This ornamental plant belongs to the family Euphorbiaceae, that is, with any minor damage from the trunk or leaves, white thick juice can stand out. Craton flowers have long become popular pets with many housewives in our country, they are loved for their bright, broad, colorful leaves and the ability to clean the air from many types of bacteria.
So that growing a plant does not become a constant race for survival, you need to prepare in advance. This is especially true of the temperature regime, because one of the most thermophilic home species is definitely a craton flower. How to care for him so that there are no problems? The temperature should never be below +17 ° C, you need to protect the flower from any drafts and possible differences in humidity. The ideal mode would be to maintain a mark of +22 ° C, if it is lower, the roots of the plant will quickly decay and the leaves will fall off.
Cratons are placed on well-lit window sills, however, direct sunlight should be excluded, which can burn colorful leaves. In winter, the plant is exposed to the south or west, and in summer - in the east or west. Northern windows do not fit this type of Euphorbia. If there is little light, the flowers of craton will lose their decorative color and become simply green.
Watering the plant should be plentiful, but only in spring and summer, when there is maximum evaporation of moisture. In autumn and winter, you can simply regularly spray leaves from the spray bottle with cold water and pour a little liquid under the root once every 1-2 weeks. It is easy to find out that craton flowers suffer from a lack of moisture: large leaves will immediately go down and hang together on the walls of the pot. Water must be defended and kept warm, if you use ordinary cold watering, you can lose all the leaves in one day. Ambient humidity should always be high, as the plant comes from the tropics.
Kraton flower: self-propagation
The main way to get a new plant is to disconnect the apical stalk 10-12 cm in size. Perform a similar procedure with a sharp knife, then immerse the resulting material in warm water with charcoal diluted in it. If there is no special fertilizer, an ordinary pharmacy activated analogue is suitable. You need to wait for the complete dissolution of the milky juice, after which the stalk is dried with a cloth or just in the air. So that the leaves do not interfere, they are not very tightly tied on top and the croton is planted in a mini-greenhouse. The soil is prepared from a mixture of sphagnum moss or peat with the addition of river sand. Next, you need to spray the stalk every day and ventilate the greenhouse. The roots should appear within one month, but you can speed up this process using the Zircon or Kornevin fertilizer.
Other methods of propagation are seed sowing or germination of seedlings and seedlings of croton by air layers. In January-February, you can sow a flower in the same mini-greenhouse, but you should first soak the material in phytohormones for at least 2 hours. The first shoots will appear only for 3-4 weeks, so cuttings are a more reliable and quick method.