Well, I'm headed home.... (they let me out of my metal box for a bit) Stuck at the airport... lil bit of free time and a few heinekens in the blood stream.... instead of annoying the locals with my insane prattle I guess I'll throw a few caapi pictures up.
Anyway here is a basic pictoral of caapi rooting.

A fella named Pan gave me a lil baby caapi plant once, I stuck it in a pot and rooted it, got it established over the next 2 years:


After this time I decided to take cuttings. This momma plant had 60ft of usable vine so I wanted to get the maximum amount of cuttings. I devised a single node rooting system. Instead of using a full node for roots and one for leaves I would take just one node and lay it sideways on the soil, thus half would root and half would sprout. seemed like a good idea. Would produce at least twice as many usable plants.




that worked out well!
Tip cuttings tend to fall over and sometimes die on you... woody sections are easiest obviously. I took my woody shrub know-how and remembered we used to "slice" with a razor blade the hard woody parts to promote rooting. I don't carry a knife so I chewed the ends lightly to break the surface.... three days later, rootbuds:


once rooted well in a small area


I'd transfer them to 1 quart pots where they could spend up to a year. It is always better to keep your tropical plants in too tight of a pot and water them often. The real killer here is overly wet soil as it pushed the oxygen out.



slip inside this house,
Ringworm

Ringworm? From the ayahuasca forums?

Thank you thank thank you for this thread!

I can only hope my caapi grows as wonderfully as yours someday!

yeah brother, the one and only.

so what about lighting?

I am finding that in the shade my plants would not grow much at all. They were only 3 inches tall from seed in 4-5 months, kept in the shade indoors with lots of water(but not drowning them). They would very slowly loose one set of leaves, and then put out another..but it was very slow..so that the plants only have leaves on the tops..they are still small though so maybe that is normal?

I just moved and have them in a sunny window with my mimosa trees, which are all growing very fast and very well..they get alot of sunlight now and seem to prefer it..I noticed that one week in the sun and the caapi plants began to put out new leaves..

I have always read that caapi likes alot of shade though, but mine dont seem to.

not trying to be rude here, but a minor reality check....
I could probably lay naked on asphalt in your neighborhood in July and not get a sunburn. You visiting me however would result in an immediate burn in January :-)

in it's native climate, the sun is VASTLY more intense then it will ever be in British C.
Thus in your neighborhood it would make sense to give your plants as much light as they can handle. Even so, these are not plants of the floor, caapi is a plant reaching for the heavens (else why would it be a vine?)
The leaves get crispy edges and yellowed evenly if it gets way too much light, I doubt you'll run into this problem.

It does get hot here in the summer where I am..I am like 15 mintues from the US boarder right on the ocean so it is alot milder here but yes you are right. In the winter the angle we are at is just not great for full sunlight..I have all of my plants in a sunny window, in a sunroom right now but I also have them under 2 grow lights with the proper spectrum. The only plants that dont seem to need the extra light are my salvia plants.

It is quite warm here in vancouver though. In many parks downtown you can see full grown brugmansia trees thriving, lots of palm trees here(though they can take colder weather)..there are people here who are even having great success growing date plams here outdoors 12 months of the year. Go just 1 or 2 hours east of the coast though and this just is not possible. The climate here is alot like the mediteranian..olives for example do well here and we have olive farms, as well as other mediteranian crops..so it is not nearly on par with the rest of canada, but yeah we are far from tropical..

My mimosa hostilis trees are thriving and over 4 feet in less than 6 months and concidering their native climate they require alot of heat and sunlight as well..maybe caapi is just more fussy though than other plants from near the equator.

Funny, I never had any luck with psychotria from seed..or caapi as cuttings..but when I attempted to germinate caapi seeds myself I had like 8 out of 10 of them germinate within less than a week..when I was expecting 1 or 2 if that..

I am planning on getting a larger indoor setup going soon and building my ownn larger light system to save on costs, with fans etc so hopefully that will help with some of the more fussy tropical species.

I live right in the middle of a gigantic temperate rainforest, and actually 5 minutes up the street from one of the largest peat bogs left in NA..so the humidity here is probly okay..more humid than alot of other places though..I do mist the caapi, but none of my other plants have ever needed it..I think you are right that light/heat are what it wants more of.

I have also been using a tropical organic soil mix with lots of perlite and organic fish ferts..

I have to agree with jamie here... I've had my caapi for over 2 months now and I have it growing in a window here in south florida. It gets about 5-6 hours a day of DIRECT sun. No obvious damage, no burned tips, etc.

Durring the 2 weeks that it actually got cold enough to close the windows here I did that and noticed a major stretch in the vine and growth slowed. The caapi only got filtered light through the window instead of its 5-6 hours of direct light and 5 hours or so of indirect light.

When it got direct light it was tight, compact growth. As soon as it lost that it started stretching.

It's back to being warm here again, about 75F, so the windows are back open and the caapi is picking up speed again.

Just thought I would share.

btw, I stuck my caapi plants in a humidity tent a few days ago and they already started new growth now.

Great stuff Ringworm! Thank you very much!

It grows really slow at anything under 80F, and grows fastest in the 90's. Light doesn't seem so important. I'm growing mine outside, under a porch, so it doesn't get much direct light. It's wrapped up in plastic and a blanket with a light for heat, and it has been managing 40s inside fairly well. It has had a few growth spurts when it gets in the 70s. I open it up. So it doesn't every really stop growing, just very slow.

It grows where it wants, and I've found that once it hits direct sunlight, it slows quite a bit. It is a "searching" kind of vine. It knows what it likes, so I try to let it go where it wants. I planted it in a spot that gets no direct sunlight, but is within reach of direct sunlight. This vine grows ridiculously fast when growing full out, as much as a foot in a couple of days, but it isn't easy to gauge because it's always wanting to grow out of every node every which way however fast it wants. It isn't like morning glories that want all the sun they can get, these vines seem to be strategic the way they grow. All I can say is that I wouldn't want to grow this inside. It's trainable, but it really wants to grow up and up and up. I wish I had a big tree for it to grow into, that is what I think it really wants, to grow in the canopy. The canopy would provide protection too, because the wind will tear up the vines and leaves if they are exposed. Caapi doesn't like strong winds.

Concerning water, just don't let it dry out, it likes constantly moist soil. I have highly variable humidity outside, generally humid, but the very dry days do not seem to affect it. It definitely doesn't need as much humidity as viridis. I imagine a sustained 20% RH for extended periods might be bad, but regular indoor humidities around 40-50% are fine (that's what it usually is around here). It is a woody vine with somewhat ridgid leaves, tougher than I thought it would be. I've only seen the leaves go limp one time, and even then it was just the newer green leaves. It was dry and cooler and a warm front turned it humid and hot. Some of my other plants were damaged in that ordeal, even some plants I consider tough. If they were watered properly and already hydrated, they wouldn't have been cooked like that.

Thanks for sharing Damon!

My caapi is still a young lady, not sure on age, I got her when she was around 6 inches tall about two or so months back. removed the damaged foilage upon arrival and now it is about a foot tall, few sets of leaves, growing just fine, no burned tips, not drooping, seems to be loving its location.

Her current growing conditions aren't very great either. I have it growing on an east facing windowsill. It gets at least 5 hours of DIRECT light daily, than th rest is just ambient sunlight coming in the room. Have no fertilized it yet and water it a little bit every other day.

There was a period of about 1-2 weeks where it got cold enough here in florida that i had the window closed. Durring that time the vine stretched because of lack of light. Upon warming up again and reopening the window 24/7, the caapi started growing tighter together again. It's funny to look at because its all spaced perfect than towards the top theres a big leap of no leaves, than at the top, huge leaves.

Caapi loves sun, at least mine does.

Spring will be here before i know it and I can't wait to get my babies outside to flourish.

Happy growing.

Hello fellow gardeners. Ive been trying to clone my caapi following this guide a bunch of times... i just dont know what is going wrong. My plants rot and die within 2 weeks. I was thinking the semi-hardwood cuttings i was using just werent hard enough, so i cut the thickest part of my plant (huge knotty node) and now have it in mini greenhouse. Ive tried the cuttings in water method, cutting in soil in a humid environment... all rot away on me. Im really hoping this hardwood cutting takes root, if any other help is available id greatly appreciate it =). The mother plant grows about 10' of vine every few days, its potted and seems very healthy.
UPDATE: The growing medium wasnt draining enough, thus the cuttings rotted within a week or two of planting. Added half sand to the medium, and built a humidity tent, seems like this is going to work great!

Greenish cuttings are indeed hard to root compared to semi woody cuttings.
I am not there looking at the situation, but my first thought with rot is this:

What soil are you using? peat based soils stay too wet, I prefer something sandy or very porous and kept moist but not wet. When I say wet, taking a handful of soil and squeezing it should not get any water to fall out.

Good luck,
rw

Mind sharing your soil mixes? I just lost a couple of psychotria leaf propagules (potentially to fungal gnats) that were in straight pine bark mulch/fines. Got some stem cuttings in a cactus soil/coir/perlite mix that seem to be fine and are still in the process of rooting. Kinda the wrong thread...but with your comment on soil, I figured perhaps trying a new soil could help.

you had fungus gnats in pine bark? weird. Can't say I've had that problem.

I used sand/pine bark for everything until the plant was established. After that i had no problem using any sorta peat mix in conjunction with more pine bark.

a friend is going to travel, and is going to bring me a caapi plant. the smallest plant he has is quite big for travel, so he is thinking of cutting 70% of the vine, leaving the lower 30% and roots.
so i would like to know if its safe for the plant. anyone experienced with caapi knows how it reacts to trimmmings? will it sprout from the trimmed part again?

thanks

The Caapi should be able to handle that sort of pruning without causing it too much stress. If you leave a few shoots it will recover quite fast. If there are no new shoots then Caapi can shoot new ones from the nodes.

Caapi has a strong will to live and is very hardy except when grown in a cold climate.

Mine was destroyed by my dog which mauled the stem at ground level and almost completely ring barked it. It grew back stronger than ever in less than 2 years. Recently I had to dig it out because the tree that was hosting it was cut down, it looked a bit sad for a while but it's starting to put out new shoots again.

Don't get too concerned if it drops most of its leaves, that's a normal response to stress. You can be quite confident that it will recover.

Edit: One of my mates has a Caapi that he hacks back regularly and it seems to thrive on the hard pruning.

good to know! it really seems like a resilient plant, but i wanted to be sure! thanks

Ringworm if you have a chance maybe you could take a look at these pictures. I'm curious if there are any glaring mistakes here. This is my first attempt trying to clone. I'm moving soon and I have more vine I can attempt to make more clones from it if these fail.

I used some fresh growth and some semi-woody pieces. Dipped them in rooting powder and placed them in these rooting cubes. I'm thinking perhaps the rooting cubes are too loose and aren't holding water well enough?
Also I had it all under a dome and on a heat mat. I've removed the heat mat as it seemed to also be contributing to drying the soil too quickly.
Any advice from anyone is greatly appreciated.

Looks fine. I like those root cubes, they are nice.

Good luck.