A beautiful miniature endemic to Madagascar coming from Cape Sainte Marie at the southern tip of the Island. Its natural habitat is rocky areas. I grow mine and others from this area in "bright" shade all day long. They get fed about every two weeks with a low nitrogen food (MSU formula for RO water). You might want to treat your plant one of two ways: 1) In the spring when new growth begins cut it back to more substantial stems at 45 deg angle, washing the cut ends to remove the latex sap and wear protection on your hands as the sap is very irritating. This will force the plant to branch. 2) Use a VERY hot paper clip and burn the meristem of each stem. By doing this you will minimize the scar left by cutting the stem but you'll still have thin branches.

I use the second method as demonstrated:

This is a three old seedling grown from my own seed. While the plant is monecious, you need two different plants to generate seed.

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Here is a closeup of the meristem, the "growing" portion of any plant.

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Using a very hot paperclip, burn the meristem. You may have to repeat this several times to burn it deeply to kill the meristem.

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You will see some white latex produced as you burn the meristem as well as some smoke!

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You should see a black eschar when you have successfully completed this step.

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This eschar will slough off with time leaving behind a small callous. As the plant grows, new arms will be produced as seen in this plant from earlier treatment. This plant was first zapped at the base of the two longer arms when there was just a single growth producing the smaller lower arms and the longer arms that should have been zapped last year.

This post was edited by bikerdoc5968 on Tue, Oct 15, 13 at 17:20