My list of what actually makes a fat seed grown pachypodium. Discussion welcome!
Hey everyone, I just wanted to share some potential information and see if anyone agrees, disagrees, or has more to say on these factors that seem to contribute to the best wild looking home grown pachypodiums. Here’s a list of a few things that I think matter the most:
Zero Fertilizer. Natural pachypodiums grow on sandstone cliffs and rocky holes in madagascar with zero nutritional value to the substrate. if you do fertlize, it shouldn’t contain nitrogen to prevent the plant from being overly vigorous and opportunistic. it ruins the shape forever. Root vitalizers like menadael could be great options for boosting vitality and root growth without compromising shape.
Full Sunlight. Again, just mimic the conditions in madagascar, if you want to baby your pachypodium, it won’t look like the ones in nature. There’s no shade cloth in madagascar and the compact ones are out in the intense sunlight. The wild ones often get sunburnt too which give them that orange or discolored skin in some spots.
Mineral only soil. Zero organic, either use decomposed granite, perlite, pumice, or a combination. Vermiculite can hold water longer but that’s up to your own preference since if you add that, you probably don’t need to water as often. But if you want it as natural as possible go without it but water and replenish that moisture every day or every other day during the heat of summer.
Wind. Thigmomorphogenisis is slept on I think. Madagascar is windy, open and often geologically unprotected especially on the plateaus and cliffs. I believe the fattest plants are beaten with the most wind because it signals them to thicken and sturdy up their roots and caudex to avoid being blown away or damaged. You can even see this in other species of plants, for example some bursera fagaroides on the windy cliffs stay low to the ground, branching low and horizontally and rounding out their caudex for stability and lower center of gravity. Meanwhile the ones with more protected conditions tend to have more open air freedom and instead “stretch their legs”. In any case wind creates stronger more resilient plant cells and fibers which help the plant retain a sturdier structure to resist damage and swaying. Apparently ethylene is released internally when the plant detects strong wind and movement forces which signals lignification.
Large day/night temperature swings. I don’t have much of a backing for this, but again madagascar definitely has desert like temperature swings when the sun is out vs not. I believe the bigger the caudex the better the heat retention (from all that water and mass) for keeping warm at night once the sun goes down. Curious about thoughts with that, it’s just a hunch.
Genetics. Of course this is out of anyones control, but shape is generally based on genetics first. I think you can get a pretty ugly seedling but still give it the right conditions and it will eventually become fat like we all want though. If you get seeds from an etiolated, branchy soft grown plant with weak structure then expect the offspring to have that coded into it. A lot of japanese grow with great conditions but there will always be ideal shapes that come out of the mix and also non ideal shapes. They keep the best shapes to further cultivate and breed to optimize genetic outcome. I could do a whole separate post about the methods they use to grow though but it’s a lot.
There’s probably more, but that’s what I have brainstormed for now. Most plants are grown in greenhouses with little to no airflow (at least without big fans), and even lower light depending on how much protection there is. I have seen the difference between those greenhouse plants vs the ones grown on a windy island in japan (@hide.garden on insta) where his seed grown plants are raised in harsh conditions with unprotected wind, sun, rain, and everything else. There’s a massive difference! I’m even sitting here at the beach writing this and feel a constant 14 mph gust blowing past me and realize that might be the biggest factor to the secret with these. Think about the giant fat adeniums on the windy mountainside in socotra, there’s gotta be something about that spot specifically that gives them that much girth besides just age.
Everyone always complains about seed grown plants never living up to their wild counterparts whether is pachypodium or not, but maybe we need to try harder to give them the same conditions!
I’m curious to know everyone’s thoughts. I’m not expert, but I definitely have a hyper fixation on pachypodiums specifically, and trying to get seed grown plants to emulate their wild counterparts. If all goes well, i’m sure these conditions will also produce harder grown fatter dorstenias, adeniums, pachycauls, and other caudiciforms. Is wind the secret nobody looked far enough into?