Adansonia digitata #1

[Kievnstavick]

Dedicating a thread to show progression of an African Boabab (Upside-down tree, Rat-tail tree) tree from collection to hopefully a show worthy tree in the far future. My goal with this thread is to catalog the journey of both this tree and myself as well as providing an example to new hobbyists like myself. The idea behind this is to provide an area where someone can quickly look through the years (decades) it took to get to the point that it is at currently. I will also be providing written information of the journey for those interesting in reading about the different stages.

Now, a question some may ask is why did I collect and start growing a Boabab in my climate? Well to be perfectly honest, it has always been one of the trees I have loved as far back as I can remember. Sadly, I do not know what captivated me initially nor did I ever see one in real life growing up. It just has always been sitting in the memory banks. When I decided on pursuing bonsai as a hobby, I just knew this was going to be one of the trees in my collection through thick and thing.

Without further ado, here is the collection process (my other boabab trees will not have this or the initial germination stage.)



I was brought to Hawaii for work and to kill some time after work I started really watching bonsai videos on YouTube. I stumbled across one of Nigel Saunders's videos of germinating his boabab seeds that a viewer sent in. In the video the viewer had shown himself collecting the fruit. I was able to locate the trees through the video. I grabbed fruits from a variety of trees to increase the genetic diversity of the seeds. Also pictured is a sausage fruit. I did not end up using it due to its toxicity and the hardness of the fruit itself. These were collected the 1st of December, 2021.



I captured this moment of cracking into the fruit itself. I utilized the pulp as a snack while I was working. The fruits easily split, but the hard part was separating the split section as the shell is fairly woody.



I got the seeds inspected at the USDA office at the airport before my flight home. If you collect seeds outside of your native area, please follow your importation laws as one person bringing an invasive pest can devastate the natural habitat.

 

[Kievnstavick]

The germination process was certainly a learning curve in of itself. I first followed some processes that seemed to work. I poured boiling water over the seeds sitting in a small amount of water (to lower some of the initial temperature shock) then added tap water (and hot water) until the temperature read 120° F. I then keep the water between 90°-115° F for 48 hours. The seeds did not seem to increase in size. I then proceeded to hand sand the seed until I broke through the coating. I resoaked them in 90° F water for another 24 hours. (Only use power tools with extreme care. My 2nd attempt at this overheated the seeds. I'll stick to hand sanding in the future.) The next time I do this, I'll just omit doing the presoaking step as I don't think it really did anything.



Pictured above shows the stages of the process. I planted the seeds on the 31st of December, 2021. (Left) The sanded seeds. The one showing white was sanded a bit too much. Light brown is the color you want to see. (Middle-Left) Showing the seeds after soaking. (Middle-Right) My first victim. I removed the seed coating. Looks like a little maggot. (Right) Showing all of the seeds after I removed what I could without much effort.


On the 4th of January, 2022 , I was getting impatient and I caved into my curiosity. I dug up on of my seeds and I was excited to see that it was doing stuff. I carefully replanted it. 5 days later, I was rewarded with some green leaves. You can see in the one pictured where I sanded the seed a bit too much.

 

[Kievnstavick]

In these photos, you can see the progression of growth over the next couple of months. I was quite interested in seeing it already growing mature leaves.

 

[Kievnstavick]

These images show the growth of the tree throughout the summer. The last image I had of it outside was from the 6th of September, 2022. I am not entirely sure why the leaves have brown tips. The only guesses I have are different light conditions and maybe some minor root rot. The tree seemed to be doing fine as is, so I just left it to continue growing.

 

[Kievnstavick]

These images show what it looked like on the 18th of October, 2022. I wanted to trial a repot of a healthy boabab into a larger pot (#1 to #2.5 nursery container). I changed the growing substrate from whatever weird mix I had to my bonsai substrate.


This image shows the tree a full month later on the 20th of November, 2022. It didn't miss a beat with the repot and it kept doing what it does best.

 

[LittleDingus]

Good luck with yours . They are fun to grow!

I've had 7 of the 8 know baobab species growing at once. They are quite fun!

You do need to remember they are succulent, not woody. When in active growth they can be watered pretty freely and grow like weeds! Your one year growth looks like they've been well watered

The "winter" dry spell is much tougher if you can keep temps high they might keep their leaves...if not, they will go dormant. Then zero water.

I had mine in Missouri. Several made it through the first winter...but it was rough. They got a dry rot...I didn't water them but some fungus species colonized them and lived off their stored moisture

Then we moved and the rest died I need to work out a better winter care method. I've read that the natives can toss them under the bed and forget about them...but that didn't work for me either

I still have seeds for all 8 species and plan to start again when it warms enough to germinate them...

 

[Kievnstavick]

Here is the tree a few days before it turns one year old (24th of December, 2022). I made the effort to acquire better pictures of my trees and show off all 4 sides of it. The tree has started branching quite a bit as well as having a side growing branch becoming the leader for whatever reason. It has filled out its pot quite nicely. It will probably be due for another repot next bonsai winter shuffle depending on how strongly it grows during the summer outside.

 

[Kievnstavick]

Good luck with yours . They are fun to grow!

I've had 7 of the 8 know baobab species growing at once. They are quite fun!

You do need to remember they are succulent, not woody. When in active growth they can be watered pretty freely and grow like weeds! Your one year growth looks like they've been well watered

The "winter" dry spell is much tougher if you can keep temps high they might keep their leaves...if not, they will go dormant. Then zero water.

I had mine in Missouri. Several made it through the first winter...but it was rough. They got a dry rot...I didn't water them but some fungus species colonized them and lived off their stored moisture

Then we moved and the rest died I need to work out a better winter care method. I've read that the natives can toss them under the bed and forget about them...but that didn't work for me either

I still have seeds for all 8 species and plan to start again when it warms enough to germinate them...

Thank you! Indeed. I brought mine in when it started getting cold as my research makes me think that they don't need a dormancy period (at least A. Digitata) as they grow fairly far north on Africa up into the sub-tropical zones. As I have an indoor growing set-up, I can keep it in full leaf. I read through your thread awhile ago during my research binge on this species. One of mine went through a summer dormancy due to a repot to address root rot (to be posted later on). I have about 60 more seeds to germinate once I expand my indoor growing set-up (and thus the cycle continues to expand).

 

[LittleDingus]

There's one (digitata) at the St Louis batonical gardens in the "Climatron" that is in leaf year round as far as I am aware. But it's pretty warm in there

Mine would start to go dormant below about 65F and I don't keep my house much warmer than that in the winter.

They are succulents...well, scientific consensus is a definite maybe that they are succulents They aren't woody and they do act more like a succulent. They are opertunistic: grow when they can...stop and protect themselve's when they can't.

I have a thread on portalacaria (another succulent) where I took a two leaflet cutting to a plant about 12" tall with multiple branches in 1 year. Succulents can grow quite wild when watered above "safe" levels WHILE THEY ARE ACTIVELY GROWING. They are very susceptible to overwatering any other time.

Yours looks great! I doubt I'll be able to manage anything near that here in Chicago The nights are too cool and the season otherwise too short. So, I'll be watching yours and dreaming

 

[Kievnstavick]

Yeah, from my research so long as it is warm enough and wet enough to not trigger dormancy, then they should be fine.

I brought mine inside after my night time tempatures got to less then 50 degrees at night.

Thanks again. We'll see what the future holds on this species. I'm already in love with them as they are. So the love can only grow stronger when they actually turn into bonsai.

 

[Kievnstavick]

The Spring Formal pictures have arrived.

A few days before this picture, I gave the tree a little hair cut to allow for better airflow and to reduce crowding. I'll be able to leave this guy outside full time in a few days.

 

[hemmy]

The Spring Formal pictures have arrived.

Nice! When just has hints of green buds, probably another month before it will be leafing out and ready for water.

 

[Kievnstavick]

After our cold end of spring, the tree lost a few leaves and decent amount of them had some cold damage. The remaining leaf density was still a little thick, so I went in an removed the damaged leaves and any remaining strongly overlapping leaves. I also went a little heavier with the pruning on the "leader" since it was so much thicker then the others. The goal is to slow it down a bit to let the other branches catch up. I am also hoping for some back budding in order to gain more options/branch density for the future. This will also be a personal test to see how defoliation works on this tree.

Pre-cleaning


Post Cleaning

 

[nn843]

Can we get some updates?

 

[Kievnstavick]

Ask and you shall receive. Well mostly it was enough to get my butt in gear and get all the pictures off of my camera, sort them, and do some quick edits. I can't believe it has been a year since I updated this page.

Anyways without further ado, here is how Baobab #1 is fairing 2 years in.

This was taken on 01OCT23, fairly soon after I had finished putting together my "main" grow tent, The tree had recovered quite nicely from the defoliation.



On 09OCT23, I decided to finally repot this guy once I was confident that the tree was on the upswing and acclimated to the new grow tent environment.

Notice how much the foliage had change in just those 8 days. I was surprised to still see "mature" leaves sprouting as I figured the defoliation would have triggered juvenile foliage to sprout first. Also note that the storage root had expanded from an odd potato shape to more of a chubby claw. In hindsight, it probably could have gone another year without repotting in the #2.5 nursery can.



Now we see how it is today. A little worse for wear. Most of the die back occurred from a cold start to spring. I figured it could handle it....apparently not as well as I hoped. I'll take this as a lesson and leave my tropicals in for a longer period of time. This baobab finally started to wake up from its spring dormancy sometime last week. Our outside highs have been in the high 80s and low 90s. Take note that it has extensive back budding with high concentrations near the knuckles/die back.



Here it is after cleaning up the die back and re-wounding some chops to test its ability to heal over. It was tricky trying to clean up some of the areas while avoiding all of the buds, but it probably would have been a lot more difficult once I let them expand.

 

[Kievnstavick]

I'll update my other baobab threads once I get some sleep as I need to take take some current pictures of them. They faired a lot better as I kept them in the grow tent until a few weeks ago. The outside was cooler then the grow tent with the nightly lows only dropping the the mid-50s.