather getting colder now, but just wait for the new growth to start developing in the center where you cut it down! When new growth is clearly starting to grow, I recommend, in this case, that you go around and cut off about half of the remaining long stems--leaving some on the plant to continue to provide "support foliage" for the still-small developing foliage. When you do that I'd probably lift up the "center" of the remaining stems and cut off the longest, outside bare stems. That would get some of the most sprawly part that's starting to cover your other plants out of there! Then--and it could possibly be spring before you do this!--when it's really, really obvious the plant is gonna survive, go around one more time and cut back the remaining long stems. (Additional new growth should develop from the stems you cut down the second and third time too, which will give you a larger plant than it first looks like you're going to have. And it's conceivable that cutting it back severely will start to force more growth around the original crown, which could possibly help get it large enough at some point to divide it--but since I haven't grown one I'm not really sure about that!) (Don't know if the ones you put in water will root either--and since none of them have ever started to root along the stems in the garden, I suspect they may not----but, hey, it's almost winter, and plenty of time to play with it and see what you get! You might want to stick a few of the stems you cut off in soil to see if that works! Or, David has shown around here how he roots things in just moist perlite with a "dome" over it! That might be worth a try too!)

With my Geranium I now cut it down once a year, so it never develops really long bare stems. By cutting it back more frequently when the stems are still shorter, it makes it less likely that the plant would die from the more severe cutting back. And with that, the caveat! I can't absolutely, positively guarantee this is gonna work for you! By cutting things back gradually I've never had one of them die on me, but when I'm doing it the first time on something I always worry about it a little bit and keep an eye on it--as if that's gonna help if it dies!!!

You could just go around the very outside of the plant and trim back each stem to the point where there's still a little bit of foliage left on each stem, and it'll develop new growth--but the new growth will still be at the end of the bare stems! So all that would really accomplish would be to make it slightly smaller in diameter for a little while! Since none of the stems have rooted (which really didn't surprise me at all), and since the main crown hasn't gotten any bigger, the only way to get a "new plant" will be to try the "stepped" cutting back--and maybe hover a little bit--and maybe pray a little bit if you're into that sort of thing--and let the plant do its thing! I'm guessing it'll work-----but don't want ya throwing rotten eggs at me at the next swap if it doesn't! :-D

Assuming you do decide to try it, I recommend cutting it back again next summer, and the best time to do that (with anything you're cutting back) is right after it finishes blooming. With most perennials that gives the plant time to fully recover before winter. One other option would be to wait till next spring to cut it back, but since they bloom early/mid summer, I think it's very unlikely that you'd get any flowers next summer. And if you wait until after they finish blooming next summer, the bare stems are just going to be that much longer, making it at least a little less likely that it'll survive the severe trimming. The longer the stems are when you cut them off, the harder it is on the plant.

As encouragement, here's one more thing I cut back every year! it's Arabis arendsii 'Compinkie', rockcress, and it looks really nice and pretty and compact when it blooms, but if you look closely you find long, skinny, bare stems! I have little room for things to "flop all over the place," so for the things I like and want to keep around I just make sure to get them cut down each year. This Arabis is another one that almost never roots along the stems, and this is one of the things I sometimes cut back in three steps, just depending on how long the bare stems are and what the overall plant looks like.

The first pic is of it when it's Doing It's Thing, and the second one is long enough after cutting the center stems off that you can clearly see the "new plant" regenerating in the center. Probably took this pic just before I cut of the outer bare stems, but didn't take a pic after doing it!

Creeping phlox are another plant that gets really nasty long woody bare stems, and it often goes unnoticed until it's virtually too lake to try to "reclaim" it because the new growth laying on top of the bare stems keeps the plant "looking good" and most people just don't notice how bare and long the stems underneath are. Even with creeping phlox you can keep really nice compact plants by cutting them back once a year before they get TOO leggy!

And this method of cutting just part of the stems off at a time is how I keep my Sweet Williams--a biennial--going from year to year too! After they bloom I cut the flower stems all the way down, and then I go to the remaining foliage at the base of the plant and cut off about a third of the stems, which, when you look at them, are long, bare, and almost "thread thin." When new growth starts at the base of the plant, I cut off more of the thready stems, and then, later, cut off the last of them. By then I have a nice "solid" little plant again--that doesn't seem to remember that it's a biennial! I've had a couple of my Sweet Williams for at least five years!

About Picasa! I never signed up for google+, so I'm still able to use it the old way--when it was still GOOD, and USABLE! Why does everybody who comes up with a good idea have to wreck it at some point???? I don't plan to EVER do another Picasa update (even tho it keeps begging me to do it every couple days!), because I'm not sure if updating it (the photo editing part of it) would "commit" me to using the "new" WebAlbums. When I was trying to help GarnerGarden figure out how to use (the new) Picasa, I saw how awful it was, and that's when I decided I would NEVER sign up for google+ (google "tracks" you enough anyway without adding even more google+ tracking!!!), and that I would never, ever update anything again. If it ever gets to the point where I MUST switch over to the new version, I guess I'll just have to stop posting pics here, because I REALLY dislike both photobucket and Flickr!

While I was trying to help GarnerGarden I took some screenshots to try to show her how to post pics from WebAlbums, and here's one of them. Is there REALLY no way now where you can click on "Link to this Photo" to get a link (which you can see on the right side of the picture if you enlarge it), in whatever size you want, to imbed in a post on a forum??? The whole purpose of WebAlbums is (WAS) to make it easy to post online (or send in an email), so if you can't do that anymore, what can you use it for? Is it good for ANYTHING anymore????

In any event, at this point it still IS possible to click on my pics and then click the little magnifier at the top for the bigger version--and then click on the "+" to make it bigger yet if you're trying to see something really close up, so you should be able to see anything you need to in these pics. I think My System is pretty well explained, but if you have any questions, let me know.

Skybird

P.S. And if you do decide to try this way to "revitalize" it, document it so you can come back and show us how it went for you.

Skybird - WOW! You are amazing!! To think you had actually already documented the process for what will help my plant - LOL. You certainly had some great foresight when you did that :) I thank you, and I'm sure there may be a few others on the group that can benefit from your "experiment" and your knowledge with this kind of thing.

I've read through it once (thank you for spending so much time putting in all the details) and think it makes sense, but I'll read through it again more thoroughly before I attempt it. I'm not sure if now is ok to start the process or not - this plant is evergreen, so guess it'll be ok. Or do you think I should wait till early spring and start cutting it back?

As for google+/Picassa - yah, that handy 'link to photo' with size choices is gone now. Here's what the page looks like now when you have a pic selected:

As I mentioned, the only way I had previously figured out how to get the link was to right click over the picture and select 'copy image location', and then paste that into my post. Guess it's possible the browser I'm using might have something to do with it - I use FireFox normally. I might try Internet Explorer as see it it behaves differently

But I just tried using the complete url at the top of the browser window instead, and that seems to be better - it gives you the zoom tool. So I tried to use that with the photo above, but found the picture won't come into the post that way. I have to first put img src using the copy image location method, and then add my a href using the complete url for that. That seems to work, but I wouldn't expect most users to know, or bother, with doing all of that!

I also experiment with adding the full url to the 'optional link url' at the bottom of the RMG post - and I think that works ok.

Do you get the zoom tool on both of those?!

Now, back to the plant project - I will definitely document it and post my progress results!

Thanks!!
Marj

Here is a link that might be useful: my google+/picassa picture

So I gave my Helianthemum a good trimming yesterday - not drastic, but I got it down in size quite a bit. Here's how it looks now (compare it to my earlier pic):

I just couldn't bring myself to cut it all the way down, Skybird. I kept looking at the shrub like stems, and was worried it would be too severe to cut back that far! Here's a pic to show you what I mean:

So I stayed safe and trimmed the top foliage back (as well as some of the smaller woody stems underneath, that didn't have any foliage on them anymore) like I learned to do from you quite awhile back (thank you for that!!), when I hadn't had it for too long. I'm actually ok with it being on the large size, because of the spot I have it in. But I am interested in propagating it. I couldn't find much on it the first time I searched, but tonight I did find some sites with info! From what I read, recommendations are to divide it at the crown in the spring, and to start new plants: trim it back in the late summer to encourage new growth (and get it tidy again), and then take cuttings when new growth gets to be about 2".

Here are three sites I found about this:
Xela'a Garden

Helianthemums.co.uk

And this one mentions separating at the crown:
propagating perennials

So I'm going to watch now for the new growth and take some cuttings, and see if I can successfully get them to root. Then I can hopefully share at the next swap! In the spring, I'll look into separating it at the crown.

Marj

So, how did the experiment pan out? I just purchased some of this and was looking for more information on my impulse purchase when I found this very helpful series of posts. But what happened this year?

Well, fernfarmer, the cuttings I took didn't take unfortunately. And then this spring as I was cleaning out the bed, I found a lot of the Rock Rose was very dry with no new growth, So I ended up picking off those parts and was left with about half. It's green and growing, and flowering. So I did do a big trim on it, just not the way originally suggested!!

Marj