Plumeria

As of this post, I have two plumeria.  One two-branch I picked up at the NC State Farmers Market years ago, and a cutting I got from Katsura Garden, Japantown SF from this year's family vacation.

These plants are paradoxically difficult yet impossible to kill.  I used to have a third one what was literally lifted up and thrown by a thunderstorm .... so who knows.  The storms literally just snapped the inflorescence and I've been bitter about that ever since.  Same specimen didn't overwinter successfully, so I'm still sour about it :-(

Their footprints are weirdly small for their height, although that may just be my reluctance to repot something that works.

Bigger one first:

Breaking Dormancy.  Literally watered it a total of once all winter,
 and even then I made sure all of the soil went dry again

Here it is coming along, week or so later:

Oh yeah look at that second branch go!

A little bit more:

Week or two later, with leaves

The cutting was a bit more difficult.  This is how it started:

Those bump are tiny nuggets of "maybe"

Originally, I tried to get it to go by putting it outside in late spring weather, in a mix of soil and perlite.  Obviously, with some added rooting hormone.

That really didn't work, and the cutting started to lose its green.  I then switched to Saran wrap.  Took the cutting out of the soil, washed everything off, re-cut the bottom, and let it sit away from bright light on my kitchen counter for a day.  After it calloused over, I sprayed the bottom of it with fungicide, gave the bottom area another coat of rooting hormone, a few spritz of water, and then wrapped Saran Wrap around the bottom part.  Secured it with a rubber band, and then placed it on a windowsill.

The buds actually started to get a little bigger, but a millimeter of growth in a month is ridiculously slow even for plumeria.  I even had to change it's Saran wrap diaper twice.  And then a couple of the tiny leaf-buds turned black.

I then switched to the "ziploc bag" method, and just stuck the dang thing in a ziploc bag full of lightly humidified soil, and rubber banded it securely.  Then set it outside in a relatively shady area away from sun.

Hiding away on a balcony shelf

Eventually, it looked like this:

Which means it's at least trying, which is good news. A couple of days later:

So even the tiniest of plumeria leaf grow is gravitropic.

Hmm.  Let's see if I can play with that:

Update:  A few days later: