Adventitious leafy growth in Plumerias; my first.

A few of my plumerias in my small collection are sending out adventitious leaves this year. This is my first time witnessing such odd habit of the plant's growing pattern. Have you experience such and why is this happening?

This is one of the examples. This white NOID plumie's FOS inflo. Some are sending flowers as usual, but a portion of it reverted back to leafy grow. My named cultivars also showing same currious behavior. This plant is in full sun. The others are in partial shade.

All input from fellow gardeners and expert growers are welcomed.

The inflo. itself:

Among the few not-yet unfurl flowers, one can see the adventitious leave on the other terminal growth of the inflo. in place of what- should be flowers formation:

Sunlight is receeding pretty rapid now, in the morning I'll add more pictures of other adventitious leaves, on another plumeria cultivar. Your comments are welcomed.

These are others pics. that I took early this AM. One of my rubra plumies cultivars:

What appears to me, is that the tree attempted to send out an inflo. then reverted back to leafy growth instead:

Another closer look at the tips:

Many viewers, no comment. So no one has similiar experience? Here is my one inflo. with the flowers getting ready to open up.

Over 80 viewers, and no one, I mean no one has seen this condition? I guess due to variation in growing/environmental condition that cause the plant to show some delay in development, or reversion of growth?

Your comment is welcomed here.

The flowers today:

Lily, forgive two things:
a) my ignorance. I didn't know what adventitious was. had to look it up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventitiousness

2) indifference to your posting. Knowing what adventitious means, my plumies shoot in that manner (Not often) and I've never thought much it or been concerned that there's something wrong. Keep in mind I only have under a dozen plumies so not very "worldly" on the subject.

as to inflo sort of disappearing and turning into a branch, yes, it had happened. then an info grow from that general area in the same season.

Hi vossner, thank you for your reply and sharing of the article on wikipedia. Skimming through the deffinition. It dawned on me; the plants was kept indoor over the winter, (with the inflo. (which has) under gone its growing/formation during the low light condition), further more, this spring I postponed (delayed) on moving it out to the optimal sunny location because of technical difficulty. So its growing pattern has somewhat been interupted. That explains it for me.

In years past; what I've noticed was that, the one healthy inflo will produce successive waves of flowers over the growing seasons. Then one day, when it will wither (on its own) and new branches, big thick sausages-like branches will form there at the tips of that branch and so the tree grows and extends outward, taller, wider ect.

I'm exploring, and like to share my finding on gardening with others. I'm so thankful you've responded to the my question. Thank you.

hi lily_love - i did not read the wikipedia article. i do know that this happens to ppl in different climates and can happen even when plumies are grown in the ground. what i don't know if anyone has got a successful plant from this type of growth. it might be a fun experiment to just let it keep growing. then again, might just be good to let the energy go to the "real" branches once the inflo stops blooming. bien suerte!

Hi Tp, so far on this inflo there 5 or 6 'branches' radiated out; one (branch) with the flowers pictured here. One with the leaflet. And 3-4 others with no active growth on them. I'll just sit back and watch its development further. Will post any new changes here. Happy gardening, thank you for your response.

correction ... "so far on this inflo there're 5- 6 little branches ..." sorry about the typos.

plumeria inflorescence branch by nature. each branch is a pedicel. not every pedicel will produce leaves. their purpose is to hold flowers. however, they can produce leaves on rare occasions.

Now I'm learning new terminology! Pedicel.

haha...you're funny! : ) here is the link where i got the terminology. http://waynesword.palomar.edu/terminf1.htm i'd say the plumies have a compound cyme.

Thank you for sharing tp. You're a sweetheart! Now many others can learn along with me. Here is the group of plumies in a corner my garden.

oh...i am learning, too. : )

that is a nice shott! it's not often that we see a plumeria in silhouette.

so lily do you pull those plumies out every winter? with that view, of course, it's probably worth the hassle.

Vossner, those sit in large containers, I and dh haul them in and out every late fall and spring. They're getting really big and challenging to move around in big pots. Thanks for the compliments.

We may change our ways, however. To pull them out of the containers, plant them directly into the garden, and pull them up like some of us do.

lily i am gonna make a recommendation... : ) i tried that for at least two year - planting directly in the ground and storing bare root. it takes them longer to come back in the springtime. what i would suggest is plant them in smaller container and bury the containers. make extra drain holes before you do. the roots will grow out of the drain holes. these will be the roots that you cut off when you dig up the container in the fall. the nice thing is that the central root ball is undisturbed. you can trim it back in the spring, add fresh soil to the pot and let it grow. sometimes i keep my plumies in the same container for 2-3 years.

tucson, what size pot to bury them in? when u have the size that Lily (I have a couple too) has, the pot has be be pretty big to accommodate that size plant. All in all, for those of us that have to overwinter, it is a huge pain. I have a local neighbor who had a plumie with a 3" dia trunk and that was a bear! She finally sold the tree b/c she could no longer handle the moving in & out routine.

tp, thank you so much for sharing your experience with me. I'll see what all I can do. Vossner, giving up on plumies was probably how I came to experience my first plumerias ever. My favorite, local nursery was a recipient of such plumerias from local donor who was probably giving up on hauling the thing around. When I first laid eyes on the tree in blooms at the nursery. I felt in love. So I told them, it's a must have for me. Then one day I noticed they spliced those beautiful 6-8 feet tree into pieces to attempt to root them. On my subsequent visits, they were losing those cuttings one by one due to rot. Being a novice, but I had confidence as a gardener. I asked them to allow me to try a couple of them. That was how it all began. I succeeded on rooting the cuttings, then I collected a few more just for the joy of having them since....

Now with the help of fellow gardeners; I'll fine tune my caring technique to continue to be able to enjoy these beautiful plants without getting burned-out. Many thanks tp.

p.s. I'll post more pics. in the near future.

that's a love story, if I ever heard of one... lol

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/754182/

Here was my introductory on my experience on growing these beautiful plants as a hobby. Hope you'll enjoy.

i think that you can get away with a 10-in squat container for large ones. you can root prune if you bare root them during the winter.

here are some plumeria that i pulled out of their containers for winter storage.

*

this seedling is almost 6' tall and look at the container that it is in.

i like to use the nursery pots with holes on the side. sometimes i will put holes in the bottom, too.

i hope this helps explain what i was talking about.

here's some illustrations of plunging plumeria.

http://www.plumeria101.com/plunging.html

Tp, that's priceless a website tutorial on plunging plumerias on temperate climate. Thank you for sharing that with us.

Interesting about the pot size. not a single one of my plumies is in a pot a small as shown in the tutorial. perhaps I've been using too big/cumbersome of pots.

Boys, voss, after my trip to Maui, Hawaii. I realized these plumerias can grow to a sizable tree! 30' tall and wide or bigger. I guess the size and speed of its growth all dependent upon the size our pots, the sunny condition, and the nutrients we supply them. They are fascinating to see them in the natural habitat!

tp, the picture you provided above on 4:44 hrs. post. Those are the one you dug up at the end of the season?

I have seen big ones also overseas, I guess that might have been the reason I went for the big pots--hoping or anticipating that mine would get that big.

For the past 3 years I have been pruning one branch per plant hoping to create fuller canopies. It's working but it is a slow process for sure. The reason for single branch pruning? The branch will not bloom the following year. If I were to do a more drastic pruning, then I wouldn't have any flowers at all the following season.

BTW, Lily, I read your thread w/ great delight.

Have you all noticed that in the tropical areas, FL, HI, overseas, the trunks are brown, like on regular trees? A past president of the plumeria Soc, who happens to live in the Houston area has a plumie living outdoorss year-round. Her trunk is about 4" in dia. and brown. She does not protect in any way during winter. Her house is brick and the tree is planted sort of against a brick wall so perhaps that also contributes to a friendlier micro-climate, I dunno.

Tucson, same question from me except that on my screen your pic is time-stamped 5:44. Why is foliage so small? beginning of spring?

Thank Voss, I'm glad you've taken delight in my thread. BTW, if you look at the pic. closer. Those are only leave-stems. Tp must have taken all the leaves off to allow the tree to rest during dormancy. Tp, if I was incorrect, please help correct my misconception.

I need my glasses!

Hah, I recognize that form since one year I've to trim off all the leaves from one of my trees because of rust infestation. Thank goodness, rust wasn't harming the plant. It was easily eliminated when I took off all the infected leaves that year.

Voss, most of my pots are large too, thus I'm working on modifying my technique of care for them. Plunging them into the ground seems an appropriate thing to do in the future.