a little bit different view.

This post was edited by bttrflii on Tue, Aug 20, 13 at 13:37

Suckers, if left on the plant, can become a second crown. Suckers do start as a tiny plant from the main stem, but if you leave them, they will continue to grow along with the rest of the plant.

Try to figure out which is the second one, remove it and root it as its own plant. Or, enjoy the fact that it is happy and leave it as is.

Many minis have trailers in their genetic background and will sucker freely. I have an 'Ali's Blizzard Bunny' that refuses to stay single crowned so I just enjoy its copious blooms as a multi-crowned plant.

Try not to remove middle leaves. They are the plant's most productive food factories. Remove the oldest outer leaves as they are on their way out.

If it were my plant, I'd leave it as is. It looks very happy and healthy.

Linda

thanks linda. :)

i actually had left the leaves as they were until this morning. they were growing so close together that they were all straight up because they couldn't go anywhere else. i am apparently too inexperienced to have figured out the sucker before they both grew out, because i looked and looked and couldn't see any difference between them, not even the distance from the center. -.-

/goes away grumbling about inconsiderate little plants

Some varieties are just naturally tight in their growth even without suckers. Removing the bottom leaves will give the rest somewhere to spread out to.

Some violets grow so tight, usually the frilly leaf-types, that you have to nudge the blooms out from under the foliage.

If it's healthy and blooming and not going to show, relax and enjoy!

Linda

You need to take one of the crowns out - and no matter what you do - it will be temporarily ugly. It happens more often to minis and semis than to standards. I wouldn't worry too much about removing productive leaves - the plant will react to damage with a strong vegetative growth. Actually I would do remove some of the leaves off - up to the surgery point. Eventually you will need to trim the roots and set the plant down to cover the surgery - but it can be done later.

What is more worrisome -is sometimes the plant puts double crowns all the time - and the best way to get out of it - is to get a leaf from a different better behaving plant of the same variety.

irina - i did take one of the crowns off earlier this afternoon, pretty much based on eeny-meeny and which side maybe had smaller leaves. he didn't look too bad when i was done, but if you think i should take more off, i'll do so. when you say to take more off, do you mean *from* the surgery point or all of the old leaves up *until* the surgery point?

here's a picture of my full plant plus the hacked-off part. we'll see if little mini-bumble grows or not. :)

I'm not too sure, but I think this one still has two crowns. I would do more surgery, but I'm sure some one else will chime in on this.

It looks like two crowns to me, too. On the picture, it looks like there is one at the one o'clock position.

Linda

are you ladies looking at the remaining leaves from the part i removed, perhaps? i didn't take out all of the wrong leaves, just the growing part.

here's the side i took out.

and here's the same angle but zoomed in.

I think you're right but you should remove those as well. Next time, try to remove all of the leaves of the sucker.

Linda

I am thrilled to find this topic here. Several of my african violets have double crowns. I always thought you were supposed to remove one of them. But how? How without damaging the plant you want to keep? And now from these postings, I am thinking I don't need to remove the double crown. What's up? I love this thread!!! thanks ahead of time!!

I had a couple of double crowns on a few of my plantlets. They ended up having such a strange leaf pattern, at first I thought it was a light issue - until I spotted the double crown... At that point it wasn't a sucker, but more of a Siamese twin issue (or so I explained it to myself).
So I took them out of the pot, shook off the dirt, decided where the dividing line would be between the two, and sliced them apart with a sharp blade.
That actually gave me a nice cross section of my plant(s). Ever since I've been looking for an illustration of the same thing....
Anyhow, I potted them and they are doing much better now - I can't tell the difference between them, and the other plantlets from the same batch anymore.
the article I linked has pictures for the procedure:-D

Here is a link that might be useful: Taming the double headed monster