By far one of the best caudiciform species is our old friend Moringa oleifera. Remember that this species is famous for growing into a 6-8 meter tall tree in a year. If you give it just a little too much water, it will shoot for the sky and you will lose the charming caudiciform shape. Keep them dry, though, and you will be rewarded with almost comical, often almost perfectly shperical fat tubers. Most oleiferas will do this-- the photo below includes street tree M. oleifera from India, from Madagascar, and the cultivar PKM. That M. oleifera is so easy to come by inexpensively, along with its tendency to form wonderful caudiciforms, leads several unscrupulous nurserymen to sell hard-grown oleifera seedlings posing as the rare northeast Africa dwarf species such as M. borziana or M. rivae. These are to my knowledge not in the nursery trade and probably represent M. oleifera. If you have doubts, send me photos and I can try to ID your plants.
When not being used for food, oil, forage, medicine, water purification, fiber, or biofuels, moringas are often used as ornamentals. I will look at outdoor uses in another post. This post will look at small moringas as ornamentals in pots grown by people who like to look at tubers, roots, and other sculptural dryland plants. Dryland plants that grow with exposed tubers, or that can be grown with exposed tubers, are often known as caudiciforms or caudex plants, and fat, water-storing trees are known as pachycaul trees. They are both esteemed ornamentals. The most recent shipment of my moringa collections from Africa, Asia, and Madagascar just arrived from Missouri, where they have been under expert care for more than ten years. They will soon be planted out here at the collection and grow into trees or shrubs, and lose some of the charm that they now have. So it's a good time to take a snapshot of what they look like now to show what moringas look like when grown very "hard," that is, with very little water. You will never kill a moringa for lack of water. Keep them dry, only let them grow a few weeks a year, and you will be rewarded with a very fat-based, compact caudiciform. Most of the plants shown below are 10 years old from seed. By far one of the best caudiciform species is our old friend Moringa oleifera. Remember that this species is famous for growing into a 6-8 meter tall tree in a year. If you give it just a little too much water, it will shoot for the sky and you will lose the charming caudiciform shape. Keep them dry, though, and you will be rewarded with almost comical, often almost perfectly shperical fat tubers. Most oleiferas will do this-- the photo below includes street tree M. oleifera from India, from Madagascar, and the cultivar PKM. That M. oleifera is so easy to come by inexpensively, along with its tendency to form wonderful caudiciforms, leads several unscrupulous nurserymen to sell hard-grown oleifera seedlings posing as the rare northeast Africa dwarf species such as M. borziana or M. rivae. These are to my knowledge not in the nursery trade and probably represent M. oleifera. If you have doubts, send me photos and I can try to ID your plants. The pachycaul species Moringa ovalifolia also does well in a pot. It grows as a tuberous herb for many years before forming a permanent stem. This is a good pachycaul tree for a pot because unlike many pachycauls it gets a very fat base in a pot, looking like a miniature version of its wild self. Moringa peregrina, one of the slender trees, is one of the most exotic moringas when grown in a pot. A tree in the wild, it hangs on for years as a caudiciform when grown in a pot, dying back to perfect globby tubers when it gets dry. When watered, it produces blue foliage, unique in the family. Moringa longituba is a coveted species, with its fat tubers and red flowers. The tuber in the wild grows way below ground level and moringas don't like their roots kept warm, so they are not 100% happy with growing with the tuber exposed. They grow quickly enough from seed but as adults get long and rangy if given too much water. So, Moringa offers great material for growing as ornamental caudiciforms in pots. Just be sparing with the water and watch out for M. oleifera masquerading as other species. Happily, M. oleifera, the easiest species to get ahold of, is also one of the best species for culivation as a caudiciform.
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Shoshana Grambo
10/2/2015 02:33:09 pm
I would like to grow a moringa olifiera as a house plant, but also would like to benefit from the tree by using it's leaves etc as food. Would i need to trim the root bulb when it is a young plant to be able to grow it in a pot?
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AuthorDr. Mark E. Olson is a researcher at Mexico's national university and an expert on the biology of the genus Moringa Archives
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