Other pictures from 20040208

Search for Aeonium arboreum at Google.

Quoting Woottens of Wenhaston:
AEONIUM. (Crassulaceae). Large succulents native to the Canaries, Aeoniums can grow into small trees. Not hardy, but easy in a large light window. Good bedded out in summer with Agaves, Astelias, Cannas, Echeverias, Musa Basjoo and suchlike exotica. Drought tolerant. To keep compact, pinch out top rosette each spring. This will encourage good side growth. They will all grow to a height of 150cm with a spread of about 40cm. A. arboreum Schwarzkopf has dramatic, dark bronze, almost black foliage. A. arboreum Magnificum is similar, but has plain green leaves. A. balsamiferum has green foliage and smells of balsam.

The handwritten instructions that came with my arboreum say "water once a week, except mid-June to mid Oct. during summer when dormant, only water once in 6 weeks."

I've watered it when I felt like it and it's not dead yet, so that's good. Here in coastal San Diego it grows well outdoors potted but it probably can't survive much cold.

According to Ruth Bancroft Garden site, "The plant is very easy to propagate from cuttings. Cut off a rosette and let it harden off for three days or more. Then the cutting can be placed directly into a well-drained mix to root." I read that after applying dipngrow to everything; hope the cuttings don't actually need to "harden off" first. Another suggests sand in late summer; this makes sense, I suppose, because of arboreum's Mediterranean summer dormancy.

Although the instructions say mornings are best for cuttings, on the afternoon of March 30, 2003 I started cloning my plant. I went off to Walter Andersen Nursery in Point Loma and got some peat pellets, peat pots, and root growth stimulant. When my plants grow out of their pellets I'll add some cactus soil to the pots and let them continue to grow. Because it has an ingredient different from others on the shelf at the store, I bought Dip 'N Grow, a liquid solution I diluted 20x per their instructions. I have five different test plants.

1. A fresh clipping with a thick stem. One inch of leaves removed. Submerged stem is a half inch of "old" stem and a half inch of "new" stem. Unique from #2 because only a half inch of cleared stem is above ground level.
2. A fresh clipping with a skinny stem. Two inches of leaves removed. One inch is below soil, one inch is above.
3. A fresh clipping with a medium stem. One inch of leaves removed above ground, one inch of "old" stem below ground. Approximately twice as many leaves as the 1 or 2 plants.
4. A month or-so old clipping, one inch submerged in water until a few days ago when I cut that off and moved it into a half inch of water. Unique because it's the most "sickly."
5. The last clipping is a stem with no leaves, trimmed from number 1. In addition to the standard one inch dipping for the base, I barely dipped the exposed top of the stem in the hope that stems with leaves grow like roots. It's easier to clone ten plants from a stem instead of one if this works.

Here are some pictures of my cuttings.

ptudor@ptudor.net