You are seeing here two different species of Plumeria
This one is Plumeria Obtusa with White Flowers – called White Champa.
The other one is Plumeria Pudica – commonly called as Naag Champa – perhaps because of it leaf shape which resembles the hood of a cobra snake.
Well Now moving on to Care Tips for Plumeria plants.
Whatever is the species, these are the common care tips for all plumerias. With the proper plumeria plant care, these wonderful tropical plants can live for many years in containers.They can grow very tall when grown in ground soil.
- Plumeria Watering Requirements:
Plumerias like a lot of water during their active growing season (spring and summer), but be careful with overwatering because this can lead to rot and kill the plant. So the best method is to dip you finger to about an inch into the soil and if its dry, then water the plant thoroughly. This depends on you climatic zone and season and also whether you have kept it in full sun. May be you need to water daily or alternate days depending on your climate. One important point to remember is use clay pots and not plastic pots if you are keeping any plant in full direct sunlight.
- Plumeria Sunlight:
For best flowering, keep it in full direct sunlight and maximum sunlight if possible. Or atleast 4 to 6 hours of sunlight is required. And Depending on your climatic zone, some regions might have to shift this indoor in winter season where they go in dormancy period.
- Plumeria SOIL: If you are repotting, consider a best potting mix for this so that the care becomes easier later on and its gives maximum flowering. First requirement is a well draining soil that should drain out soil easily. Also check the drainage holes of your pot and if its blocked, use a screw driver and and poke or release any clogged stuff from the hole. General Potting Soil like my universal potting mix will be very good for this plant. You can check this video on Universal Potting Mix from a Card linked at top right corner of this video.
- Plumeria FERTILIZER: Remember Plumerias are heavy feeders, and growing plumerias in pots will definitely require fertilizer application to bloom. Most of the time a potted plumeria won’t bloom without it. Fertilize once every 15 days to 1 month specially in spring and summer season for best results. You can add anything like:
- One handful of vermicompost or decomposed cowdung powder
- NPK crystals some 5 to 10 crystals or even water soluble NPK 19 19 19 powder.
- Bone meal of about 1 – 2 teaspoons every 2 months because it’s a slow release fertilizer and very good for flowering.
- Compost Tea is also a good option.
- What I Use is my Cock Tail Universal Mixed Fertilizer Powder – about 1 table spoon into this large pot once every 15 days after tilling or raking the soil – that is loosening the top 1 inch of the soil. If you have not seen my video on how to make this Mixed Fertilizer recipe and save time, checkout my video from a card linked at top right corner of this video or you can check the channel homepage at youtube.com/gardentips.
- Plumeria PEST CONTROL: Very rarely they are attacked by Whiteflies and spider mites. You can use neem oil spray when attacked or best is to spray a dilute solution of Neem oil once a month for all your plants. Just 5ml Neem oil in 1 1 litre of water + half teaspoon 0r 10 drops of liquid soap for the surfactant and coating effect. You can find a detailed video on Neem Oil in gardening from my playlists.
- Plumeria PRUNING: Pruning from time to time promotes good growth by branching and hence more flowers. Best idea is to prune bit by bit like once a bunch of flowering happens on a branch and flowers dry out, you can prune that branch or its twig – its called dead heading which promotes more growth and flowering.
LASTLY ON Plumeria PROPAGATION. They are really easy to propagate from cuttings. The only point you need to remember is, they are milky sap plants. Be little careful with the milk – it can be a skin irritant to some people. The cutting should be dried for 2- 3 days to form a callous at the cut end and then you can insert it into soil. This roots very easily but sometimes rooting can be very late. Do not discard – sometimes it can take months before showing signs of rooting or growth as you can see in my case. And You can take any sized cutting and success rate is really good.
Plumeria is a genus of flowering plants in the family, Apocynaceae. Most species of this plant are deciduous shrubs or small trees. These are mainly grown as ornamental plants in warm regions and produces nice flowers called champa flowers with a very pleasant fragrance like a scent.
It is called by various names like Champa tree in India , chempakam, Kath Golap, aaraliya or temple tree, Japanese frangipani and so on..
Plumeria species can be propagated easily by cutting leafless stem tips in spring. Cuttings are allowed to dry at the base before planting in well-drained soil. Cuttings are particularly susceptible to rot in moist soil.
There are more than 300 named varieties of Plumeria like plumeria rubra (red flowers), plumeria alba (white flowers) . This plant is very much similar to Adenium (desert rose) – which also has many varieties like alba and rubra and also both belong to the same genus of Apocynaceae.
The main differences are in appearances like:
Adeniums are large trunked with the bottom resembling a bulb, but as a whole they are small plants with smaller leaves. Adenium Root can also be enlarged like tubers.
Plumeria small trunked without any form of elongated tubers, and these plants that can grow big and tall, with long leaves and large shapes.
Plumeria species have a milky latex that, like many other Apocynaceae which contains poisonous compounds that irritate the eyes and skin.
So, coming back to plumeria propagation. We will start the rooting process of a cutting I brought from this beautiful white larger plumeria or champa tree with white flowers – that’s plumeria alba – alba means white.
You are seeing this mud wrapped around the base of the cutting, the person who gave me this cutting thought it would dry up and may not produce result if its left for drying, but in case of plumeria we have to dry this rooting area for about two days before planting in soil. So I am cleaning off this and allowing it to dry.
These Cuttings are allowed to dry, not in direct sunlight but just under room temperature. We do this because they are more prone to rot with fungus if kept too moist and directly insert in soil.
The success rate of these plumeria cuttings is great and that’s really encouraging for beginners in gardening. So, the basic procedure for this and also adenium is as follows:
- Take out all the leaves , but do not strip the node off. Why do we do this? The reason is that – The cuttings with all their leaves intact may be placing a greater water stress on the shoot which may not be able to grow roots easily. Some recommend cutting the leaves to half, because its believed that hormones are released in to the stem for rooting if we do this, but again this is perhaps an hypothesis.
- Here we are using the antifungal or rooting hormone like the one commercially available rooting hormones or your own organic rooting powder. This organic rooting hormone is nothing but the cinnamon bark powder which we use in our kitchen recipes as garam masalas.
- Just dip the base of the cutting which needs to be inserted into soil with this rooting hormone powder. Do not directly insert or make hole with the cutting because the rooting powder might just strip off the cutting and mix with soil. So, make a hole with another stick or any thing wider than your cutting stem and then carefully insert the cutting into the hole. The depth here is about 6 inches because the cutting here is longer. You can vary this depending on the size of your cutting.
- Then one more important thing is just pour small amount of water and leave it for alteast 2 -3 days and then recheck the moisture of the soil and sprinkle some water if you feel its fully dry. Because we do not want our cutting to rot due to overwatering.
- The roots should develop in about 40 to 50 days.
- Check the results at our instagram page.