On Fri, 04 Jun 2004 18:26:34 +0100, Chris Hogg wrote:

~On Fri, 4 Jun 2004 14:52:53 +0100, "Joanne"
~wrote:
~
~I've grown two Birds of Paradise from seeds. They are exactly one year old
~and are growing well indoors and producing new leaves. The plants are,
~however, quite root-bound, and I'm wondering if they should be potted up or
~do they prefer to be cramped?
~
~I would appreciate any advice on getting these plants to flower
~successfully.
~
~Many thanks.
~
~
~From seed, they take several years to reach flowering size, and while
~it's said that being pot bound encourages flowering, I would think
~that at this stage you need to keep potting them on until you get them
~into something like 8 or 12 inch pots.
~

I would search Google Groups on this one - it was the reason I found
urg in the first place and there isn't a lot of info out there on
them! We get a thread every few months... so does rec.gardens who tend
to get more response because they are more common elsewhere.

Consensus seems to be to pot on when the roots try to escape, up to
12-15" then let it get potbound. Hopefully it will flower. Note: they
often flower in winter!!!

Mine's just grown a huge leaf (way bigger than any previous) and lost
three smaller ones at the same time, and is coming up for 3 next
month. I don't expect it to flower for another couple of years at
least. I cheated a few days ago as Waitrose had 3 stems reduced to
affordable so I bought them :-) and am tempted to stick them in the
pot! :-)

One consolation is that once you've germinated one, it takes some
serious neglect to kill it

jane (back from travels)

--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

Please remove onmaps from replies, thanks!