My aunt bought this mislabeled as Euphorbia decaryi var. cap-saintemariensis. She gave it to me after it won only 2nd place at some sort of flower show, because my aunt is a very nice lady but apparently doesn’t tolerate failure well. At the time, I’d wondered why it’s all made up of little sprouts, instead of a larger sort of bonsai-looking plant like the pictures online, or at least a clump of bigger sprouts.
Well. I think I’ve found out why.
I went to repot this thing. Discovered that, oh, neat, it’s growing baby sprouts wherever its pot-bound underground stems touch the surface! Cool, I can propagate it and get a few babies, as soon as I unravel it from… oh dear.
Oh golly.
So, this was all one plant. I found the original plant- that’s what I’m holding it by in the fourth photo. It took me half an hour to untangle it, and that’s with breaking off about half the thing’s mass in the effort, as the stems are fairly fragile. (Yes I know it’s toxic, I was careful.) Before I broke it up into about 50 pieces, this was one plant. Every time a stem found the surface, and they did that a whole lot in there, it’d grow a new sprout, and then that sprout would continue. There was literally more stem than soil in that pot. No wonder none of them got big!
Someone at some point appears to have removed this from a square pot, seen how tangled it was, and opted to simply place it in a larger pot. That inner area had multiple spots that were solid root and stem.
I separated all the sprouts off, except the original three from the first plant. I now have 34 E. decaryi, or at least I did before I gave about half of them to a friend who happened to be visiting. I’m about to have more again, because I put all those stem bits in two bonsai pots (underneath everything else in the last pic), and I expect most if not all of those to send up sprouts of their own.
Anyone want some E. decaryi sprouts in a couple months, once I’ve learned how many of those little bits are alive? Seriously- I’m gonna have so many.
And can anyone by any chance help me figure out if these are any var. in particular? I have a better photo… that I forgot to add.
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My aunt bought this mislabeled as Euphorbia decaryi var. cap-saintemariensis. She gave it to me after it won only 2nd place at some sort of flower show, because my aunt is a very nice lady but apparently doesn’t tolerate failure well. At the time, I’d wondered why it’s all made up of little sprouts, instead of a larger sort of bonsai-looking plant like the pictures online, or at least a clump of bigger sprouts.
Well. I think I’ve found out why.
I went to repot this thing. Discovered that, oh, neat, it’s growing baby sprouts wherever its pot-bound underground stems touch the surface! Cool, I can propagate it and get a few babies, as soon as I unravel it from… oh dear.
Oh golly.
So, this was all one plant. I found the original plant- that’s what I’m holding it by in the fourth photo. It took me half an hour to untangle it, and that’s with breaking off about half the thing’s mass in the effort, as the stems are fairly fragile. (Yes I know it’s toxic, I was careful.) Before I broke it up into about 50 pieces, this was one plant. Every time a stem found the surface, and they did that a whole lot in there, it’d grow a new sprout, and then that sprout would continue. There was literally more stem than soil in that pot. No wonder none of them got big!
Someone at some point appears to have removed this from a square pot, seen how tangled it was, and opted to simply place it in a larger pot. That inner area had multiple spots that were solid root and stem.
I separated all the sprouts off, except the original three from the first plant. I now have 34 E. decaryi, or at least I did before I gave about half of them to a friend who happened to be visiting. I’m about to have more again, because I put all those stem bits in two bonsai pots (underneath everything else in the last pic), and I expect most if not all of those to send up sprouts of their own.
Anyone want some E. decaryi sprouts in a couple months, once I’ve learned how many of those little bits are alive? Seriously- I’m gonna have so many.
And can anyone by any chance help me figure out if these are any var. in particular? I have a better photo… that I forgot to add.