Indian Jesmine Plant and its Flower

First of all it is not a plant but a vine.

It is the most difficult to propagate.

Over 15  years I have managed to get one sapling and it has only two leaves and no flowers.

I have managed to get two sprouts but they failed after replanting.

Mind you, I have 38 years of experience and I leaned the tricks from my mother.

Going back to the beginning when we were building our house (I have no understanding  of house construction but good at making cement fish tanks), I decided to grow some flowering plants.

Our great great granny in her eighties needed flowers for her daily offerings to Buddha and she used to scatter the flowers seeds all over.and making a bit of a mess in the little garden (in fact it was a rocky garden which had a jute plant. It flowered after 100 years of existence and died naturally and I did not replant the hundred of offshoots for posterity. I had no idea and the thorns I hated -with growing children around).

I hate Dahas Peththia (flower with 1000 sepals or petals but which did not have even 100 and it leaves an unpleasant smell in your fingers when teased to spread the long narrow seeds).

So I did some looking around and found a similar colour flower with about  8 sepals and I gave her some and she did not mind.

Any flower would do and she told me we need 10 varieties of flowers in the garden when children.are around.

I took heart to her very broad sense of understanding of nature and she probably grew around a beautiful garden with flowers and that is why she lived up to her 80s with good health.

Another point about her to remember was we had 22 odd fish tanks around (tried a pond but failed) and the fish tank for display was in the living room (with an air compressor pumping stream of air bubbles from behind: brought from UK and not available then in Ceylon and I hate the cheap Chinese substitutes that do not last even 6 months) and I was obsessed with its upkeep.

One evening when I returned from work, I found two slices of bread in it.

I was bit annoyed but when I realized Great Granny had done it, I calmed down and after having my evening tea,. I asked her why she did it.

The fish are hungry and you come late.

I quietly explained to her while removing the slices carefully with pair of prongs, told her, that in fact, fish do not like bread but I feed the fish with fish food with tiny pellets.

I was expecting a wise saying from her and she never did it again, having got a sense of my subdued anger.

Mind you we did not have tap water and I had to go and fetch water from a nearby well.

That well and the guppy fish have gone.

I noticed today they have dug up a big pit (which fills up rapidly with water from the underground spring) and a drain to get a new water connection to a new house in our neighbourhood and a New Cesspit with it, that encourages mosquito breeding.

Coming back to 10 flowers in our garden.

We have failed her.

Only two flowering plants for hummingbirds.

A new and a bigger pair with a lovely velvet neck (male bird) has come (more about the pair later).

I got a sapling of the top variety of jasmine from my mother and planted in the place where children used play (hanging to an Araliya Branch-for flower offerings to Buddha).

It was well cared for and one day when I was admiring its first few flowers and I accidentally touched the belly of a Ahatulla (a relatively less,poisonous snake wrapped around the jasmine).

I immediately uprooted the jasmine plant and gave up caring for jasmine for over 30 years.

I have four varieties now and the Gata Piiccha is almost a weedy vine.

Normal jasmine variety,, of course the Indian variety and top jasmine variety.

I have mastered the propagation of saman or the top variety and when I have  extras I give away.

It needs lots and lots of water and dry up in dry weather unless you water it daily.

I have at least two sprouting currently but not the Indian variety.

I am experimenting with it and may succeed this season.

The way I do is to tilt the vine to a bucket with water plants and tease it by dipping it deep under water.

The pressure I apply makes the branch to lengthen (that come yearly when the old one is drying up to become firewood like) and remove the bark underneath with my nails and leave for the roots to come.

Once in a way I lift it up and see if the rooting is progressing well.

This way I do not need to water them daily.

I use the Pizza Hut clips to anchor the spot I have teased.

That works.

More reliable method is to dip the branch (having teased the bark underneath)of sufficient length to a pot with rapidly growing little flower plants (which become manure for the jasmine sapling later) so that the microflora that nourishes the jasmine have time to recuperate.

It takes about one year for the vine to become independent and flowering.