Hi, my name is Byron Martin, here at Logee's Greenhouses.
And today, we're going to be talking about a fragrant Southeast Asian
plant, called Aglaia odorata. And this plant has been in our collection for
quite a few years. It's a favorite of people that are from Southeast Asia, China and
India. But, it's also become a very popular plant, in terms of people
that are interested in fragrance in container plants, and also looking for
plants that do fairly well inside the home under the distress of lower light
and low humidity. So, these are some plants that we have in the greenhouses; these are
young cuttings that have been grown. This is also one of our stock plants, which has been
cut back many times. So, the flowers form on the young growth, or new growth, and
they first emerged as sprays small green balls on the end of these long stems. And
as they mature, and come into full bloom, they turn yellow. So, this is actually
an example of a plant that's in full bloom, right now. The fragrance is quite
strong at certain times of the day, and at other times there's no fragrance at all,
and it's quite variable. It seems to be related to... cloudier days with higher
humidity; it can be very strong. There are times when we walk into the greenhouses,
where our mother plants are, and it just overwhelms us. In terms of culture,
they're quite easy to grow. Aglaia; there are two cultivars that we have, and both of them
will tolerate fairly low light, even to shade, and still grow. Flowering will
increase, if you increase your light level a little bit. We use a standard
potting mix for that; nothing special.
This is a peat light mix, that has a pH of around 6 - 5.8. So, they do very well with that;
the leaves stay nice and green at that pH level.
As you can see, this has been pruned back many times. It's not really
grown for its form; this particular one, because it's a mother plant. But you can
see, when you prune it, creates a bushier habit to it. Now, this young four inch
pot, here, has never been pruned, and so it's a central lead that's coming up.
Here is the one that was done by a cutting, where the cutting was taken
along the stem. It's made two leads on it, and, in terms of culturing this, you can
simply go in when they're very young, like this, and pinch out those growing
tips, which will help break that and create that fuller plant for you.
A couple of the cultural issues that we face with this plant, is that we do have in the
greenhouse culture, we do have Edema that gets onto the leaves, and this is shown
as a corky outgrowth on the upper surface of the leaves. It really looks
almost like an insect, but it's not. It's actually a physiological outgrowth, it causes no harm,
and it's really more of a cosmetic issue than anything else, but we are often
asked if the plant has bugs, and it doesn't. And it's really caused
by relative humidity, temperature differential, and water and soil moisture:
those three things combined, in a greenhouse situation, where the humidity
can be very high, will cause this edema. And it's really a seasonal thing for us; it
happens at certain times of the year. Grown outside, you never see it; but, when you
bring into a greenhouse, we do have issues with that. As far as fertilizer goes, when
they're in active growth-- you can see all this soft growth and young growth coming on them-- they
can use a fair amount of feed. iIt's good to do it maybe once a week, every couple weeks;
if you want you can top dress some granular organic on the top of that; do
that once a month, during the growing season. In the winter time, as everything
slows down-- these plants do too-- but... just back off on your feed as you go into
the fall. Far as a flowering season on this, it's intermittent. We see them pretty
much year round; we can go in and find flowers on our plants; they grow for a
while, they flower, they stop, they grow some more. It doesn't seem to be seasonal, here, in
in terms of day length or temperature. As far as temperatures go, we keep them in warm
greenhouses; that's not necessary. You can grow these down into a cold greenhouse, where
it goes down into the forties. They don't really care for freezing temperatures; they might take a little
bit of a frost, but you really want to keep them above freezing. Insects really are not a
problem with Aglaia, we don't really see much of anything ever attacking them;
mites or aphids, or such things as that, so they're pretty much insect free-- which is a good
point to have when you're growing plants inside. So, if you're looking for a plant
that will give you a fragrance, and has good resilience in terms of container
and indoor growing, try an Aglaia.
This is Byron Martin at Logee's and thank you for watching.