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roanimare

Need Planting Instructions For Hawaiian Tree Fern

roanimare
19 years ago

Hi All -- I just got back from Hawaii and brought home a Hawaiian Tree Fern (Cibotium splendens)(Hapu'u-pulu). It says to bury the rhizome deeply so it won't topple over. Do I bury the whole thing or do I leave the top part out of the soil? Any help would be greatly appreciated! These ferns are very cool and beautiful. I hope it grows. TIA

Michele

Comments (5)

  • KonaPhil
    19 years ago

    I am not coming up with any specific planting instructions in my research, but I would suggest leaving the top part out of the soil if I were planting it without more positive instructions.

    Phil

  • menehune_HI
    19 years ago

    Here in Volcano, we plant hapu'u partly buried. Make sure it is shaded. It normally grows as an understory plant.

  • roanimare
    Original Author
    19 years ago

    Hi - Thanks for the tips and info. I replanted my tree fern with about 1/2 above the ground and placed it in a shadier area. Now lets see if it will grow here in Arizona! it might if my dog doesn't keep thinking its a football. -- Michele

  • hotzcatz
    19 years ago

    In Arizona, you may want to try full shade, no wind and near some sort of water to moisturize the air. If you happen to have a sheltered courtyard with a fountain in it, that would be a good spot. An australian tree fern would perhaps be a better choice for a fern to grow in Arizona since they don't mind the sun and wind as much. Is there anywhere it can get high humidity?

  • stephenpope2000uk
    19 years ago

    Your Hawaiian tree fern is either Cibotium glaucum or C.chamissoi (the 'splendens' tag is a nurseryman's misnomer applied to any damn thing). As for planting it in Arizona: virtually impossible, I'd say. In theory you can grow anything anywhere, given enough equipment - after all, NASA have experimented with horticulture on the sea bed and in space - but for all practical purposes Cibotiums in your part of the US are outrageously difficult. Only by enclosing the tub in an enclosed, shady, high-humidity environment will it be possible - and even then, how will you keep the temperatures from soaring? Some kind of shade-cloth tunnel - polytunnel hoops draped with mesh - would be the only way I can think of, and you'd need to build in almost continual automatic irrigation and misting. Otherwise the poor tree fern will fry in the Arizona heat and desert-like aridity (to be brutally honest, it would be easier to keep Cibotiums in Alaska).

    Unless you're up for a shade-house, or some equivalent solution, your Arizona Cibotium experiment will be short-lived indeed. Whether to bury the trunk or not* isn't really the priority.

    Steve - Brighton, UK

    *In case anybody's interested, all tree fern trunks require only minimal burying when potting up - just deep enough to get them to stand up safely without risk of toppling over. In the wild, Cibotiums habitually fall over and then re-sprout along the lenth of the prostrate trunk.

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