Gill, I don't know very much about arabicum, but hope someone here can. Good luck to you.
Marie

Glad you asked Gill and hope that someone has some older Arabicums to show changes.
A couple of my Thai Socotranum (Arabicums) that I started 14months ago has not grown in height much, but I am noticing quite a difference in it's girth.
Hoping that this is the beginning. No signs of more terminal growth points as yet.
I remember a comment made and photo's by NRSundaram showing Thai Soco and Arabicums, where people had pruned.
I am going to send a note off, but 'Durch' from Durham Botanicals would know.
Rick

Gill, I don't know the exact answer to your question but I wanted to say that the seedlings I have that are 1 yr old already have much a bigger caudex than my 1 year old Obesum for the most part. I just posted a new thread titled 1 Year Old Seedlings that show what they did in 1 year.

Although I didn't grow it from seed, I have an Arabicum I bought last year - I don't know how old it was at the time, but it basically doubled (maybe more?) in size over the year - it added A LOT of girth from where it was last year. I can't even believe it looking back at my pictures!!!

When I got it:
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Recently, before getting a fancy new pot and getting lifted - this will show you how much of the pot it filled up in a year. CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS???!
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New fancy pot and lifted! The picture doesn't do the plant or the pot justice, but you get the idea.
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So I have experienced significant expansion on a plant that didn't appear to be very old and was most likely grown from seed by the seller. I don't think anyone would graft or grow an Arabicum from a cutting since the flowers are mostly the same, I'm not sure, but what do you think?

I love the Arabicum, they are a lot of fun! hope this helps in some way!

Thanks for the replies folks.
el....Good grief! That sure is some growth rate in a year, what on earth have you fed it on, meat and 3 veg!!! It looks good since the re-pot with it's typical Arabicum shape...lovely! Thanks so much for the info, and yes, I have just read your other post and spied the Arabicums. Interesting point you raise about grafting them, I have not seen or heard of a grafted Arabicum.
Gill UK.

Elucas, what AMAZING growth in one year. I am so excited to see my baby Arabicums put on that much growth in a years time. Thanks for sharing that information.

Elicas,
What a gorgeous plant. Looks like it had grown so much, it was bursting at the seams.
Nice to see the difference in growth with your photo's.
Looks like you have some nice Frangipani's growing also.
If you do not mind me asking. You mention grow lights. Do you have them under them all day for cooler months?
Rick

Thank you all so much for the kind comments! You had me laughing about feeding it meat & veggies! LOL! I am spending a fortune on steaks! Really I only use Dyna Grow Foliage Pro and ProTekt, occasionally a shot of Super Thrive. As you can see, it was given a lot of room to grow in its pot and I give it a lot of sun.

I had a close call last year when something hit one of the branches and split it - it would have really thrown off the symmetry of the plant so I was frantic to save it. I wrapped it up really well with plumbers tape (not sticky) and thankfully it healed itself and the branch survived. You can see the bulge in one of the branches, that's where it was. At the time it was also much closer to the base which would have made it look weird to have to cut it.

Ladylotus I would love to see pictures of your babies, have you posted them?! I am excited to see what my babies will do this season too, I wonder if they will grow a lot like this one did.

Rcharles, I didn't realize exactly how much it had grown until I looked at these pictures, even I am amazed! I have quite a few Frangipani's growing, good eye! I have about 30 plants from cuttings and about the same number of seedlings. I put my oldest plumeria and my adenium (I only have 5 adults so far) in the garage on a piece of plywood to go dormant for the winter but I kept my adenium and plumeria seedlings and my younger or rooting plumeria under grow lights the whole winter because I heard you're really not supposed to let them go dormant their first year. I have 2 T5 lights that are 4' long and 4 lights wide. So this particular one went dormant but the youngsters got around 12-14 hours under the grow lights daily during winter.

amazing growth on that arabicum! funny but somehow their growth is less noticeable, until you actually put photos side by side.
today i repotted one of mine, i thought it didn't grow at all over the winter. then i looked at the old photo and was very much surprised. maybe i'll have to take a better pic of the pot from above...
here's a pic from last september
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and from today,same pot just lifted and changed media
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and an arabicum seedling thrown in, has a funny shape (but still small)
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teyo, very cool! You had some excellent growth on yours too I see! That is so interesting, I didn't realize Arabicum could grow so fast! Nice looking plant, did you grow that from seed?

Teyo, I really REALLY like your Arabicum that you state has a funny shape. I bet that one is really going to have character when it gets bigger.

Hi Teyo, you have a nice looking plant with another fast growth rate there. I really do like these squat Arabicums, they are real characters. That seedling really is a mixed up guy isn't it? Looks like he couldn't make his mind up where he was heading!
Gill UK.

Elucas, thanks! I bought the first one and grew the second one from seed. I have about a hundred arabicum seedlings growing now, about six months old but they've been mostly dormant over the winter. Turns out arabicums need more light than obesums. I expect them to explode in growth now.
Hey, one VERY important question! You said you use foliar feed on yours? So it was fertilized only that way?? That would be freaking awesome if so, means i could water mine with a hose and then just spray the fert (i do so now, but i put some in water too). So much faster!

Ladylotus, thanks, yeah it's a weird little dude. I think it's conjoined twins, because from the start it had two growing tips.

Thanks Gill, i think the key with arabicums is giving them space to grow in a pot, like elucas noted already. That pot is 25 cm wide, but not too deep. It still reached down to the bottom. Next repotting it will probably get a bigger one still. I actually give all of my adeniums a lot of space to grow in, confining them to small pots only makes sense when using cr@ppy water retentive media.

NRSundaram from India is a expert in his field of Adeniums. He plants many of his Arabicums in the ground (can do this in India) for the exact reason of growing across the soil. The point that they need surface area in a pot to allow them to do so in an artifial way as opposed to in ground. Free draining soil of course.
My largest Arabicum is only 4" in diameter and hoping to see some growth as on Elucas's and Teyo's. Seedlings starting to show some of thickening of caudex.
Rick

Teyo, sorry, no I don't foliar feed. You actually CAN foliar feed with this though if you like. I actually started a thread on the Plumeria forum about foliar feeding and the concensus was to do one or the other but doing both does not seem to produce results worth the money and effort to do so according to the majority of people.

The brand is Dyna Grow, the product is Foliage Pro and ProTekt - the Foliage Pro because it is a balanced fertilizer for the plants needs and the ProTekt because it is a silicon additive/light feed that helps the plant be more resistant to cold and heat. They can be mixed together as long as you add the ProTekt first and then the FoliagPro, otherwise they bind together - you will know it if you add them wrong! LOL!

I would love to have a (very) mini rain barrell type thing with a hose hooked up where I could just mix a few gallons of ferts at a time and then deliver with a hose, how sweet would that be?! LOL!

well, if you're going to mix up a barrel of nutrients, might as well go full hydro and set up dutch buckets :D

i have an old bathtub that i am going to set up one of these days, in a ebb and flow system, stick in some hydroton and adeniums. why waste water and nutrients when it can work just as well in a circular system :D

too bad, i thought you used just foliar feed. i use foliar on adeniums and plumeria, both seem to like it, especially seedlings.
Dyna grow stuff is of no use to me because it is not sold where i live, but thanks for the info. i know tapla recommends it over on container gardening.
well, back to the old watering bucket :))

Because this forum was a little slow I went out online to read more about adeniums and ran across this Utube video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=7cCwaft-Nm8

What I noticed while seeing the various plants were that a lot of the arabicums were planted in very large, oversized containers. So you guys hit the nail on the head with the extra space requirements for aribicum.

Just watched the video and there are some amazing plants featured in it...and in big pots too, a lot bigger than I had imagined they needed.
Did anyone spy the ones with what looked like a dark coloured 'soil retaining fence' around the pot rim...what's the reason behind those, any ideas? Found parts of the video a bit fast moving to have a real good look at the plants, bit like being on a roller-coaster! Thanks for the link LL.
Gill UK.

I have not watched the video's Gill, but Sundaram from India (do not mean to go on about him, but he has always been supportive and his knowledge is immense) has most of his larger potted plants in concrete circular pots. They are in two pieces. At some point they remove the upper ring (barrier) and allow the rains I assume to wash the soil away exposing the caudex.
They show much of this on the web site for Ademiumsindia.com . I think you can see them in their big/large obesum section.
I am assuming that the black retaining fence may have a similar purpose.
All very interesting.
Far from any of that.
Rick