1m20 tall, in a 35 liter pot.

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any chance at a pic.. so i might be able to understand what this means .... especially the 20 part???

ken

Hi @ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

Sorry, I didn't mean to be confusing. That translates to a 4ft tall tree, in a pot that's slightly over 9 gallons (9.24 to be exact).

I don't have a pic right now but will take one tomorrow.

As promised here is the picture:

The Tetraclinis has been through a lot. He was stuffed into a crowded, shady corner of the nursery when I got him last year (hardly fitting for the national tree of Malta!). Since then he has been happy with the sunshine on the roof, but we have had some severe storms this winter that he did not enjoy.

Although the branches are both flexible and sturdy, the green "foliage" parts are rather delicate and snap off easily in very strong winds.

There's hardly any literature out there about Tetraclinis, especially in pots, so it's hard for me to understand his needs and whether he could stand sharing the pot with such a vigorous plant as oxalis, or if the oxalis would just hog all the nutrients.

I just realized there is already another thread on this forum about Tetraclinis, so I have also posted my question there.

Apologies to anyone who might be annoyed with me posting my questions in two separate threads.

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/1843965/tetraclinis-articulata-and-new-website#27608578

Thank you @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK !

Hmmm I'm glad the oxalis won't bother the tree! That is very good news.

But I don't want oxalis to end up in all my pots either... I think I'll try pulling it out, knowing that some bulbs will still stay in there, and then I'll just keep pulling it up as it reappears.

When I repot the tree next year, I'll make sure to thoroughly remove any trace of the oxalis roots. Thanks again for your advice!

https://conifersociety.org/conifers/tetraclinis/

https://conifersociety.org/conifers/tetraclinis-articulata/

post wherever you want.. no one cares ....

the only downside that crosses my mind about the oxalis in the pot.. is that it might cause some type of watering issue ...

i still dont know what '1m 20' means ... https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=1+m+20&ia=web

i want to learn what it means.. if anything ,..

when i grew stuff in pots.. i eventually found .... that it was easiest when all plants were the same ... all annuals.. all perennials.. all trees ... etc .. when you started mixing and matching.. you could run it to problems of each different plant having different water or drainage needs .... so you either over or under watered one plant.. dealing with the other plant ...

ken

The Oxalis is unkillable. It will have no effect at all on watering. Mixing plants is absolutely possible if you choose properly.

As for 1m20. It’s stated to be the height of the tree. Take a wild guess as to what it means.

Thank you @ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5

1m20 is a common way of writing 1 metre and 20 centimeters. But I guess the most common way is to write 1,2 m. Or 120 cm.

Various ways of writing the same thing, like when people in the US write apostrophes next to numbers instead of ft or in, or they can sometimes express the whole thing in just inches.

I will remove the oxalis I guess. The tree is much more important to me.

Providing you can avoid spreading the Oxalis around you might consider using it as ’groundcover’ in your pot. O pes-caprae will not survive in my climate but another species, O articulata, is a nuisance plant here. I’ve eradicated it in the garden but leave it in pots since it is tough, attractive and maintenance free.

@floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK Oh, that one is even prettier! The flowers look like yellow daffodils! I can understand why you'd want to keep it in a pot, it's lovely.

We have a huge storm with gale force winds coming at the end of the week, and I expect that unfortunately the Tetraclinis will suffer more damage. I don't want to disturb the soil before the storm, so I am putting off the removal of oxalis until after it passes.

Those flowers are yellow daffodils!!!!! They are growing up through the Oxalis foliage. The Oxalis has pink flowers about the same size and shape as your O pes-caprae.

Haha ok it makes sense now! Very pretty together with the clover-like leaves of the Oxalis.

While the oxalis might not harm the plant by way of allelopathy, and that has yet to be determined, it will be very strongly competitive with the cypress for nutrients, oxygen, and room for roots to grow. IOW, all else being equal, a planting w/o the oxalis will conspicuously reveal its ability to realize a much greater fraction of its genetic potential than a planting encumbered by its invasion.

Many people love to see the cute little blooms on pearlwort too, but it's a nightmare that spreads like wildfire once it's established in pots. I have occasional 'issues' with oxalis volunteers in my pot. My strategy for keeping it at bay is to do one of 2 things. I either keep the plants pruned back to the soil to limit their ability to reproduce, then remove the bulbs/roots at repotting time; or, I prune the plant back to the roots and use a small paintbrush dipped in a solution of tryclopyr triethylamine salt, a herbicide synthesized with chickweed, oxalis, and clover as the target, to just paint a very thin coating on the stem stubs at ground level. This kills only the oxalis and has never conspicuously harmed any non-targeted woody material I might be growing ion the pot.

The more common 2,4-D doesn't work well, and herbicides containing glyphosate work nearly as well as the TT-salt first mentioned. I don't water on the day I apply.

Al

“it will be very strongly competitive with the cypress for nutrients, oxygen, and room for roots to grow.” (My italics) I can’t agree. There might perhaps be competion with small, delicate plants but not with large healthy trees and shrubs. Many of us successfully grow mixed pots of perennial plantings which thrive for years. I am not advocating definitely leaving the Oxalis in situ. Just pointing out that it will not harm the tree if the OP does so.

Thank you for your advice @tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a).
I just repotted and rootpruned the Tetraclinis in December, so I will not be doing that again until next winter, but in the meantime I will be using the first option you and @floral_uk z.8/9 SW UK mentioned, cutting the oxalis back or rather yanking as much of it out of the pot as I can, after the storm passes. Then at the next repotting I will really thoroughly remove the oxalis roots when I change the soil.
As for herbicides, I don't use them, nor do I wish to. I only have about 40 pots to tend to, so manual removal of weeds is usually not too much work.

As much as I think the oxalis is pretty, I don't want to impede the tree's growth, he's already been through a lot and you both mentioned how invasive they can be. I don't want to risk it getting into the other pots. So, the oxalis will have to go.

Thanks again to both of you!

That resources in a pot are limited ensures that the sharing of those resources with a number of plants greater than one will be further limiting. There is absolutely no question that more than one plant in a pot limits the potential of all plants in the pot in terms of growth rate, vitality levels, the ability of the plants to protect themselves against insect herbivory, pathogens both biotic and abiotic, and yields where applicable, of individual plants.

Assuming absence of allelopathic limitations, which has not been confirmed, plants will be less affected by competition (from additional plants) until the approximate point in time where the root mass can be lifted from the pot intact. From that point forward, limitations become increasingly severe in direct relation to the severity of root congestion and the absence of adequate resources, such that the growth rate of all plants (or some) can be zero or less in many cases.

There is also little question that species of oxalis have a very high level of vigor, which is a genetic trait. A plant's level of vigor is a very good indicator of how effectively it will be able to compete with other plants for resources, and why a large % of plants are seldom found growing in situ under conditions and levels of resources that most favor the plant; this, because the more vigorous plants are better able to compete for resources. It would be unwise to assume that the oxalis is not competitive enough to make a difference in how well the cypress performs because res ipsa loquitur ('the thing speaks for itself'). When the total of share of resources is limited, the less the individual share can be when divided among an increasing number of individuals.

I also think there is a lot of territory between what different individuals consider to be a thriving plant. To me, the very idea of a thriving plant implies that all cultural conditions are in its favor. This means if even a single cultural condition asks the plant to tolerate conditions at or near the limits it's genetically programmed to tolerate, a thriving plant is not a possibility. A shortage or toxicity of a single nutrient, a temperature to high/low, to much/ too little water or not enough air in the rhizosphere, an inappropriate pH level, would all preclude the plant's ability t o thrive. On that basis, I would suggest that most plants that have been in the same pot for more than a year are hardly thriving unless they were appropriately repotted or divided and all other cultural conditions are in the plant's sweet spot, and that type of care is much closer to the exception than the rule.

I appreciate the opportunity to muse on your dime, Seasiderooftop. I hope you and the plant fare well. Keeping the oxalis pinched back to the soil line will limit its ability to do much growing and limit how much it will limit your cypress. It should be easy to tease the weed out of the roots next time you repot. As noted, that's how I often keep volunteer weeds from being as limiting as they have the potential to be. The greater the dynamic mass of the plant, the more resources it will command to keep that mass in a viable state. Trees and herbaceous plants prioritize their parts into something of a 'pecking order', but perhaps it's better to say that the strength of energy sinks (parts of the plant which demand energy) has a distinct order: Demand for energy is greatest from and first allocated to to respiratory function, i.e. to maintenance of already living tissues, followed in order by production of fine roots, then flower and seed/fruit production, primary growth (extension of both roots and shoots), then secondary growth (thickening), and finally, the synthesis of defensive chemicals. Since the plant's ability to defend itself requires a high state of vitality, it is often inadequate even in plants we think are thriving because it's the first hit the plant takes when it is stressed.

Al

@tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)

Fascinating about the energy "pecking order", that is really good to know and explains a lot of what I have observed.

Regarding competition for resources in pots, oxalis aside, this is a topic that has been rather frustrating to me I will start a new thread about that later today.

While the observation isn't universally true, there is a great deal of truth in the idea that a container planting is only capable of producing a finite amount of growth, regardless of how many plants are in the container; and the more plants there are in the container the smaller the proportion each individual plant is able to secure. The true measure of growth is the increase in the weight of a plant's dry mass. So while the total mass produced by a dozen plants might be roughly equal to that produced by a single plant, the betterment of the individual plants will always be sacrificed at the altar of the collective.

Al