White Lead Tree - Dec

Tree species : White Lead Tree (Leucaena Leucocephala / Su-babul)
Collected on : Dec 1, 2015
Season : Early winter, 18-33°C temperature range

This plant was growing new shoots just like springtime and hence, I decided to collect this species despite early winter. 

Before & Now

These wild weedy trees were collected from the roadside. Due to repeated attempts to kill or limit the tree 's growth over a couple of years in my estimate, branch ramification, trunk thickness and character is good. 

Since these trees usually have a deep tap root, there is no point in digging to get the root ball. I just dug a few inches below the ground and cut the root with a hacksaw blade. This material will have to be treated as a hardwood cutting and should root in a month. The tree next to the road divider was sawed off at ground level.

Basic pruning was done and very few leaves were kept. Rooting hormone powder was applied. Till now, I had been using only cocopeat as my rooting medium but I decided to try coarse filtered sand this time and results are better. Even after 3 days the original leaves still look healthy, unlike my cocopeat ones, which had wilted / dried up leaves in the same time.

Once roots develop, the container will be converted to self-watering style.

Current Status - June 9, 2016

The middle one was re-potted once and has gone thru few prunings and is still alive, with good roots.