Moonie, my Thumbalina grew several feet in one or two years before blooming. It bloomed late last year, branched into three, and one of the new branches is blooming now and has branched into two. All that branching happened in just a few inches. As it gets hotter the color looks better and better on this one.

I am having a very similar problem as you with my Divine. It blooms OK but it has been reluctant to branch. This has happened enough to me that I'm wondering if it is just luck or a problem with the care I am giving them.

When I first started with Plumeria I remember reading on the forum that most will branch 3 ways after a bloom and I sort of had that expectation every since.... only to watch a lot of them bloom and do nothing.

At any rate "good brancher" is a trait that I'm really interested in now. If you want a nice mature plant it simply isn't enough to bloom and keep growing.

Good luck!

My experience with Thumbalina is that it doesn't always branch. It started with two tips. Both bloomed and branched to 4 tips. Then 3 out of the 4 tips bloomed, but only one branched and two did not. On the tips that bloomed, but did not branch, both are pushing new inflos while still holding the old. To sum it up, I have 5 tips and 6 inflos.

irun5k - I had quite a few plumeria that bloomed last year, but did not branch. I also wondered if it was luck, or the care I was giving it.

I am posting a pic of my Thumbalina. You might be able to see the new inflo and the old inflo on the same tip.

gidget - yes, i do see the old and new inflo branch. You just never know what you're going to see from these trees! But, wow! That's a nice looking Thumbie you have there.

After you mentioned having had several plumies that didn't branch, I remembered that my Wave Rage also did not branch. I do realize that this does happen, but it sucks.

irun - I also worry that it's the care I've been giving my plants. Last year when i ran out of SNG and foliage pro I feed a smorgasbord of different things. Shopping time, I think!

Oh yeah... wanted to mention that my divine is finally pushing an inflo on one of it's two branches. That thing has been the slowest grower of all my plants. Hope you get some branching on yours!

My CA Sally, Maverick, and my mom's Divine, Penang Peach and Miami Rose all did the same. That's a lot of single branches! Then TLD did not branch at last year's inflos because it bloomed on such short branches.

I imagine a lot of this has to do with pot culture over in-ground trees. I've also noticed some of my nice mature cuttings from Hawaii have multiple closely spaced inflo scars running up single trunks, so maybe the trees do that as they age, too.

We're probably more likely to see branching on a single tip rooted cutting than a small tree. Mona, I did have a Rose Red that looked like a single brancher, but one of the leaf nodes actually grew a surprise late branch after flowering and now the two branches are balanced. Very cool!

most of my JJ plants dont seem to always branch the first year and inflo's. My Desert sunrise took 2 bloom cycles to finally really start branching. I have backed way off on the nitrogen to hopefully help keep them from being so long between forks.

My divine however seems to always for at least 2 new branches.

mike

Glad to hear other's stories that sound similar, thanks for sharing.

Most of the old, mature trees in Hawaii have high enough canopies that you can walk under them, or at least duck and walk. If you look at a 20 year old trunk, you can still sort of see the angles where it branched. Most of them did not branch every 2 inches but instead you can see that the trunks are usually made up of sections that branched a good distance apart.

There does seem to be evidence that behavior changes over time. Some claim the cutting from the top of a mature canopy has different characteristics from a cutting on a less mature section.