I shared this adenium with you last year when it bloomed, “The Adenium with the Double-Petaled Flower,” July 10, 2023. It is blooming again now, but this time it has two slightly different flowers, thanks to the fact it is a grafted plant. This is how it looked last year.
This is how it looks this year. More flowers and a different shape.
But the stock plant still made lovely single-petaled flowers.
The flowers last year were heavy enough that they faced downward and were hard to see, so when the blooms were gone, I decided to trim that branch. At the same time, the new shoot coming out down below the graft on the stock plant started growing, and I decided to just leave it and see what kind of flowers it would make.
So, now here we are, not even a year later and the stock plant and the graft are blooming! And the stock plant’s flowers are single, and the grafted part is once again making a flower with a double row of petals. How cool is that?
I guess the double petals make a heavier flower; they still seem to be facing down. The plant made many buds this year, and I had hoped they would open at the same time for a big bang of flowers. Well, that hasn’t happened, but these three did open at the same time. And maybe all of the buds not opening at the same time is a good thing; I will have flowers to look forward to longer as they open at odd times.
I thought the graft would have had a double flower to begin with and that’s why it was chosen for the graft. But I have learned that just doing the grafting is what produces the double petals. If seeds from this plant were germinated and grew, I believe the flowers would once again be single petals.
So, as time goes by, the caudex will get fat, the stock and the graft will continue to grow and bloom, and I will enjoy two kinds of flowers on the same plant.
Sounds like fun to me.
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