Mystery structure on brugmansia --- bloom?

If you fiddle with it enough, your going to end up knocking it off by mistake. lol

 

This is a great thread.

I've had a Brug for 3 years now and this year the leaves sort of crinkled and then finally grew properly, however no flowers. Now I have to admit, I haven't repotted it for 2 years and I never fertilized it this year. Is that the problem?

 

I blame the lack of blooms on my brug from lack of enough fertilizer. The small pot should be OK as constricting their roots seems to only limit their size, not blooms (based on a friend's brug performance). If you didn't fertilize at all, I would suspect that to be the problem. They also like tons of water.

 

Great...thanks for the quick reply. I'll put it inside and start fresh next year!

 

The size and overall heath of Brugmansia depends on a healthy root structure. Root bound plants eventually suffer, perhaps not immediately, but when the root system can't support healthy, structural & foliage growth.
The most vigorous and healthy plants have unresticted root run, in rich soil.

Cheers, LPN.

 

Emy --- really? You've been growing a brug for three years and no blooms? Wow --- I got a 10 inch cutting with one tiny leaf on it on Canada day of this year. I stuck it in a pot and lavished it with fertilizer and just last week re-potted it into a five gallon container. It branched into two and started making blooms three weeks ago. The blooms haven't quite opened yet but they will soon, I'm sure (my pod is 14cm now, not including stem).
I'm very surprised to hear that yours hasn't bloomed in three years. There must be something wrong with it. If mine will go from ten inch cutting to a lush, multi-branched, five foot high bloomer in under a 100 days and your hasn't bloomed in an entire three years --- something is amiss. How often do you feed it?
A noteworthy feature of brugs is how high a concentration of fertilizer you can give them without burning. I give mine a liter of warm water with 10mL of fertilizer every day or every other day and it just loves it. Any other plant would either "yellow-top" or go all soft and die from a concentration that's HALF of that! My point being, don't worry about over fertilizing it.
And the roots grow quickly, too. From that little ten inch twig that I got on Canada day, the root-ball has expanded to completely fill the whole pot --- when I lifted it out of the old pot by grabbing the stem and pulling, not one speck of dirt fell off of the root-ball, the entire pot had filled with a solid mass of root tendrils.

 

I can't belive that flower hasn't bloomed yet, I don't think your paying it enough attention. ( just kidding)

 

My 'Yellow' and 'Pink' still seem to be plugging along nicely while my variegated seems to have stalled somewhat. Perhaps the high overcast and 20C (68F) temps this afternoon will help it along.

Cheers, LPN.

 

Mine still hasn't opened.
:(
It's gotten bigger, but remains closed and mainly empty. It'll be any month, now.

 

Last nights wind blew over my Brugmansia sanguinea and broke one of the three leaders. It's having enough trouble producing blooms without this. Well, there's always next year.

Cheers, LPN.

 

I'm having similar problems Barrie, I lost four stems last week in the wind, of which one was a nice woody bit. Fortunately the remaining ones are the ones that are blooming. I'm surprised that it is bloomi ng at all, now that this part of the garden is in the shade. Brought the broken the broken stems to school, and made the kids study cuttings, and poisionous plants all in one go. I guess it wasn't a complete loss.

 

More bad news for the Brugmansias...Environment Canada is calling for minus 3 degrees overnight tonight. Batten down the hatches!

 

Yeah, I brought mine in. It STILL hasn't opened up yet although the pod is filling up and there's only a couple cm of empty space at the end now. I guess I'm not giving it enough attention.
:)
I might have to get artificial lights to make it bloom. After all this, if it falls off or whatever I'll be mildly disappointed disappointed.

 

That was hard frost last night for sure --- good thing mine is small enough to bring inside.
I noticed the very tip of the largest bloom-pod was turning an unhealthy looking brown so I removed it. There's only a centimeter and a half of empty space near the end of it and I guess it'll open as soon as that fills up entirely --- I hope it does anyway.
I noticed that a large, tree-size brug in a garden a block away from my place has turned a completely different color and the leaves and blossoms on it are all droopy --- I guess from the frost. Nice bright sunshine today, though. How's your's doing, Palmera? Did you bring it inside or did it get frosted?

 

We dropped to 0.5 celcius (31F) for an overnight low, cold enough to badly wilt my yellow and seriously damage the pink. Varigated & sanguinea are still fine, albeit damaged from being knocked over in their pots from the wind. They're under cover but still outside.
Here's yellow & pink after the chilly night.
Cheers, LPN.

 

My brug came inside the garage Sunday night so it didn't get frosted. But it isn't very bright in there so I'm afraid the blossom color will remain a mystery until next year...

 

Too bad about the weather. I thought for sure both yours and mine would have bloomed before this frosty weather set in. I brought mine inside and couldn't resist opening it up a bit to see how close it is to blooming and check the color --- it looks green. Is there such a thing as a green colored bloom --- probably not.

At the reduced light levels, although it probably will bloom, I bet it'll take forever to do it. It's by a window but at this time of year the sun is low on the horizon and behind trees and there's never any direct sunlight getting to it.

 

I noticed that with the recent last few nights of frost, Brugmansia holds up fine if under an overhead cover. My variegated Brug is exposed to both conditions as it's partly grown beyond the deck cover. That part got toasted and the nearby under-cover foliage is untouched, even with the -1.3C conditions one night.

Cheers, LPN.

 

The huge brug near my place got all chopped down to the bare essentials the day before yesterday -- tis nay more than a stubby, leafless twig but ready for next year. It was amazing how wilted and droopy all the blooms and foliage were after that single night of hard frost --- it looked like a deflated balloon or a plastic plant that had been too close to a bonfire.
I removed the outer coating on the largest pod because the tip had started to go mouldy and once I took the first part off, I thought what the heck and took all of it off. If I had to guess what color it'll be, I'd say yellow.
I changed the genre of music that it listens to from industrial techno stuff to alternative rock like Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine --- we'll see what impact this has on the growth rate.
:)

 

Once the plant has succumbed to a light or medium frost... without warm temps. it will not bloom with tropical abundance until next year. I still have hundreds of 10 - 15cm long pods , who knows, with the next warm spell coming next week they may
prove me wrong. Remember brug's once dormant, keep their soil medium on the dry side until Feb- March...

 

Mine is just a puppy. I started it from a ten inch cutting with one leaf on it in late June of this year --- so it's small enough to easily move around and hasn't been exposed to any frost at all. The growth rate has slowed considerably.
Will it still go dormant or not? None of the foliage has wilted at all.
I'm curious as to how much less feeding it should get.

 

If it is inside , it must be adapted to the lower humidity levels, therefore blooms could continue, I am no expert on Brugs. but keep it in a bright area, and continue with what you are doing, good luck.

 

Just checked all the Brugs I have. Anything outside with overhead cover is fine, and any of them exposed, are hard pressed to rebound and show frost damage. So they will take some cold but if frost is allowed to settle on their leaves, expect the worst.

Cheers, LPN.

 

Yes, frost has a dramatic effect on brugmansia foliage, doesn't it? The large brug nearby that got frosted looked like it was made out of plastic and had been too close to a bonfire and melted. The owner brutally pruned it to a fifth of it's blooming height and left only a couple little side-branches. I don't know if that's the right thing to do, but the root balls are in cylindrical containers four feet high/wide, and I guess as long as they grow back maybe that's the best you can do given that brugs evolved in a frost free, tropical environment.
I'll remember that about overhead covering.
I put mine in a room with flourescent lighting and I still give it warm root feedings but less frequently and at a lower nutrient concentration. None of the leaves has fallen off. I notice that when a brugmansia leaf is ready to come off the plant, it detach at the right place if you simply lift the end of the leaf so that the stem is perpendicular to the trunk. If you do this and it doesn't detach, then the plant doesn't want to lose it. My brug doesn't want to lose anything.

 

Many of the potted Brugmansia I have are much too big to move now. Very heavy and cumbersome. Smaller ones will be moved to my crawl space for winter.
Garden planted Brugmansia will over-winter like a returning perennial. They're late (late May - early June) to push new growth, and as such, get little help until then.
If I remember to assist them, maybe I'll get larger and more productive plants next year. There's just way too much to do and remember.
Cheers, LPN.