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[TigerBeard]

Hello STS community, as I was going through my plants and loving on them all and just spending some time with them I noticed something on the newest leaves of one of my smaller Bumble Bee strain kratom plant.  It is too early to know for certain but I am almost positive that my kratom plant has developed the rare horned leaf mutation.  I tried to do some research on the origins and development of the horn leaf mutation and came up empty.  Could you please tell me the history and origin and pretty much everything you know about this mutation? Thank you so much I will be posting pictures as it continues to grow and mature, and hopefully the rest of the leaves that develop from here on out will also have that mutation so that I can take cuttings later on and develop plants entirely with the horned leaves.

[Toxicodendron]

From my experience, it is not so much a mutation as a morphological trait of the species once it attains a certain size. I had a big Rifat that did this after growing for a few years. Glad to see the Bumblebee does it as well.

[Bach]

Never saw that on either of mine and the biggest one is a Rifat that's 17 feet tall.  Still in a pot, too. 

[Toxicodendron]

Hmm, maybe not size determined then.

[TigerBeard]

This is what I originally thought would be exclusive to the rifat strain. As I heard there are two types of Meang Da out there. 1. the original that was never horned to begin with but instead was a smooth leaf created by a graft method, and 2 the more recent green horn meang da. Either way I though the maeng da was originally thought to be a mutation that happened among the rifat strain. This now leads me to believe a few things: either it is in fact a leaf mutation that is not strain exclusive leading to a bumble bee strain maeng da, or that a horn mutation does not necessarily mean that it is a maeng da. if the second belief is true that means there are at least two types of horned kratom varieties: the horn maeng da, and the normal horn mutation. what do you guys think as i have seen both of these claims on different forums and sites recently while trying to find research on this subject. it would be nice to find that maeng da is not exclusive to the rifat strain and that i do in fact have a maeng da variety in my possession.

[TigerBeard]

Also Bach what size pot do you have that would allow for such growth that is my eventual goal with these is to keep them in pots but I wan them to be trees still, what was your method?

[Bach]

As it grew I gradually potted it up as one would normally do. Since it does freeze here every few years I want it to still be mobile, otherwise I would put it in the ground. The pot it's in now is 25"dia by 16" deep, so roughly 30 gal. or so? I won't be potting it up again since I can't physically move anything larger. It gets lots of worm castings and Osmocote when potting up. When it's actively growing you can practically sit there and watch it.

I have the pot sitting in an old-fashioned galvanized wash tub so I can fill it with water every few days since as you know they can be water hogs. While I never measured exactly how much free water the tub holds when it's full it's gotta be at least 10 gallons, and during the hottest days that krat will suck the tub dry inside a day.    When it's cooler it can sit in water for a week or more without any issues. 

Since it will tip over in a light wind I have it anchored by the stem to the side of the porch with some parachute cord.

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[TigerBeard]

i literally cannot wait until all of mine are that large. I heard that within a growing season they can grow from 4' to 6' that is quite a bit. so far over the last month in this california winter i have been able to grow most of mine between 6" and 1' so i can only imagine how much this summer will allow it to grow! and the pot you have it in doesnt sound too big, do they not require a massive amount of root space? this area of kratom growing I am unsure about at the moment since mine are still babies.

[JMZ]

I'm trying to arrange to get some horned leaf seedlings from a person in south Florida whose plants have seeded his entire yard. I'm not sure which variety they originate from. I hope to hear back from him and get these plants. If you can keep your plants from going dormant this winter, they can easily be 6 feet tall and shaped like a Christmas tree by October. I kept two Bumble Bee clones from 2015, let them go dormant last winter, and they ended up just as I described above. Kratom grows like a monster, and Bumble Bee easily outgrows all of the others.

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[TigerBeard]

JMZ if you manage to get a lot of horned plants and the 3LI could you save one or two for me? Also you were not kidding about the bumble bee being a monster! Here I thought the entire time the rifat was the grower but the bumble bee has been going strong for a little over a month now and it's already put on around a foot!! I just measured it and it's sitting in around 14" at the moment. The rest of them are doing great too. The GM has had a hard time since day one but it's slowly beginning to put on new growth. Also the RVT AOE's grow slower then snails. By far the slowest growing plant I have in fact my two salvia plants and my psychotria viridis are growing faster then those two xD but when they do hit a little growthspery they sent out their leaves quick and then slow back down again. Very odd habit when compared to the other strains. The 14" bumble bee has a set of leaves on it right now that are over 6" long they are beautiful! I'll post some picks either on Christmas or Monday when I get some time off.

[Darwins Farm]

I was wanting to start a thread about horned lead kratom plants. I decided that continuing this thread might be better. Perhaps previous posters might have something to add after another spring of growth?

Does anyone have horned or serrated M Speciosa plants?

[TigerBeard]

An update to my plants so the rest of the users know for whatever reason all of my rifats, bumblebees, and my PVI are developing horns on much of the new growth, so prior to previous speculation I can say that horned leaves are less of a genetic factor and more of a biological condition. The climate that I am in is arod desert inland Southern California with little humidity. It was a mission to get them acclimated to that climate and took about 6 months from cutting to plant to tree for them to eventually hit their growth spurt.

[themallacht]

I'm in SoCal as well, and I've found that they kind of just do this based on lack of humidity. Ever since I started spraying my "tropical corner" area (where my Kratom tree is located) twice a day, they've had perfect leaves and stopped doing this at all.

1 Like LIBERTYNY likes this.

[TigerBeard]

So maybe it is a humidity thing. I've reached a point where they are so used to the lack of humidity that they grow normal leaves without any defects, all in tact. However, what I did notice is that the leaves of the BB, Rifat, and PVI are smaller and harder then if they were grown in an area with humidity and resemble standard leaves in this area. They no longer are silky smooth and large, but rather much smaller and tougher. The RVTs and the GM still grow very large, soft and silky leaves though and the RVTs are now growing the fastest and should even outgrow the others within a month

[Darwins Farm]

So maybe it is a humidity thing. I've reached a point where they are so used to the lack of humidity that they grow normal leaves without any defects, all in tact. However, what I did notice is that the leaves of the BB, Rifat, and PVI are smaller and harder then if they were grown in an area with humidity and resemble standard leaves in this area. They no longer are silky smooth and large, but rather much smaller and tougher. The RVTs and the GM still grow very large, soft and silky leaves though and the RVTs are now growing the fastest and should even outgrow the others within a month

Your RVT AOE is growing fast for you again? I would love to get one of those.. I had one once but it was one of my first M Speciosa plants and it died on me its first winter.