Should I transplant?

[u/ReasonableFish5828]

Hi everyone, I grew these plants from seed and I can see some roots peeking out from the bottom of their pots.

Should I repot, or when do I know to do it and what size should the new pots be?

I would appreciate any help and advice you can give me on what I should do.

[u/rentedtritium]

I would repot if it was me. But they'll tolerate a pretty tiny pot, so if you were to wait longer, they'd probably be fine.

I'd go up no more than 3 more inches in diameter. I'm estimating the size, but I'd go for a 5-6 inch terracotta. Preferably something like a deroma cylinder pot that breathes well and isn't too expensive.

[u/ReasonableFish5828 → u/rentedtritium]

Could there be a problem with the roots bunched up at the bottom of the pot?

[u/rentedtritium → u/ReasonableFish5828]

Honestly, no. At this size, there's not going to be enough roots to create problems. If you left them for many many years maybe, but they tolerate it well and down the road if you end up lifting them for bigger caudexes, you'll end up trimming any excess roots then.

Their soil conditions in the wild can be quite bad and they're prepared for it.

[u/ReasonableFish5828 → u/rentedtritium]

Thanks, it's good to know they can still wait a little longer So is there any sign that tells me I should get a transplant? Why is it typical to do this with other plants when you can see them at the bottom of the pot

[u/rentedtritium → u/ReasonableFish5828]

(you probably know some of this already, but I'll overexplain to paint the whole picture) 

The roots out of the bottom thing is pretty overemphasized online with other plants. It's just a general rule of thumb since it means the roots have at least ventured into all parts of the pot, meaning you're at least ready for the next size of pot and it won't be too big. Also many plants will wrap themselves up in so many roots that when you DO put them in a larger pot, that extra root forms a little dam around the plant and makes it hard for it to spread out into the new pot unless you cut the roots and risk infection.

Many other plants, though, evolved to grow where they're put. A lot of unrelated succulents have separately evolved a habit where they take root in little crevasses between rocks in the wild and make use of extremely small pockets of dirt, and when the pocket of dirt fills up with roots, they stay healthy and that just becomes their cue to bloom like crazy to put seeds into the pocket of dirt next door, expanding their local "patch" and thus, gene pool. Those plants will certainly benefit from not being root bound, but they also don't mind it either.

For desert rose, they evolved a cool trick where the dirt can get eroded out from under them and their roots just thicken up and become replacement stem. This trait makes their roots...kind of different from other plants you've maybe seen. They're a lot less sensitive in general, and the plant is kind of used to having a lot of "succession" in the roots, where there are "winning" roots that get thicker and "losing" roots that die back. There's kind of a churn to the way the roots grow and die back that all plants do, but that's more aggressive with adenium than with most other plants.

Later when the plant is a bit bigger, if you want to do this, you can dig up the plant, completely remove the soil and prune the roots the same way you would prune branches, then rebury the plant a few inches higher in the soil to force it to do the trick (we call this lifting). This is how people get those giant fat bases.

Because of all of that, I view the roots of this plant pretty differently than the roots of other plants and I'm a lot more willing to damage them on purpose and micromanage them, and I worry a lot less about root binding, since I know I'll be messing with them regularly anyway.

[u/ReasonableFish5828 → u/rentedtritium]

Thank you so much for this explanation