Pachypodium: plant species and care tips

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Pachypodium is a cactus or succulent whose name comes from the Greek phrase meaning “fat leg”. The plant has a high capacity for morphological adaptation: its appearance is highly dependent on the influence of various environmental factors.

Like many other succulents, Pachypodium is a hardy plant and is popular for this reason in indoor floriculture.

Family: Kutrovye. . Homeland – South Africa, the island of Madagascar. It is distributed both in the dunes and at an altitude of 1600-1900 m above sea level. Local Bushmen use the plant’s poisonous sap to lubricate arrowheads.

Depending on conditions, pachypodium may have a dwarf appearance up to 8 cm in height and 40 cm in trunk diameter; the shape of a bottle or bush up to 4 m high; a type of tree similar to a cigar, whose height reaches 5 m. In general terms, a tree-like succulent plant with a thick, almost conical trunk, reaching 7 m in nature. The trunk, like the branches, is covered with thorns. The thorns are important for the absorption of moisture, as is the thickness of the trunk, which gave the succulent its name. The leaves are light green, narrow, without stipules. Blooms in spring.

The blooming pachypodium is very attractive from a decorative point of view: the flowers are white-yellow, similar to asterisks, 2-5 cm in size. By the beginning of flowering, under natural conditions, the leaves fall off. Indoors, the leaves persist throughout the growing season. It grows slowly – in 10 years it reaches no more than 1.2 m, and in room conditions – no more than 50 cm.

A typical pachypodium flower is shown in the photo .

Popular types of pachypodium and photos of flowering cacti

There are 23 species in the genus Pachypodium. Most popular :
Pachypodium Geyya (P. geayi) ;

Pachypodium Lamer (P. lamerei).

Also known is the so-called bottle tree (Pachypodium Lily),

Pachypodium namakvansky;

Pachypodium short-barreled (P. brevicaule Baker);

Pachypodium Saunders, or Lundy’s Star (P. saundersii);

Pachypodium densely flowered (P. densiflorum) and others.

Below is a description of what the flower of the various types of Pachypodium looks like.

Pachypodium Geya – grows into a tree up to 6 m tall. The trunk is thick and prickly. The young plant is easily confused with its relative, the Madagascar palm (P. Lamera). It has narrow leaves with a margin. Young spines are light gray, lighter at the base, turning black towards the point. Flowers have white petals with a yellow speck closer to the middle. In a home environment, it grows up to half a meter on average.

Pachypodium Lamera (Madagascar palm) – got its name because of its resemblance to a palm tree (woody thick trunk, thickened at the base, at the top of which a rosette of leaves is concentrated). Leaves 20-40 cm long on a small petiole, pubescent on the underside. There are 3 spikes under each leaf. The flowers are white-cream, sometimes pinkish, the throat of each flower is yellow. In the room grows up to half a meter. In the branched variety of the plant, the foliage is whorled at the ends of the branching stems, there is no edge on them. Little thorns. It blooms in large white umbrella inflorescences.

Pachypodium is short -stemmed – in the state of vegetation it resembles a stone: a prickly low trunk, similar to a tuber, up to 60 cm in diameter. The flowers are yellow.

Pachypodium Saunders – has a spherical gray stem, from which shoots extend. The length of the spike reaches 2-3 cm. The flowers are white with a blurred pink stripe.

Pachypodium Rutenberg – grows up to 8 m in height and up to 60 cm in trunk diameter. Glossy dark leaves are arranged rosette at the ends of branches covered with thorns. Snow-white flowers are grouped in 3-4, also at the ends of the branches.

Pachypodium rosette – a low cactus, has a gray-green caudex (thickening of the trunk in the form of a bottle, ball or column) and cylindrical branches, the surface of which is covered with frequent spikes. At the ends of the vertical branches are whorled or rosette leaves, oblong, green, leathery, without edging. Flowering is yellow, sometimes with a greenish tint. Its variety gracilius (graceful) caudex has grey-brown, bright yellow flowers on long stalks.

Pachypodium southern – wild reaches a height of 3 m, indoor – 1.5 m. It is distinguished by a smooth gray-brown trunk and a pleasant smell of pink flowers with a red corolla.

Pachypodium horombenze – has a wide trunk and narrow leaves of a greenish color with a gray / silver tint. The flower petals are bright yellow.

Pachypodium densely flowered – the growth rate is very slow, grows up to half a meter in height. The size of the trunk dotted with thorns in cross section reaches 30 cm. Dark green leaves are concentrated at the end of the trunk, they have gray felt pubescence from below. It has yellow flowers with a diameter of about 3 cm.

Pachypodium varieties found in stores are most often hybrids. For example, the faster growing P. Lamera is grafted with a rarer Namakwan species. The rich morphology of the flower species and its hardiness eliminate the need for directional selection.

How to care for Pachypodium and how the plant propagates by seeds and cuttings

There is nothing easier than caring for a pachypodium, accustomed to the harsh African climate. Withstanding temperature fluctuations of -10 °C to +45 °C and humidity fluctuations from 75 mm to 1985 mm in the wild, Pachypodium lives perfectly at home.
requirements for environmental conditions. Pachypodium is photophilous, not afraid of direct sunlight. In summer, if possible, it is good to expose it to the open air, windows facing south, southeast are suitable. If in the autumn-winter period the flower was in conditions that provide a small amount of light, you need to accustom it to the sun gradually. The same adaptation period will not harm a plant bought in a store and transferred to a new microenvironment.
The plant is thermophilic. In summer it lives at temperatures exceeding 30 ° C, in the cold season it needs at least 16 ° C. Does not need a cool winter. It tolerates dry room air well, but does not like drafts.
The flower can be placed near central heating radiators. For the normal well-being of the succulent, not only the air, but also the soil must be warm, in addition, the substrate must be loose, nutritious and consist of soddy, leafy soil and sand (1:2:1). The soil environment for the roots requires medium acidity, they also need strong drainage.
How should you care for a pachypodium? Care will not require effort from the grower. During the growing season, from May to September, the plant needs abundant watering, but the roots should not be in the water. In winter, watering is reduced only for species shedding leaves. Other species do not tolerate overdrying of an earthy coma. An exception is the short-stemmed pachypodium, which requires poor watering throughout the year. Despite the low requirements for the level of humidity, wiping the leaves with a rag moistened with water or spraying will be a useful measure – this will serve as a preventive measure against damage to a dusty plant by thrips or red mites.
The plant needs to be fed, best of all with fertilizers for cacti. It is enough to fertilize once a month, using dissolved fertilizer diluted with water for irrigation.
A young pachypodium is transplanted every year, adult cacti – once every 2-3 years. When transplanting, pay attention to the safety of the roots. The first flowering of the indoor pachypodium occurs after 6-7 years of the plant’s life, the color of the flowers depends on the variety of the succulent.
Reproduction. When choosing how the pachypodium will propagate, it should be borne in mind that only some species are cut, and even then with great difficulty. To propagate the pachypodium by cuttings, you can try to root the upper part of the plant by drying it with activated charcoal powder, but it is easier to grow a cactus from seeds. Pachypodium is grown from seeds in uniform sufficient light and temperatures above 20 ° C.

Why do the leaves of the indoor pachypodium turn black?

Despite the simplicity of caring for a pachypodium at home, mistakes, especially for a beginner grower, are not excluded. The succulent is affected by thrips and red mites. Favorable conditions for the reproduction of parasites are dusty leaves and dry air in the room where the flower is located.
With tick infestation, the leaves of the plant become pale, wither and fall off. On the stem among the thorns, a rusty-red coating is sometimes noticeable. The thrips cluster in large colonies on the underside of the leaves (appearing as dark spots), and above their presence is manifested by the appearance of light specks. When the disease is advanced, the leaf from above becomes completely grayish-brown and silvery shines.
The diseased plant is completely isolated from the rest of the flower garden and treated with an insecticide, for example, actellik.
Pachypodium leaves that turn black serve as a diagnostic sign of the disease due to improper care. When figuring out why the leaves of the indoor pachypodium turn black, you need to pay attention to the air temperature in the room and the humidity of the substrate in the pot. Lack of heat and excess water in the soil and lead to disease. Usually, the succulent recovers itself when it begins to consistently receive enough heat, and the substrate in which it grows dries out.
Soil moisture requires careful monitoring also because of the frequent cases of decay of the delicate roots of the cactus. In this case, its stem loses its shape, becomes soft, bends, sometimes begins to collapse under its own weight. It is treated only by the complete removal of the affected part, followed by an attempt to root.
Attention! The sap of the plant is poisonous! All work with the plant should be carried out with caution, with gloves, keep the flower out of the reach of children and pets.
To consolidate the information and get more tips on caring for the plant, you can watch a video on pachypodium.

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