When is the best time to repot a Pride of Barbados? Now when it's beginning to leaf out after its winter dormant period or in the winter when it is dormant?

Hi Chris, I just dug up a couple and potted them up and bumped my potted ones up to bigger pots and they are looking good
It should be fine to repot them as long as you don't change their growing conditions, like putting them in more sun

Thanks Jolana, how much sun do you keep yours in? I have my Pride of Barbados, my Bird of Paradise and my Mexican Bird of Paradise all getting pretty much full sun for now. Do I need to change that as summer comes in? The Pride of Barbados, which is all I had at the time last year, was in pretty much full sun the whole time.

What is the difference in your Bird of Paradise and the Mexican Bird of Paradise? I have the second one in a container, but it will live outside in my area. Both my grandmothers grew it. I had Pride of Barbados but tried it outside in the ground and it didn't come back after a winter. I'm just not sure what the other one is. Is it the same family?

Here's the Wikipedia link to the Mexican Bird of Paradise - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Here is a link to the Bird of Paradise and it mentions the Mexican Bird of Paradise as it's cousin - http://schillinghorticulture.c... There's a guy down the street a ways who has one planted out by his mailbox. I'm not sure which it is but it seems to be doing really well, produces a lot of flowers and seed pods. I need to ask him later on this season which it is and see if I can get some pods from him. This was the first year mine bloomed and produced a few seed pods.

I'll be curious when yours bloom. Check out the Caesalpinia entries in the ATP database. pulcherrima and gillieseii have common names used for them that are really similar. I'm wondering if your third plant may be a duplicate of one of the others. Or have you seen all three bloom? I know mine is C. gillieseii. When I got the C. pulcherrima it was actually sold as gillieseii. Even the label had a photo of gillieseii, but it was in bloom so I recognized it for what it really was. At some point, I'm going to acquire it again, I think.

Caesalpinia pulcherrima is usually more of a shrub and has red and orange blooms. The leaves are a little larger and deciduous , even here . The is a yellow also with even bigger leaves
Caesalpinia gilliesii has finer leaves and a different looking bloom, yellow with gorgeous red tendrils and evergreen here and as far north as Salado where I've seen it during a very cold winter and I see those as a tree form as mine is

Chris mine are always in full sun, even the ones in pots
Unless a seed pops somewhere in the shade. I usually dig those up and give them away 😊

I thought I had a photo of it in bloom somewhere from last year. The Mexican BOP and the BOP were just grown this past winter from seed. Here's the only photo I could find at the moment

Finally, had to look through photos on my computer, phone and tablet but I found the ones where it was blooming

Yep, looks like Caesalpinia pulcherrima
They are coming back fast

It's pretty scrawny right now Jolana, the plastic pot it's in is broken in several places and need replacing and one branch so far hasn't put any leaves out. But, it's early in the season yet. I believe the photos in my last post were from August of last year when it bloomed.

I was looking at the one in the blue pot. I have pots like that, when I pick them up, they crack like that,
I still think they look great for this time of the year

That was still early last year Jolana, I'll see if I can get a photo tomorrow in between rain storms, if we even get any.

Here's how the poor little thing looks now Jolana

Looks like it's just waking up after the winter doldrums . My gilliesii looked that way until fairly recently. Now it has buds. It badly needs to be either in the ground or up-sized to a larger container. It's still in the same one that it was in when I got it 3 yrs ago. Originally I meant for it to go in the ground, but where I want it is too far to give water easily. So I waited for better weather and discovered the grasshoppers would eat it. Not as bad as some plants, but they eat enough to remove some of the growth. Now I just think about it all and can't decide

You're probably right Donald, it just doesn't look as good as it did last year. I grew this from seed, I think it's either 3 or 4yrs old. The container for this one is in horrible shape, I'm fixing to throw out some of my Datura that are all scrawny and put reuse the pots for other plants. BTW - Are you getting any rain out of this system that's going on now?

Yes, I'm getting rain. So far since last evening I've had 3.25". It's raining again at the minute, but I'm not sure I'll get a lot more. The radar isn't showing that much. I just went walking down in the pasture to see the river. It's running nearly full, but there's not much indication there was a lot of run off on my place. The ground is seeping, though. That's very good. I always need the moisture, but don't like erosion.

The radar looks like we'll be getting quite a bit since whatever comes up dead center of the state usually gets us too. Not sure how much we've had so far but they're predicting heavy t-storms for us tonight.

I'm not complaining but if the rain stops I won't mind
How are the B's op doing?

Good morning Jolana, I had to go out and take some photos after I had to go get our dogs diabetic food. All of these you'll see were grown from seed. I've got 4 more Mexican BOP seeds waiting to germinate. Hopefully the sun will come out soon and warm things up a bit. I can't remember how old the last one is. It bloomed for the first time last year so at least 2yrs old. It needs transplanted to a better pot and better soil as soon as possible I know. I think there are a few dead branches on it also.