Hot Weather, Desert Rose Favourite Season

Yesterday I trimmed all my large adenium plant at my home in Shah Alam. This is the best season for us to make sure that our adenium plant grow healty. If you wished to make your adenium to grow stout with large caudex and nice short branches, trim it and it about 2 weeks time you will see new leaves to sprout and giving it another week or so, more new flowers will start to bloom. Try it.

Oh yes, do not use dirty knives to trim your plant. Use clean ones, preferably those that has been disinfected with alcohol and once you trimmed it, wipe it with lime juice. Happy planting!

Summary of the Common Types of Adenium Species

Besides adenium obesum, two other adenium species which is A. Arabicum, A. Somalense & A. Socotranum seedlings will be available in the Malaysian market by April 2011:-

Adenium Arabicum (A. Arabicum)

Distinguished most by its outstanding caudex formation and relatively thick fleshy leaves, this is the most succulent and "desert-look alike" plant. The seeds are particularly large and gives seedlings which rapidly form a nice hard caudex. Caudex for such plants for adenium refers to its large body size trunk.

Adenium Somalense (A. Somalense)

This is an interesting adenium species with moderate caudex but can grow every tall. This makes them a robust, fast growing and very suitable for landscapes and it is typically easy for grafting with different hybrid.

Adenium Socotranum (A. Socotranum)

This adenium is somewhat slightly different from the rest as you can distinguished from its branch that is bushy and grows like a crown. Many adenium enthusiasts who likes "bonsai" look would love having this and this species is considered "high class" compared to other adeniums as you can play with its branches; whether to grow sideways or straight-up and it has very nice distinctively look on its root base and caudex. Usually socotranum is small in size and cannot grow as tall as arabicum.

What is Desert Rose?

Desert Rose, also called as Adenium obesum in scientific name is a plant which is very popular in Malaysia and Singapore. The chinese name for this is "fu kui hua", which written as 富贵花 in Chinese or Desert Rose as 沙漠玫瑰 in Chinese. For the Chinese, especially those from Malaysia & Singapore, Desert Rose is also called as Prosperity Flower - which also represent wealth and prosperity during Chinese New Year.

Most of us do not know how to take care of this plant and do not know how to make it flowering. This what turns a lot of people off not be able to taking care of this plant as it refuse to flower or grow to the size that you wanted, even after 10 years!

In Malaysia, single layer adenium is common but it is available only in pink colors. In the world, there is more than 300 over types of adenium hybrid flowers but in Desert Rose King, we promote only the multi-overlapping petals that we call it "rosy" adenium.

For those who are keen to keep in touch with me and keen to purchase any of our beautiful grafted desert rose plant seedlings, do contact me. We in the midst of moving our nursery to another location in Batu Pahat. Expected moving period is from 11 July 2011 to 15 August 2011.

Currently we specialize in 2-layer and 3-layer grafted rosy adeniums which you can view from this web blog. More updates will be made available to you soon.

Any sales of these beautiful flowers are first-come-first serve basis and we do not supply to nurseries as we would like to educate the user, hobbyist, collections alike the proper way of cultivating this wonderful plant.

Thank you and happy planting adenium!

William G.

Desert Rose King - Adenium Horticulturist & Speaker

+6 017 366 2899

desertroseking@gmail.com

Office: 56-1 Jalan PJS 11/28A, Bandar Sunway Metro, 46150 Petaling Jaya, Selangor, Malaysia

Nursery: Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia (for visitors, please contact Mdm Thai at +6 012 308 1899 (call for appointment first)