Whack its little head off where you want it to branch.

Mine look like that when it starts out but it will eventually branch out on its own. It Jatropha Multifidia or what we call "Coral Tree" here. Butterflies love them!

Yes, mine brached out on it's own too, and is at least 10 tall now. :o)

hmm. Maybe a few shots of compost tea and wait. It's in pretty poor soil. For those of you who have these and they branched on their own, how tall were they as sticks in the ground? Just wondering.

I think mine was probably 3 to 4 feet. But I like "trees" so I might have pulled of any new leaves till it reached a 4 or 5 foot height and then let it branch.

relax... they always look like that at first. everyone here is right--the problem will fix itself, or you can cause it to bush out more quickly by topping it. they are VERY EASY to start from cuttings, so stick whatever you cut off into a pot with proper medium, bag it, and wait...

Thanks IMA. I think I'll just let it do it's thing. If I was just dying to cut something, I've got plenty of my neighbor's blasted brazilian pepper hanging over the fence I can be hacking on. Good to know they root easily, however. I'm always looking for things I can root and trade.

What do the flowers of the split leaf jatropha tree look like? Are they always red?

I don't know if they are always red. Mine is. Very pretty flowers held out above the leaves. Sure is a funny-looking stick in the ground at the moment, however.

The flowers are always red as far as I know but there is another small tree that has similiar leaves and flowers that are white. I thought it was a Jatropha, just white, then I found out it is called a Spinach tree for some reason. Anyway, it is also a favorite of the butterflies. It grows slower than the Jatropha and the leaves area a darker green but supposedly it is not in the samw family as the Jatropha.