You flatter me, but I have no special knowledge of Optimaras. I just live in the boonies and have taken home more plants from Lowe's, etc., than people with better opportunities :). I also remember when Holtkamp introduced them, but that is another story.

Many people here could help you, but I'll try. The Optimaras have probably responded to growing conditions, although once in awhile you do get a plant (any plant) that just grows weird.

Here is a video on separating the crowns. It's easy to see on this small plant but the concept is the same. I can't seem to link without embedding it, so search for "Multiple Crown Surgery on African Violet." It's on YouTube and Anne-Marie Keene's blog, "Fuzzy Foliage."

The best I could do was to say look for the centers ):( and the video is way better than that!

You are just going to have to take the plant out of the pot and get a look at the base of the plant and see where there are centers. Hopefully, you can just tease them gently apart, but sometimes you have to cut them (I use my 9" serrated kitchen knife). There may be small suckers that you can pot or root or you may find that those were just little useless leaves.

After you have them separated, then you can see what you have. You may want to remove some leaves from one to make it more symmetrical, for instance, or toss a particularly puny one that didn't get any roots. It's a good time to set a leaf or two.

Then you repot in a suitable size pot (probably much smaller), and treat them very gently, either using a dome or a baggie for a bit until they get over the shock.

If they are new, they should be isolated too and you should have been watching that soil to be sure there weren't any critters there and then bundle up all the discarded stuff and get it out of there pronto. Wash everything you used too (one good reason for the knife that goes in the dishwasher).

The last bad one I got was at a grocery store. I thought it was an Optimara, but now I think it was Anthoflores (there wasn't a lot to go on). By the time I had taken it apart, I had a very sorry looking crown, one small sucker with roots and another sucker without any. I believe this was January. They are still in quarantine, but I just potted the suckers into soil. The bigger one is starting to recover a bit but may never make a nice plant. I wouldn't have bothered if I hadn't thought it was O. Harlequin. I think it is healthy but had been chilled.

By contrast, both of my Lowe's Optimaras are doing fine (ca. October). The 6" one did have tiny suckers appearing around the outer edge but they didn't seem to have roots and I removed them. Optimara Tennessee had no blossoms so I didn't know what it was (just could tell it was light-colored). It was a 4" and adjusted beautifully. Looks just like the one on Optimara's FB page, well the blossoms look like it and the plant is fairly nice.

Sometimes all you get is the variety from a box store plant because it doesn't look nice until you start your own. However, most of us do repot them right away. This too can happen with a plant from any grower though, not just a box store plant.

I hope this helps and do check out the video. Maybe someone else can link to it without embedding it.

Ask if there's anything I wasn't clear about.

Diana in PA

Diana,
Thank you so much for taking the time to write this!
It is very clear.
I found the video and watched it plus one from Donna of Fancy Bloomers. They also have videos on separating babies grown on mother leaves.
When separating babies, they show removing the mother leaf. Sometimes, I leave the baby attached to the mother leaf and repot it. The other babies go into their own separate pots. I try it both ways, mother leaf repotted again by itself if it still has roots.

It is the Optimaras that grow up straight like a bunch of sticks, it is hard to see where the crowns are. So far, I have been pulling off suckers on the sides of plants and leaving the centers alone.

They seem to have their own unique growth patterns, for example, with other violets with more clearly separated leaves, the flower
stem comes from a leaf. However, with O's, all the flowers come from the crown.

Sounds like you prefer O's to Anthoflores.
Joanne

This post was edited by fortyseven on Mon, Mar 31, 14 at 23:53

It's not exactly a law, but most of us grow our plants as single crowns unless they are trailers. They won't shape nicely otherwise. It's often impossible to see what's going on with an overgrown plant until you take it out of its pot and get to the base and see how many plants are actually there.

I've had some Anthoflores that I liked fine. It's just that the ones at the store were in bad shape and now it's about impossible to get any names for them. I kept the ones I got (or will if they make it through quarantine and do well) but I won't look for more. In the somewhat distant past, I got some nice plants that were grown in Canada so that's not so much the issue. I'm not sure that Canada's so much further than Tennessee.

Well, that's what I do anyway :). Good luck.

Diana

Thanks!
I've just gone through a close up exam of all my O's.
Some of them grow differently from other O's and very differently from the specialty plants.
Maybe when the O plants grow in clumps, they are not meant to be separated.

For many years, I grew mostly O's, possibly some Anthos. I never pulled leaves off because there was no need to. The leaves did not break off. I probably was unaware that leaves could be rooted. Freshly blooming O's were easy to find and in great condition. So it was easy and inexpensive to just buy a new one for someone else.
This is the first time I am paying attention to how they grow only because of wanting to remove either leaves or suckers to start plants for folks. I am growing a few from leaves I ordered from the company, so this will give me a chance to observe how they grow.

Joanne

This post was edited by fortyseven on Mon, Mar 17, 14 at 5:09

I had some Optimaras that were growing straight up until I moved them to natural light in a window. They did beautifully after that and flattened out. Optimaras seem to like natural light better, or lower light, and bunch up on me if they are receiving too much light.
Its hard to tell with some plants if they growing straight up is because they are reaching for more light, or if they are trying to cover their centers from too much light. You kind of have to move them around and see how they respond. I found out by accident that ones that I had moved to windows did very well.
Other varieties of plants however, seem to like the artifical lights.

Hi, Very interesting. I am going to my club meeting on Saturday, I might take photos of the O's I am having questions and get their advice.
Seems that several years ago, I also discovered that O's did not do well on light shelves, they did fine in the window.
Joanne

This post was edited by fortyseven on Fri, Mar 21, 14 at 5:14