An angel trumpet, which is completely heavy with flowers, is a breathtaking sight. This sight sometimes meets us while traveling south. Here, the angel trumpet is often found near villages, or it also adorns the entrance to one of the many small, cozy holiday hotels.
However, it is not only south that we can meet the angelic trumpet. Although it comes from a subtropical climate, the Danish summer actually offers absolutely ideal growing conditions for these beautiful, elegant trees, which are not winter-hardy.
Angel trumpet in the garden
The English name Angel´s trumpet is particularly descriptive of this beautiful plant, which in Latin is called Brugmansia. Not only are the trumpet-shaped flowers unusually large. They also smell, so the angels sing (some species and hybrids are scentless). In the evening, the scent can become so intense that you seem to feel it everywhere in the garden. Angel trumpets have an almost overwhelming, pleasant and sweet scent. In the species Brugmansia arborea and Brugmansia aurea, the scent is particularly intrusive and resembles a mixture between vanilla and viscous honey.
Until a few years ago, almost no one knew how easy it is to make the angel trumpet thrive. At the same time, there were surprisingly few places where you could get hold of a specimen of the plant. The lack of knowledge was the reason why the angelic trumpet had a bad reputation for ages as a difficult plant or to put it another way: it was for many years a collector’s plant that only circulated within a narrow circle of connoisseurs. Fortunately, that has now changed. Today it is known that angel trumpets are straightforward and grateful plants to grow, whether it is in the winter garden, in a pot on the terrace, or planted out in a bed in the garden.
When does angel trumpet bloom?
Angel trumpets can, in principle, bloom all year round if you keep them in bright and warm conditions, provide water, and fertilize. The normal thing, however, is that it starts to bloom a month after it comes out of cool/dark winter storage. There are variations that are primarily about how hot it is and how much sun there has been since it came out.
What is the reason for the lack of flowering?
If your angel trumpet does not bloom, it is typically because it needs to get through its Growth phase, or it has been exposed to low Temperatures and has been put back.
Pests Also has a lot of postponed flowering on the conscience. Spider mites are, for example, some beasts that are only seen correctly when they have already done damage.
Finally, it can of course also be due to incorrect fitting, and then you have to start reading about fertilizer, and all the other good advice you can find on this website. If you are new to the plant, you should read the guide for beginners.
How long does angel trumpet´s bloom?
The shelf life of the flowers ranges from a few days to many weeks. The length of the flowering is particularly dependent on how hot it is, and whether, for example, the plant is exposed to wind or heavy rain. If a plant is missing fertilizer or water, it will also react by throwing all the flowers at once.
However, do not worry, the plant will bloom again. The flowering comes in waves, which are followed by periods when the plant gathers strength. Especially during this period, it is good to give a little extra nitrogen – for example, in the form of salmiac spirit.
The difference between angel trumpet (Brugmansia) and the apple (Datura)
for approx. 20 years ago, the woody angel trumpets belonged to the plant genus Datura. They were sometimes called woody apples. Today, they have such a family, Brugmansia. Both Datura and Brugmansia have large, trumpet-shaped flowers in common, but:
- datura is a herbaceous annual plant.
- It belongs in the dry desert-like areas of the southwestern United States and Mexico
- the plant itself rarely grows over 1½ m high.
- It blooms as a relatively low plant
- its flowers are erect and relatively small, and the fruits are always spiked.
Angel trumpet or Brugmansia, on the other hand, can be found in the South American Andes. Here it grows especially on western slopes in areas with scrub forest on overflowing soil. The angel trumpet spends about a year growing and first blooms at a height of 1½-2 meters. An angel trumpet bush is believed to be more than 100 years old. A grown bush can grow 6-10 meters high. The flowers are nodding to hanging, relatively large and the fruits are never spiked.
Despite obvious differences between the two plant genera, it is not uncommon for today’s botanical gardens, as well as many nurseries, to still carry angel trumpets under the name Datura.
The wild species
In 2005, there were 700 named hybrids of the angel trumpet; today (2021), there are thousands! The vast majority of hybrids originate from the USA and Germany. Despite the staggering number of hybrids, all these originate from the six wild species that grow in South America.
The names of the wild species are:
· Brugmansia arborea
· Brugmansia aurea
· Brugmansia sanguinea
· Brugmansia Suaveolens
· Brugmansia insignis
· Brugmansia Versicolor
· Brugmansia vulcanicola.
The range of wild plants reaches from Colombia in the north, all the way down through Ecuador, Peru, and ends in the northwestern part of Chile. An exception is the species Brugmansia suaveolens, which is found in northwestern Brazil. In many localities, the angel trumpets grow in a climate that does not differ much from ours; however, the low freezing temperatures that we know here at home are not experienced.
Nature hybrids
In addition to the six wild species, there are also a large number of natural hybrids. These occur by cross-pollination with the help of nocturnal swarmers or hummingbirds in locations where two different species populations overlap.
A well-known natural hybrid is Brugmansia x Candida, which is a cross between the hardy and slightly flowering Brugmansia aurea and the heat-demanding and incredibly richly blooming Brugmansia versicolor.
Brugmansia x Candida seems to hold the best characteristics of both parent species. The plant can bloom even at relatively low temperatures, and the flowering is often more opulent than in B. versicolor. Brugmansia x Candida is therefore particularly favored as a cultural plant in our gardens. Two natural hybrids have been named in botany:
· Brugmansia x Candida (brugmansia aurea x Brugmansia versicolor)
· Brugmansia x flava (brugmansia arborea x Brugmansia sanguinea)
While the range of wild species is mainly found in the mountainous areas along South America’s west coast from Colombia to northern Chile, today also introduced specimens of the angel trumpet as high north as Mexico, and the southern border area is believed to be so Southern Chile. In Puerto Rico and Hawaii, the angel trumpet also grows near villages and in the mountains. b. Suaveolens, which otherwise only grows wild around the eastern signs on the border between Peru and Brazil, it is also found naturalized all the way on the east coast of Brazil.
cultural hybrids
A cultural hybrid is an angelic trumpet that occurs when we humans make a cross between two angel trumpets and select the seedlings that carry the best properties. This group of angel trumpets can be divided in different ways. Some sort them in alphabetical order by their cultivar name, while a more serious division sorts them by the botanical groupings, such as species, hybrids, and multi-hybrids.
A species hybrid will always be a cross between two different individuals belonging to the same species, such as Brugmansia aurea x Brugmansia aurea.
A similar group consists of mixed hybrids similar to Brugmansia.x Candida and Brugmansia X Flava. A pure mixed hybrid requires that the crossing only contains genes from two different species, such as Brugmansia aurea and Brugmansia versicolor.
If it is a question of crossings where more than three wild species are included, they are called multihybrids. An example could be Brugmansia x ‘Charles Grimaldi’, which has many different species in its background. A Danish multihybrid is ‘Amorin’, which in its background has both Brugmansia aurea, Brugmansia suaveolens, and Brugmansia versicolor.
Although the angel trumpet within its large range of distribution is exposed to very diverse climate impacts, this in no way prevents the plant from thriving and blooming in the Danish climate.
The structure of the angel trumpet
As an angel trumpet enthusiast, you are understandably most concerned with the many large and beautiful flowers. Precisely for this reason, it is practical to know something about the structure of the angel trumpet, which is something peculiar. An understanding that explains why the angel trumpet sometimes stands without flowers throughout the summer period and only begins to form buds just before it has to be taken in.
In its development from seed to flowering plant, the angel trumpet undergoes two very different developmental phases. These phases always take place in the same order. The first phase can be called the growth phase, and the second phase of the flowering phase. It is an unyielding rule that seedlings of warm angel trumpets must always travel the growth phase before they can bloom.
The growth phase begins with the germination of the seed and ends with the straight trunk splitting into two branches. We call this a y.
Some angel trumpets grow more than 3 meters high before this Y division takes place, while others divide at a height of 80 cm. The division of the main trunk into two branches marks the transition to the flowering phase. If an angel trumpet has first developed this far, it will then, if the climate allows it, always be in the flowering phase.
At the bottom of the first y is the first knob. This means that all branches that are above the first fork will always be bud-forming, while the trunk, which is under it, will never form flowers. The trunk can set new branches, which then also have to go through the growth phase.
There have often been questions about whether you can’t do anything yourself to make the angel trumpet come into bloom earlier, but here the answer is no, you can’t get an angel trumpet earlier in bloom by artificial road.
An angel trumpet, which forms its flower branches at a height of 1 meter and is then cut down to ½ meter, will always have to grow the missing ½ meter before the flower branches are formed again. It is worse when the flower branches are first formed at a height of 2 meters and the plant is cut down completely in the autumn. The following season, this plant must spend most of the summer growing the necessary 2 meters before the flower buds can form.
This is the simple explanation of the flowerless angel trumpet. It has simply been cut back very hard and spends almost the entire outdoor season in the growth phase. One way to achieve early flowering is to never prune one’s angel trumpet under the first fork. Another way is to root a cutting from a flower branch as this will always be bud-forming. (See: Pruning and cutting reproduction). In this way, it is possible to already have flowers in May-June and all the rest of the season.
There is only one option to get a lower plant, and it is air layering
