Narelle's Frangipani Diary

From planting to flowering

My frangipani cuttings:: 2 x 'White Star'; 1 x 'Pink Discrete'

Why frangipani?

Quite simply, they're my favourite flower. They smell wonderful, they're beautiful to look at and they remind me of home and warm summer days spent laying on sandy beaches.

I wanted a bouquet of frangipani flowers for my wedding in July 2005, but sadly they could not be found in France and most of the florists that we spoke to had never heard of them.

Not content with not being able to find something that I desperately love, I searched the Internet for answers and discovered Baobabs.com, a company based on the Isle of Reunion, who sell cuttings and seeds of frangipani over the Internet and post them to you.

Delighted with my find, I hinted to Yves that this would make me the happiest woman in the world. Several months later, I got them as a combined wedding/birthday present -- complete with my choice of ceramic pots. (Of course, I was also happy that we got married.)

Planting the frangipani

I planted the frangipani cuttings on September 18th, just a few days before Autumn officially started. I had three large ceramic pots, one for each cutting, which I first lined with aeration balls made of volcanic rock and then I filled them with a special soil composition especially for planting cuttings. The soil is a mixture of sand, soil and perlite which are all very good for frangipani trees.

Next, I stuck the cuttings in, inserting them about 2 inches deep into the soil mixture. I then covered the pots with more aeration balls and proceeded to drench them with water. Once the water stopped flowing out of the pots, I placed them inside on a bench against a glass window which gets a lot of direct sunlight.

The room where I keep the frangipani trees is our temporary loungeroom and we keep the room heated to a minimum of 22c. That's like winter for the frangipani, so we weren't expecting them to grow for a few months, until we could put them outside in the hot Toulousian summer.

Considering this, and knowing that you're not meant to water frangipani in winter, we just left them sit there, soaking up the sunshine from the comforts of our loungeroom and got on with our lives.

Amazingly, not even one month later and not having had a drop of water, the Pink Discrete frangipani started to show signs of life! At first it looked like an alien being, but just 1 week later it sprouted its first almost-leaves. Then, a short while later one of the White Star frangipani trees started to do the same thing — how exciting! The other White Star remained asleep and eventually we discovered that it was dead when I touched the branch and it pretty much dissolved in my hands. I wonder what happened to it...?

October 27th, Update

Just over one month and a week after planting the frangipani cuttings, the Pink Discrete cutting started to resemble a real tree! I've been giving it about half a cup of water every 2 weeks and it gets full sunlight from behind the windows in our loungeroom.

One of the White Star cuttings is now at the stage that the Pink Discrete was at almost three weeks ago. Yippee!