In case you don't know, Dimmit is to growing adeniums what Steven Brack and Steven Hammer are to growing mesembs. If you do not know any of these guys, then think Henry Gray as in Gray's Anatomy. Together with Gene Joseph and David Palzkill, Dimmit also wrote the book on adeniums called--well-- "Adenium", with a long subtitle. It's ridiculously expensive so I've never read it. But Dimmit has this site which had been my starting point when I first met adeniums.
So you can imagine when offered these seeds, you're an idiot to refuse. So here they are, no special treatment, no leaf-holding, plant whispering or any kind of woowoo. Just plain, great seeds.
Sown in February, on a heat mat, under T5HOs 14 hours a day. They were fresh seeds so they germinated quickly. |
Out of the 20 seeds, 5 germinated of A. arabicum x crispum; 4 out of A. obesum x crispum; 4 out of A. obesum x arabicum and 2 out of A. arabicum hansoti DW strain |
Adenium arabicum x crispum
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Adenium obesum x crispum
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Adenium obesum x arabicum
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Adenium arabicum hansoti dw strain
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The A. arabicum x hansoti is the iffiest of these--to start with, only two of them germinated. It's a little hard to predict what they will look like eventually. But they had the thinnest mass of roots under the soil too, so it might just have been failure to compete in the crib before they were individually potted up.
The surprise seedlings, however, were the A. obesum x crispum. The tendency of all four seedlings had been to grow tall and lanky, refusing the branch even after being pruned from the top. They are not at all easy to get into shape, they have so far ended up frumpy no matter how they are pruned. After trimming off the top the second time, I decided to just leave them alone and do what they wanted. I expect these particular strains will continue to grow tall and lanky, with very little branching, if any. But that isn't the surprising part since seedlings less than a year old are generally unruly.
The surprise was how early one of these A. obesum x crispum started developing buds. It is the first and only seed-grown plant on my bench that has ever bloomed.
This flower also has that curliness that crispum flowers have. I don't know what's up with that. Now I want a crispum. (No!) The bottom line is that nothing beats great seeds. They do all the work themselves. Go Dimmit!
Beautiful, just beautiful.
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