Giant Adenium
Adenium arabicum ia a remarkable succulent plant with a grotesquely swollen trunk which resembles a miniature baobab tree.
Adenium arabicum is similar in appearance to Adenium obesum, but creates a massive, more squat and fat caudex without much differentiation between trunk and branches and is the most succulent and “desert like” species. The fleshy trunks and short naked branches are also somewhat more coloured in purple to dark brown. Plants grown from seed produce the most amazing shapes of caudex on just 20 years.
2–5 m tall, but usually much smaller, very fleshy, with a distinct irregular swollen base, or caudex up to 2 m in diameter. The caudex can be globose to conical with smooth, pale greyish-green, brown or black smooth epidermis. The branches are short, usually upright, tortuous and irregularly spaced . The plant contains a copious sticky watery or white sap that flows from broken stem as well as from other plant parts like leaves, roots etc.
The flowers range from carmine-red to pinkish, often with a whitish blush outward of the throat.
It is capable of flowering all year, even sparingly during the winter, but it is more floriferous during the dry periods of Spring and Autumn. Flowers appear often before leaves on deciduous branches, and for a time the crown is adorned only with flowers as new leaves emerge below the flowers. The flowers opening for 2-3 days.