This is bittersweet! My hand pollinations have a lot of success bay at least coaxing a desert rose to bear seedpods. However we are now approaching the cooler weather and I expect these to shrivel and drop off Just like when the temps dropped last month, smaller and bigger sized seedpods dropped off.
Desert Christmas

Cherish Love

Harry Potter

Shocking Pink

Red Dragon

Murky said: You'll have to change your name to GiGiBee!

Good one

GigiPlumeria said: This is bittersweet! My hand pollinations have a lot of success bay at least coaxing a desert rose to bear seedpods. However we are now approaching the cooler weather and I expect these to shrivel and drop off Just like when the temps dropped last month, smaller and bigger sized seedpods dropped off.
Desert Christmas

• Adenium (Adenium obesum 'Desert Christmas')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

Cherish Love

• Desert Rose (Adenium obesum 'Cherish Love')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

Harry Potter

• Desert Rose (Adenium obesum 'Harry Potter')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

Shocking Pink

Red Dragon

• Desert Rose (Adenium obesum 'Joker')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

• Desert Rose (Adenium 'Red Dragon')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

It won't help if you move them indoors ?

Aashna said: It won't help if you move them indoors ?

That's where hubby draws the line. No outdoor plants indoors. I have a handful of houseplants but I did bring tiny seedlings.

Chickie and a smaller unnamed seedlings seedpods ripened and they were empty! I waited 75 days for an empty seedpods.

I did get a few seeds on my small desert rose (unnamed grafted) and there were only 10 but surprisingly bigger than the rest.

MD Addie seeds as usual ripened and mostly empty, but I think it is expected as it is I think a true dwarf. I will try to cross its blooms next year. I have 3 survivors out of the 100s seeds I sowed earlier this year.

Same with my hubby as well. I too have couple of plants inside but that's all. Brought outdoors inside only because of cyclone for a couple of days . He says you think too much about plants . Neighbours plants keep lying in the balcony even during cyclone
I didn't got much blooms this year. The one which used to rain flowers , it's pot broke and have to repot it. Did hard pruning as roots were coming out of the drainage hole. May be that is the reason.

Aashna said: Same with my hubby as well. I too have couple of plants inside but that's all. Brought outdoors inside only because of cyclone for a couple of days . He says you think too much about plants . Neighbours plants keep lying in the balcony even during cyclone
I didn't got much blooms this year. The one which used to rain flowers , it's pot broke and have to repot it. Did hard pruning as roots were coming out of the drainage hole. May be that is the reason.

Oh yeah hard pruning of roots will make it bloom less I have just been lifting mine without root pruning. I plan to do some of my root pruning early in the season next year.

Sad as predicted Cherish Love second attempt of seedpods turned brown.



It is now I full dormancy with no leaves and got wet, I will need to unpot tomorrow to prevent root rot.

And empty seedpod, not sure where the seeds went.

Good news and bad news as I am checking on the status of my seedpods.

Bad news on Black Romance Seedpods (4 prong) show signs of yellowing, if these ripens too early, that means seedpod would either be empty or seeds would not be viable:





Just like this, I opened it and the seedpod was black and the seeds of my beautiful no ID purplish pink blooms, are equally discolored. I will sow these but I don't expect these to germinate, the result of winter carnage.



Good news: Double Moon seedpods seems to be okay and growing, keeping my fingers crossed these can survive 2 more months of winter!

GigiPlumeria said: This same pollens

Look what I found cleaning the camping tent, exploding Seedpods

Fineline's pod parent must be an arabicum, the seeds are big. The seedpod is big (compared to others) but there were only 10 huge seeds:

I've tried several times to hand pollinate this but failed. Finally, it looks like this will develop into seedpods:

One of these blooms, photo taken 12-26-2022:

GigiPlumeria said: Good news and bad news as I am checking on the status of my seedpods.

Bad news on Black Romance Seedpods (4 prong) show signs of yellowing, if these ripens too early, that means seedpod would either be empty or seeds would not be viable:

• Adenium (Adenium obesum 'Black Romance')
• Uploaded by GigiAdeniumPlumeria

Lost the other pods but there is one left not sure if it will have viable seeds.

I love taking photos of waiting them to open than I have to pick them off while green.

Tried and spoiled 2 flowers now scared to experiment

Aashna said: Tried and spoiled 2 flowers now scared to experiment

Oh sorry to hear that. I felt the same way the first time I tried. Wait when you have more blooms so you can sacrifice 1 or 2 blooms for hand pollination. I don't tear off the flowers I just collect the pollen and put it back inside.

GigiPlumeria said: Oh sorry to hear that. I felt the same way the first time I tried. Wait when you have more blooms so you can sacrifice 1 or 2 blooms for hand pollination. I don't tear off the flowers I just collect the pollen and put it back inside.

How do you do that without tearing the flower

Since I know where the pollen is located, I just use a toothpick to collect it without tearing the flower. (Slide the toothpick to the side to collect pollen and transfer to another flower or push the pollen in gently with a toothpick). This is Wildbloomer's illustration of what the pollen looks like:


And this is the illustration that help me where to put the pollens back in, without tearing the petals:


Where it states "place pollens here" those are like "slits" where you can place the pollens and brush/spread the pollens upwards using the toothpick following the directions of the arrows.

GigiPlumeria said: Since I know where the pollen is located, I just use a toothpick to collect it without tearing the flower. (Slide the toothpick to the side to collect pollen and transfer to another flower or push the pollen in gently with a toothpick). This is Wildbloomer's illustration of what the pollen looks like:


And this is the illustration that help me where to put the pollens back in, without tearing the petals:


Where it states "place pollens here" those are like "slits" where you can place the pollens and brush/spread the pollens upwards using the toothpick following the directions of the arrows.

Thanks a lot. So you slide the toothpick from the top of the flower ? At first i thought you tear it from the tube side. Since you wrote slide so want to know this .

Aashna said: Thanks a lot. So you slide the toothpick from the top of the flower ? At first i thought you year it from the tube side. Since you wrote slide so want to know this .

Yes, or you can start from the bottom with toothpick full of pollens and insert the pollens into the slit and sliding them upwards. Similar to the you tube videos you see but without tearing up the blooms. After all, bees don't own knives to tear up blooms.