I wanted to give an update on the Desert Rose that i started this thread about,pictures of it are on the first page of the thread.It's cauldex has completely hardened back up.It's leaves are growing bigger and it has tons of new roots.

I purchased another one and of course when i got it home it had finished blooming in the store but they were asking such a high price they kept them almost 2 months,then marked them half off.When i got it home it dropped a lot of leaves,i changed potting medium & fed it.All the limbs have new leaves growing. This plants leaves look completely different then my first plant.Are they a different variety? Can anyone tell my what variety they are.I can only find some pic's of the first plants leaves but the whole plant is on the first page of the thread.

leaves on first plant

my new plant

are there different varieties of desert rose or just the different blooms are the only way you can tell?

Great success story on your ailing plant

Yes, there are many different Adeniums, and so the variety in the leaves is normal. Many that are for sale in the Big Box stores are hybrids so it is usually not too easy to give you an exact name.

Adeniums that have narrow leaves need to be kept rather dry.

Some naturally grow like small trees. Some are squat and have very large caudexes.

Most that you find for sale in the USA are 'Adenium obseum', which grow naturally along the middle of Africa, between the Sahara and the Congo. Arabicum come from Arabia. There are others, in South Africa (A. multiflorum), an island named Socotra (A. socotranum). I'd have to go find a map to list the others.

Glad the caudex hardened back up Joe. The leaves look healthy... great job nursing it back.



RobertB

It's been awhile since i started this thread and asked for yall's help.I want to say thank you and show you the plant i have thanks to everyone who added any advice because even the smallest advice taught me something about this plant.
I started this thread in may and this picture was taken about a month ago and the plant looks even better now !

HERE'S MY ADENIUM NOW!!!

Looking good

Hooray! Gorgeous green leaves growing!

Melissa can you tell me why the leaves on some of my plants are curling up, they are very green, been watering never seen this befor.

Hmm, I'm here just for a few minutes---

Can you post a photo? My plant's leaves are all different sorts of shapes!

Oboy, I have been invaded by Crazy Ants. Looking around the internet for a way to repel them, I think I'm doomed.

make a batch of boric acid, sugar and water. Not too strong, here's the formula I have.

1 tsp boric acid
6 tbsp sugar
2 cups water

put this mixture in their path. They should swarm it, you don't want them to die on the bait as you want them to carry it home to the nest. It might take a day or so but they should slowly stop coming to the bait. You can put some cotton balls in something small like an old plastic film canister, punch holes in the bottom for the ants to get in and refill it when it gets dry.

Good luck,

Hi all, Doris it could be to much nitrogen from fertilizing or salt build up in the soil, also could be meally bugs,check for bugs, give them a good amount of water from time to time just to take out some off the salt or nitrogen build up in the soil.
hey Melissa you can also try cinnomon powder for the crazy ants also, they don't like cinnomon for som reason I don't know, I put cinnomon sticks in my suger bowl a they leave the whole area of the kichen and you know they like suger. I learned this from a man were I used to work at, he had a suger bowl with cinnomon sticks in it, I ask him why and he responded, do you see any crazy ants arround, I said no, he replyed, thats why. after that I tryed it at home and it worked better than I would think it would. just try both to see wich works better for you, I'm going to try Jonna batch to see if it work on other types of ants as well as othere bugs, thanks Jonna for the recepie.

Your Friend Wilfred

For me the hardest part about using the boric acid is not letting myself hit them with the Raid while they are swarming the bait. I can't stand ants, and seeing that many of them just makes me homicidal.

I did try cinnamon powder Wilfred, I sprinkled it around the edges of a shelf I feed the cats on. Ants love cat and dog food it seems and there are an endless supply of ant colonies around here, I don't think i could ever kill all of them. Anyway, it worked pretty well as long as the cats didn't track it away. In fact, I haven't seen any ants on the cat shelf for a while now. I hope I didn't just jinx myself.

Jonna same with me i CAN NOT kill all the ants here i think there must be 100 different kinds and with open field behind me unless i dump tons of chemicals i have ants!! If you have never been bitten by red ants we have here you are lucky i have 10-20 bites on legs and feet most the time working outside

Wilfred they were in a downpour a few days ago, and i have not used fert. since it has been so hot and dry, but have watered more often, there are two plants with leaves like this, I will get a picture today

I have a 4 year old grandson that came to me saying "bugs,bugs there's bugs every where" of course i went to investigate!! The ants were just every where and i found myself trying to find a line of ants to follow back to a mound but i couldn't find one,After a lot of walking around and trying to figure out what they were doing just walking around and not in a 'single file line as usual,I decided they must be from many mounds.

We have had summer down pours almost every afternoon for 2 weeks.This amount of rain has caused the earth worms to come to the top of the ground.The ants where cleaning up my driveway,which was nice of them as far as ants go,but they have a problem sharing territory nicely.So we have to get out the big guns.When i started looking for any other food source's in the driveway where my grandson likes to play in the sand.I also noticed because of the winds that come with the storms there was a lot of green leaves on the ground which evidently is also a food source.

I removed the food source's and found small holes that the ants were coming from 'not mounds' but long lines of holes along roots.So removing the food source and raking the sand in my driveway.Has helped some at least they're not everywhere that Aiden wants to play in the sand.

Now i have big piles of ants and not long rows of ant condo's,they moved back into their mansions. but i will not give up the fight because if you do they will evict you out of your house and move in.

Jonna,If i don't joke about it i will be in your boat with you "homicidal" i hate them and i have a reaction to their bite if more than a couple get me, so i really hate them.

My hubby has found an insecticide that you can put on the mounds that works better than any other product we have tried,it's granules.We have 2 grandboys walking and big enough to go outside and when they want to go try stopping them
We try extra hard to get rid of them just as i think anyone with small kids would.The granules i will get th name of what the hubby uses.Some die,some move.

Just want to do a Dance on top of the rascals. Kick the hills too....

We have dozens of different varieties and sizes of ants here, unending. There are the small red ones that bite, I react to their bites too and get a huge welt that itches for about 3 days. The little snots fall into the pool on branches and leaves from the neighbors tree and then when I'm swimming they crawl up on me thus saving them from drowning except instead of being grateful they crawl into my suit and bite me!!

This time of year during the heavy rains, their nests outside get flooded and they come out looking for another home. This is the time when they are the most problem in the house. We live in a very old stone house and they love the wiring channels, they even eat the insulation on the wires. Needless to say this is not good even beside the horror of them pouring out of a light plug. So, the exterminator has to come at least every 2 months to spray and put powder behind all the outlets. It's not fun for me as I have to gather up all the animals and worry about the fish and the ponds. He tells me that what he uses is safe for my cats and dogs but...

Then there are the leafcutter ants. They are various sizes, they have warriors, workers, and little guards that ride on the workers heads. They can completely remove the leaves from a mid sized citrus tree in one night. I once caught them using the water lily pads to get to the middle of the pond and then cutting and hauling away all of the pads back to the edge, they are not dumb. I was really angry with the caterpillars a week or so ago thinking they were what had eaten much of my passionfruit vine. That night I discovered it was the leafcutters. We followed their trail back across the rooftops for 3 houses before giving up. I live in a city and the houses all butt against each other on the street, I have a garden on the roof and they had found it. Luckily there is a bait that they love and carry it home and it kills the fungus they grow and eat so that colony dies. Then you just wait for the next colony to find you.

Oh, did I mention that in the spring there is a huge ant that flies? I guess it is a mating procedure but they are huge and there are millions of them that fly and then drop their wings and crawl around. They are as big as a horsefly. This flying lasts 3 or 4 days and then they are mostly gone leaving behind a bazillion wings that blow in drifts. Where did they go? I don't know but it can't be good. I spend those days stomping around my patios trying to squash the ones that are crawling.

Did I mention that I hate ants?

Jonna, they could make a whole movie out of what you just wrote 'The Revenge of the Leafcutters' would be a great title I think!
But I agree it is not funny...

Whee, I started something!

Crazy ants come in such hoards that until there are HUNDERDS OF BILLIONS of them, the professional Orkin exterminator guy told me, that they just rush helter skelter. Once the critical population density has been reached, again, HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS, then they form RIVERS of Crazy Ants, a half an inch wide, running BOTH ways, 24 hours, day and night. Unless you have seen them, you think I am the crazy one!

Yes, my kitchen is brown with cinnamon, and smells like the morning at the bakery. I have emptied a one pound can of cinamon, no joke, and there are still ants rushng around the floor .

I have a friend that deals in essential oils, and am going to order a quart of several types of mint, and more cinnamon.

crazy ants

crazy ants

crazy ants

I went to my Tuesday effort volunteering at the Botanical Gardens and found that some IDIOT that works there had sold my favorite Adenium, a red red red, ten year old, three foot tall "Miss Thailand" for twenty dollars. I was kind of a grouch for the rest of the day. Just the blinking pot it was in was worth $30. GRRRR I was going to do grafting from that plant. I almost quit.

Poor photo, as usual, much redder than this.
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