Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Plumeria Winter

There are a lot of sites discouraging keeping Frangipani, or Plumeria plants in the house.  They usually state how, even though it's a lower toxicity than its relatives, it's related to many much more poisonous plants and they wouldn't risk it being in the same area just in case.

This seems a bit of a stretch since tomatoes and deadly nightshade are also in the same group but no one is worried when they eat a salad. 

I'm more worried for the plant.  This is our plumeria plant after our cat decided that its leaves were perfect toys to bat around.  It had one more leaf but it was chewed on so much that it fell off.  This half leaf is all that's currently left but it being winter I half expected it to be losing leaves anyway.

As you can see from the stem though it had a nice summer even though I can attest that it only had a short summer at that.  I planted it a bit late in the season.

He currently lives at the office with a couple of the cacao trees that I have kept alive for some time now.  I will keep him here until the threat of frost is gone and I can put him back outside in the backyard where it seems to thrive.  In the mean time he gets to hang out here.

This specific plumeria was brought back from Hawaii when my wife and some friends went to visit for a couple weeks.  Originally it was supposed to be for one of their moms but it was left at our house for so long that I decided it needed planting and was told to just keep it.  The passionfruit seeds on the other hand never did sprout.  Not sure what's up there.

The loss of all of its leaves is not a bad sign.  In this area it will overwinter this way and keep just fine until spring when it will leaf back out and hopefully double or more in size.  Some other friends of ours had a couple dozen of these which they would put in the garage every year.  Sometimes they would lose one but usually they all came back bigger than ever.