For starters, I was clearly sold a diseased plant, right. That is a different conversation. For right now, you have a sick plant oozing something frothy. I'd guess bacterial infection but I really don't know and it doesn't really matter.
If you have this problem or anything similar---a soft, slowly decomposing part of your caudiciform or what-not--amputation is the only solution that could save what remains healthy of your plant.
So, get a sharp tool that is easy for you to control and sterilize it. In this case, a box cutter with a fresh blade was used. These blades tend to be lubricated with machine oil so you need to wipe that off and then apply some alcohol or bleach, allowing the blade to dry after each application. The plant in this crisis is poisonous so a pair of gloves was also necessary.
There is really no other instruction possible other than just get in there with a sharp knife and cut off the obviously decomposing parts until healthy tissue is exposed. By "healthy", in this case, it means no discolouration. In the photo below, cutting about a centimeter above that ooze was not enough. The interior of the plant trunk was still gooey. So, centimeter by centimeter, more pieces of the trunk had to come off.
After the hacking and slicing, I was left with three pieces that looked salvageable, except two of them looked too small and I was skeptical, already writing them off as a loss. Whatever you end up with, you will need to leave these severed pieces alone to dry. I got this particular plant in early autumn so this entire operation happened during it's growing season. (T. reticulatus are winter growers). Do not be tempted to plant it right away.
T. reticulatus are very slow. One month after being sliced up (photo above), the skin on the open cut was still only barely forming. In the flurry of reading that followed this fiasco, several experienced growers recommended allowing the cuttings to dry out for several months before even attempting to root them.
I can not stress this enough: it really does take several months. In this case, a whole year. If you are one of those hopeless tinkerers that Ents would call the Fast People, your best option is to dip the open cuts in sulfur (to prevent mold/fungal growth) and then hang them out to slowly dry somewhere cool and out of sight. Then forget about them.
Early autumn, 2016; days after arriving in the mail |
After pruning the mysteriously pink parts. |
I can not stress this enough: it really does take several months. In this case, a whole year. If you are one of those hopeless tinkerers that Ents would call the Fast People, your best option is to dip the open cuts in sulfur (to prevent mold/fungal growth) and then hang them out to slowly dry somewhere cool and out of sight. Then forget about them.
When checked for root growth, this one had nothing. |
Putting the surviving cutting outdoors in March did do wonders, however. In Zone 7, that time of year is probably heaven for T. reticulatus. The photo below shows the trunk finally (after two years) plumping up.
Finally, here it is, four years later. This will be the last update to this post.
October, 2020. Repotted in what will be its permanent pot. I ditched the pumice and replaced it with pure red scoria, just because it's prettier. |
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