Well, it looks like I did kill my brand new red jabuticaba by forgetting to bring it inside for the freeze/early morning hours of 20’s. In the hours since posting a picture of it not looking good, it has gone from bad to worse. A picture of it a few hours ago and now. Jaboticaba in Vista CA
At the very least, as was suggested, it is losing all its leaves. I’ll keep it inside and hope it regrows. My exhausted brain has made countless gardening mistakes over the years - frantically putting undiluted eucalyptus oil on my pumpkin patch at 9pm when I discovered a hungry chipmunk had taken up residence was the by far the stupidest thing - but forgetting to bring in a tropical and outright killing it certainly takes the cake. Have to say, this is the first thing I have been responsible for killing, and it doesn’t feel good! Alas, I’ll post a picture if it comes back from the dead. All future tropicals/out of zone container plants will be staying indoors until I’m done babying fruit blossoms in the moments between life and can remember they exist!
ouch, i feel your pain. but hopefully it’s not dead yet. i have a 1 gallon pot with a bare stick of what used to be an incredibly beautiful plinia cf. spiciflora from bellamy trees. it’s not dead, it’s just deciduous, heh.
mistakes are inevitable, which is why my #1 plant rule is to hedge my bets by not putting all my eggs in one basket.
I managed to root a couple of cuttings from my cauliflora, haven’t tried to of my red (also from flying fox). But I wouldn’t be discouraged, they are fickle but tough plants. They will get discolored leaves for a variety of reasons but seem to be pretty hardy even while looking sad a few months of the year (hottest and coldest). Mine are pushing gorgeous new growth but the old leaves look sad as they tend to. I have had one for 2-3 years and the other for just a year I think, maybe 2. I got them tiny and they grow slowly so I’m not expecting them to fruit anytime soon, maybe 5-10 years if I’m lucky.
I appreciate all your insight! That’s great that yours are thriving now.
Leaves starting to fall now. I’ve been emailing with Adam at Flying Fox, and he seems adamant that it will regrow. And, than being inside is bad for it. However, he also thinks wind is bad, and with climate change we have crazy windy spring days…so…I’ll try outside tomorrow. 20mph winds today.
It appears as though my jabuticaba might be coming back from the dead. Anywhere I cut is green and scratch tests are green. I think this is microscopic new growth…I still have no expectations. We’ll see what evolves over the next few weeks.
I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I originally basically killed my potted jabuticaba. It lost every single leaf and was just a stick. After bringing it into some shade and watering it every day for a long time it now looks like this.
Resilent plants. As long as they don’t completely die, they come back.
Very encouraging! Thank you for sharing.