It is exceptional now.

I think you should send that "homely" thing to meeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

LOL. That is FANTASTIC!

Very cool man!! It looks great!!

Wow that is awesome!!

I'm glad you folks like it. Thanks.

randy

Wow..that is INCREDIBLE!!

Hello Randy...that DR is just amazing!!! I have managed to grow several Adeniums from seed, they are just over 1yr old and their caudexes are coming along nicely. I'm reasonably familiar with the bonzai technique of branch training, although I've never done it, but how do you get the caudex/roots to grow like that? I have read that lifting the caudex each time you re-pot will expose the roots more, but is it just luck that you get one to grow like that, do they generally grow twisted of their own accord or is their some other method you use like with the branches?
Hope you don't mind an Adenium newbie asking such a question?
Thanks, Gill.

Gill,

All I did with the roots was expose them. :-) They did that on their own. Cutting grown adenium tend to produce an interesting root structure where as a seed grown plant usually grows a nice fat caudex.

randy

Randy, thanks for the explanation, no one to my knowledge has mentioned that before...I knew ones from seed tend to grow the fatter caudex, but not heard that cuttings grow the shapely root systems!
Thanks for answering my question.
Regards, Gill ; ¬ )

Here is a link that might be useful: found this site earlier

@Randy, I think, I have seen the photos somewhere before. Really beautiful plant and you did a perfect job staging it! It's nice to have this sort of "documentation" of what can be done with Adeniums.

@Gill, I have some 2-3 year old Adenium seedlings which lost their roots due to rot.

In the late summer last year, I managed to root some of the "cuttings" after almost giving up on them. Now they are all growing nicely again but they experienced a major setback in growth. They look like yearlings.

Time will tell if they develop really eye-catching "randyish" rootsystems!;-)

Best regards,

Martin

It's fantastic, Randy.
I love the symmetry of the upper foliage, paired with the asymmetry of the exposed roots.
I'd call it "Cross-legged," if I were naming it.

Another question: does anyone know the meaning of "adenium" itself?
There's a root "adeno-" that means *gland* - I'm wondering if that's the relation...
"swollen/fat gland," in regard to the trunk and roots.
Thanks,

Josh

Thanks Martin.

Josh,

According to Gordon Rowley's book "Pachypodium and Adenium" I quote

"The first published record of an adenium is in the Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica of 1755, wherein Forsskal described it from the Yemen in Arabia as a kind of oleander (Nerium obesum). In 1819 this was given a genus to itself by Roemer and Schultes in their encyclopaedic Systema Vegetabilium 4:411. They coined the name Adenium as a rough approximation to an Arabian vernacular name Oaaaejn (Aden) for the plant recorded by Forsskal."

randy

Ah, thanks, Randy.
That's exactly what I needed.
*Adenium* approximates "from Aden," where it was described.

Josh