Nice!!

Haha its got the viking horns, good work my nordic warrior :-)

The helmets of the vikings did not have horns! >:-) But yes, it looks like a "false" helmet. ;-)

HAHA Martin. I have always lived in Texas, and I remember meeting someone from out of state years ago who asked if we all rode to school on horses!

There are so many misconceptions out there!

I'm a big history buff, and I believe this artist is very close.

you could trim the tab in the middle and make it 'obscenely grotesque' ...

like an animal buried headfirst in the sand …

That's a really weird looking plant Martin! Mine doesn't really compare, but here it is anyway! It's the Arabicum I wrote about earlier, the one with the odd corky leaf patches and bulbous branches. It looks a bit beat up at the moment as some leaves are at last beginning to fail and drop off. No bugs/rust or anything else going on, it's just how it has been for a while now...and yes, I also thought Viking helmets had horns too! Just goes to show how wrong one can be :)

Gill UK

I don't know if anything I have can be considered grotesque. You will all have to judge. The closest I can think of is the one I planted July 3rd, 2015, and then removed the tap root on shortly thereafter. That caudex fattened up better than any I have ever seen. So much so that I now cut ALL tap roots off. I'm perfecting that now because on the first one, I placed a disk with wood glue in the center. On the subsequent batch (23 plants) I did all of them without glue, or a disk. Those grew layer of roots in a ring around the edge as normal, and another ring right inside that one. I think that may be useful when training to have two rings of roots. I'm still evaluating whether the plant still triggers the larger caudex response with these. I'll keep you all updated with pictures next time I do the full round if you like.

In the meantime, here is the first, and another that was about equal at the time of cutting the tap.

Here is a pic of the one on the right potted. It has lost only one leaf since sprouting, and had aphids for a bit so you'll probably notice some damage. You can see one branch, and what looks like others starting. This potting soil is very wet, but the plants seem to love it. I put them right back into this wet material after cutting the tap roots. I say this every time because I truly believe these plants only rot when they're sick for some reason, or lacking something necessary.

Thanks all.

Gill, your seedling is, eh, quite weird, too. ;-) In time it could grow into a fine specimen!

But I see you have some problems with chlorosis. The leaves produce insufficient chlorophyll which has a huge impact on the health and growth of plants. This is often caused by a specific mineral deficiency in the soil, such as iron or magnesium. Do you water your adeniums with very hard water? This can cause chlorosis. Something I have experienced many times. The high mineral concentration of calcium ions in hard water restrict the uptake of iron ions.

When the plant is actively growing, I would suggest that you repot your plant in fresh soil and then water your plant with demineralized water. Do that for, say, a couple of weeks and then add some deluted fertilizer to the demineralized water and continue the "treatment".

Some weird looking seedlings I must say. I must say i do not have any funny looking ones yet. Mine are Only one to 2 months old. So not big enough to look funny.

Martin, thanks for your interest and information. I will start a separate thread in order not to derail this one for you when I've gatered some pics and water info.....if you wouldn't mind taking a look when convenient : )

Gill UK

Martin, Great plan! I also found that information useful. One of my seedlings has yellowing in the margin, I haven't looked up which deficiency it is but now I will. Also, did you pinch the tip on that one?

Jedoba, I'll have to try that taproot thing. Your plants look great. I thought Texas was a desert when I was younger. I was pretty surprised when I ended up in Austin and saw trees. I know better now, and I didn't get to see desert in Texas til I was much older.

Nice plant Gill, love how it looks like a little tree.

Bob, I've lived in Texas my entire life. I STILL haven't seen the desert parts of Texas. Don't get me wrong, I've seen some pretty dry parts, but this state is HUGE! I doubt I ever see it all.

I started cutting tap roots because someone here mentioned it. After trying it, I realized it did two things really well; slowed the growth of the plant, and enlarged the caudex by quite a bit.

I believe that the plant must believe that because the tap root is gone, its main supply of water is gone, so it triggers the caudex to hold more water.

very nice gill. I can almost see it waving ...

Bob, thank you. I never pinched the tip of the main stem, which makes the behaviour, ramnification, quite odd. Somehow the growth of the stem suddenly stopped. I can't see any damage to the tip.

Very interesting looking arabicum, Martin. This will be quite awesome as it fattens up. I would expect the grow tip in the center to try to catch up a bit later. The form is really cool. It will be interesting to see how it fills out naturally, if you don't have any immediate plans for butchery lol.

Tracy

Where'd you get one so tiny?? She's beautiful

Mariy Necro, which one? Mine? I have grown it from a seed myself...

Yes! I want seeds! How long has it taken you ?

Mariy Necro, thank you. I think that the fatty is about 6 months old now.

2015-01-07:

2016-02-03:

The adenium has fattened up the past month, but it kind of went into shock after I put it under stronger LED light. It has only grown one pair of new leaves since the first photo (the second and third pair are on its way).

Looking good Martin! You can definitely see the increase in size that happened in the past month.

An odd arabicum ("RCN"):

I have never had such a fat young adenium before. It hasn't been pinched nor pruned, but a few months back the tip of the main stem dried up.

Another "RCN", with natural branching:

The same seedling on 2015-10-20:

So cool to see them taking form. What a butterball!

Okay she is not grotesque, she is actually quite beautiful. This is currently my favorite Arabicum seedling. She's black and she's fabulous! Meet the Brazilian...

"Black Giant"? Nice, fat "trunk"! I like tree-shaped or conical adeniums.

Thanks Martin. The name of this Arabicum is "Brazilian" it was bred by Mr. Ko. Not all of them came out this dark, I think about 3 of them so far will be black skinned. She is definitely staying in my collection. ;)

These two buddies are about 11 months now (the past 8 months or so, they have been pushed with generous watering and fertilizer):

They are not beautiful, quite ugly, but I like the "sausage finger branches" and hope for more after defoliation. ;-) They could grow into something fat and interesting. ;-)

I cut down on the watering and grow them more hard now (= compact growth).

You guys have some realy cool adeniums.

Martin, could you explain the technique you mentioned? Cut down on watering to grow them harder? When do you do this? Why?

Steffen

Wow Martin! Such Robust, stout powerful looking RCNs. What I find the most beautiful of this cultivar is that the blooms not only appear on the tips of the branches, but also come out of the nodes. I love this feature! This combined with the truly unique root structure makes it a classic that will always be popular. Nice work on these.

Tracy

Steffen, thank you.

Full defoliation/removal of leaves is a bonsai technique. By cutting the leaves off: 1) You force a tree to grow new leaves with reduced size and increase ramnification. In my experience, the leaf size of adeniums is not affected by this technique, but often defoliation can initiate or increase ramnification; 2) Your tree will grow more compact simply because the absence of leaves will allow more light to hit the tree, buds and branches directly. This will prevent shaded branches from growing leggy.

Adeniums can grow leggy if you defoliate them and at the same time feed and water them too generously. But genetics plays a major part here. Some adeniums can take a lot of water and nutrients without growing leggy.

Growing adeniums hard means cutting back on water and fertilizer and keeping adeniums pot-bound. This will 1) restrict growth but growth will be more compact, and 2) in theory, enlarge the waterstoring tissue, the caudex.

Martin thanks for this, so well said. It occured to me that I probably have done this defoliation and then heavily fed and watered without realizing. This is probably how my GB got to be so tall. I have learned so much about Adeniums from you.

Thanks Martin,

I´m learning alot here and this sure puts some of my questions to rest!

Steffen

I keep telling myself not to buy anymore seeds, BUT,,,,,,,

I have one of those arabicum RCN too, Martin. Slightly older than yours. Pic on the right was dated 20Oct2013 and (left) today.

It's untrimmed, I didn't even have to pinch since it branched very early. And of course, as you know, grown hard (i.e. completely neglected, mostly rain-fed with no fertilizer).

Pagan

Pagan, nicely grown with tight internodes. Take good care of it. :-)