Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Need Some Advice How Best to Cut, Replant, 1 by Clare_CA

Clare_CA wrote:
JP, You can certainly cut lower and see what happens and follow your three-step plan. The other option or in addition to pruning, you can stake and straighten your plumeria, which would be a rather easy thing to do. You would be surprised how much a plumeria can bend without breaking. You would just drive a plastic or bamboo stake down near the trunk and pull back on the plumeria and tie with green plastic stretchy tape on the bottom, middle, and top. In a week or two, you would tighten the top part even tighter and repeat the process until it is totally straight. In a few weeks, the stake will no longer be needed, and you will have a straight plumeria. Some plumerias are naturally thin-branched and may require a permanent stake. Some end up getting top heavy and need a permanent stake too. For a fuller plumeria though, you would want to keep pruning as many branches as come in in order to get more branches. For example, if you prune those top three, you will likely get six more in their place as two or more will spring up from each cut.

Plumerias, as they grow, if not pruned, can grow wide and tall, and I think 6-10 feet is generally recommended so as not to grow into each other, but I could be wrong about that. If you picture a trunk or main stem and then go out three feet in each direction, that tree would be six feet across, and then those branches will branch again add a few more feet, and so on. The root systems can grow wide as well as the canopies.

I have some group plantings saved on my computer that I can show you, but I don't know who took all of the pictures in order to give credit to them.

Here is one from Kaz, taken in Hawaii: