Hey all, I am brand new on this site, and I was wondering if there were any other Pachypodium growers/hobbyists here. I went to school for horticulture and focused on caudicforms alot. Ive been growing pachyies and various other cauidiciforms for a decade now with great success. Anyways hope to hear back from some of y'all. Thanks!!

I have about a dozen Pachypodiums around here... most in a resting state at the moment.

Buds n blooms from the database...



More info about the genus (and lots more pictures)...

The Pachypodiums Database

It would be fun to see pictures of your plants.

Baja_Costero said:

I have about a dozen Pachypodiums around here... most in a resting state at the moment.

Buds n blooms from the database...

• Pachypodium (Pachypodium sofiense)
• Uploaded by Baja_Costero

• Madagascar Palm (Pachypodium lamerei)
• Uploaded by Baja_Costero

• Madagascar Palm (Pachypodium lamerei)
• Uploaded by Baja_Costero

More info about the genus (and lots more pictures)...

The Pachypodiums Database

It would be fun to see pictures of your plants.

Thanks for your reply! I have about 15 at home with me right now and another 15 in my school's greenhouse I will post pictures of them on here shortly!

I will note i'm jealous of you getting to see your P. lamerei's bloom, mine have never bloomed and are around 8 yrs old. Although I think one of my P. rosulatum subsp. gracilius is about to bloom for me! very exciting! And mine are in the same boat as you, most are sleeping at the moment, but my old P. saundersii var. compacta is waking up unexpectedly, and I suspect my largest straight, P. saundersii is about to wake up, one P. lamerei is sleeping and one is not, odd.

Yes, photos please!

The leafier ones around here at the moment (today's photos)...



This one stays leafy year round



Three dormant plants. Only the first two get overhead protection from our winter rains.



And finally my crests are just starting to wake up

I grow pachypodiums...but i wouldnt say im pachypodium only(only got 2).
My other caudiciforms/pachycauls are adeniums, a jatropha podagarica and ceropegia woodii(if you can call it that)..
Maybe that medusoid euphorbia as well...

Here's some of my Pachypodiums that I have all grown from seed over the last 8-12 years. I will try not include multiples of the the same species as I have a few of each.

First is P. densiflorum var. brevicaulx


P. cactipes




Next up is my only remaining two P. rosulatum subsp. gracilius



Here's my favorite P. saundersii! I have two that are the same age but this individual packs on mass in the caudex like his life depends on it. Grows so fast it feels like I'm having to repot it far far more frequently than any other pachy I have. But he's awesome.




Next is P. eburneum, at least that's what it's bloom leads me to believe this year. The next one I'll post will my last be P. cf. eburneum but I'm waiting on a bloom to prove it.




Presumed cf. eburneum




P. saundersii var. compacta. Not sure if they remain true to type with this var. from seed. But that's what I bought the seeds as. Could just be P. saundersii but it has never looked like any of my other straight saundersii that grew from seed. It developed this rot in the side of its caudex from being in two small of a pot for too long, I swore I wawa
Going to loose it, but I cleaned it out and it's been a little over a year since then and it's remained alive.



Next is my P. densiflorum that resembles IMO kinda resembles P. horombense. I was lead to believe maybe the seeds came in labeled wrong. This guy is shockingly old for its size, around 7yrs old. Waiting for it to bloom still.



Here's my three P. lamerei



I think that's it for the Pachyies I have at home, I might be forgetting a few, my P. brevicaule stays in the greenhouse, I don't have any pictures of it but I will try and get one.

Baja_Costero said:Yes, photos please!

The leafier ones around here at the moment (today's photos)...



This one stays leafy year round



Three dormant plants. Only the first two get overhead protection from our winter rains.



And finally my crests are just starting to wake up

What is the species in the 7th photo in the fourth set of photos?

Ive also got a few euphorbia and adenium, I grew from seed as well, in my house with me.

Jatropha in bloom

before buying



Adenium(old photo)-large one

Young adenium(had 3 , gave one away)

Pachypodium


an old photo with the other (deformed) pachypodium in the background(new growth is healthy btw)





ceropegia woodii, with caudex/tubers

Oh, i also have nolina/beaucarnea..but ...eh.. its ..boring
(center, lit)

On a side note, an update for the a.vera- it got twice as large...
Its already almost outgrown the pot...

@ skopjecollection here's my adeniums.


A. obesum






A. arabicum





A. obesum subsp. somalense

Very nice plants, well maintained..

Smotzer said:What is the species in the 7th photo in the fourth set of photos?

The 7th photo is an unknown Madagascar plant with yellow flowers.

I am impressed by the variety of plants you have, and they look really well cared for. It's pretty crazy that damaged saundersii is still alive. Those plants didn't do well here (though they lasted several years) because our climate is so cool and moist.

What kind of light are all those Pachypodiums getting? I'm guessing most come in for the winter and go outside for the summer.

Baja_Costero said:

The 7th photo is an unknown Madagascar plant with yellow flowers.

I am impressed by the variety of plants you have, and they look really well cared for. It's pretty crazy that damaged saundersii is still alive. Those plants didn't do well here (though they lasted several years) because our climate is so cool and moist.

What kind of light are all those Pachypodiums getting? I'm guessing most come in for the winter and go outside for the summer.

That plant looks like a pachy, if you have a photo of it's flower I might be able to track down a ID on it if it's from Madagascar.

Thank you very much, it's been a pleasure keeping these. I'd love to one day have at least one of each species in the whole genus. Thank you for that compliment, I try and take care of them pretty well, I think it has a lot to do with the type of "soil" I grow them in.

And yeah I was totally shocked that it made it! It's been at least a full year since I noticed the rot!

And as far as environment goes most of them have lived their entire lives year round inside of a greenhouse in New Jersey. I had a desert house set up with it's own automated drip line watering system. So I never took them out in the summers, I figured if they were happy I was happy and they just lived there. I actually wish they got a little more light than they do, noticed some etiolation the last years as a tree outside the greenhouse got overgrown.

Congratulations on some really nice looking greenhouse plants. There must not be a lot of other people with these plants in New Jersey, let alone folks who have grown them from seed.

Hopefully the mystery Pachypodium here flowers this spring so I can take decent pictures. Theoretically I have some in the archives, but they're not handy at the moment.

Smotzer said:I think it has a lot to do with the type of "soil" I grow them in.

Do tell!

Baja_Costero said:Congratulations on some really nice looking greenhouse plants. There must not be a lot of other people with these plants in New Jersey, let alone folks who have grown them from seed.

Yeah I don't know if anyone else near me! But I'm about to move all them to Texas! Might find some people down there!

So I use a mix mostly comprised of red lava rock. Maybe 80% and 20% peat/perl mix. 90/10-95/5 for P. brevicaule.
I was a bonsai apprentice in PA for 5 yrs and grew in pure stone, so I lean that way with with these caudiciforms too. It's worked extremely well for me. You have to Water a little more frequently with this mix of mine but root rot problems never occur now, I feel like that's the biggest killers of pachyies is root rot. They get small amounts of water more frequently, but the soil never gets too wet and stays wet for any length of time. This has led to a better increase in growth and development of caudices.

You mentioned you had a problem with P. saundersii being too wet in your area. You might want to try switching to a mostly porous rock mix.

The problem here is the lack of warmth during summer, more than anything. Our coolness shortens and/or delays the growing season for both Pachypodiums and Adenium. Some years the smaller plants barely wake up. I've tried some that you have and they didn't do well. Our average daily high temperature from July through September is 72°, our annual high temp about 90°. We get near daily fog throughout early summer. It's an issue for the Pachypodiums.

I rely on a mix of 50% pumice which has served me well for a pretty good variety of caudiciforms. The Pachypodiums that do well here are lamerei, geayi, namaquanum, bispinosum, succulentum, sofiense, brevicaule (grafted), and that mystery plant I have been calling rosulatum. I keep my plants pretty root bound and they all get direct sun daily year round. Of the ones I grew from seed, there was a dramatic difference between lamerei and brevicaule in terms of the baby plants' tolerance for the soil drying out.

I suppose using more pumice in the mix could be a solution for the plants which have done poorly here, but I sense the problem lies elsewhere, and after that set of failures I decided to focus on plants which do better given the limitations.

Your temps could be an issue, but humidity also sounds like more of an issue, with regards to the fog, with pachyies. Do you also get a lot of rain?

In the greenhouse I had them originally set up with overhead misters, and I lost the most due to humidity being too high in the house. Never really lost any due to low temps before.
When I switched to drip watering or hand watering they became much healthier and happier. I know this might not be a possibility for you, but just an observation about leaves/caudices being wet and too much humidity for them.

I think altering your mix could be a solution, to some species that like very fast draining soils. Do you prewash your pumice? And what is the size of the pieces of pumice? With my stone soil with pachyies and other caudiciforms I prewash the stone cause it removes a lot of fine particles that get stuck in the soil, when not washed can prevent as fast drainage.

Also can you explain what you mean by your observations from growing from seed with brevicaule and lamerei? Are you comparing these two to each other with drought tolerance? Or too individuals not from seed. Cause those two species IME have totally different water needs and drought tolerances, my brevicaule only gets watered by hand, and nowhere near as often as lamerei which gets watered twice a week. And I've only ever grown from seed so I'd love to hear what you observed.

Also I forgot to add my Euphorbia escalenta that took my 3 attempts to get seeds to germinate and not fall victim to damping off. Out of all the genera of cacti/succulent/ caudiciforms seeds I've attempted to grow Euphorbias seem to be the trickiest and most fragile. On the final attempt I had to sterilize the soil and apply a low dose of fungicide, cause the seeds can't dry out and the soil conditions to achieve that are very favorable to fungi.
Been waiting for it to develop an extensive amount of new tendril heads, but I never seems that interested in putting out much new growth, except this last year when it put of a few new ones. Learned that it responds well to more than adequate watering with regular fertilization during the growing season