Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Resting has begun, 1 by Clare_CA

Clare_CA wrote:
Well, only the dwarves stay dwarf really, and more and more dwarfs are being created so that is good news. The dwarves tend to stay under five feet, I think. However, that being said, you can prune the trees to whatever size you wish and start over with new cuttings at any time. You have to prune selectively so that you leave yourself some flowers for the current season.

While cuttings can flower as they are being rooted or soon after, it bears mentioning that the inflo's and flowers are often smaller than normal due to a limited amount of energy. Well-established rooted cuttings have bigger bloom heads and bigger flowers.

There are some cultivars, like Elizabeth Thornton's 'Lemon Drop' and 'King Kalakaua' and some others which don't get to be very big trees and seem to grow wider rather than taller. You can grow plumerias in containers for a few years before they start to get really big and before they get to the point where the flowers are over your head. You can continue to grow plumerias as trees in containers after that if you root prune and add fresh soil each year once the root system becomes impacted. Growing plumerias in containers will naturally stunt them a little bit compared to what they would do in the ground if planted. Restricting the root ball does seem to slow the growing process down a bit.

Here is a King Kalakaua below.