The biggest jade tree I've come across was this potted beast!
Sorry for the ghost...the person in the chair is not related to me and doesn't want to be internet famous and I don't have a wide angle view without them
But here's a closeup:
That trunk on the front right is ~6" in diameter! The tree stood over 6' tall. It was in a large plastic "terra cotta" pot
I was very bummed when I saw that tree. My wife gifted me an ovata in a 4" pot when we first started dating back in 1990. It was my first personal plant. I still have it...too many copies of it to count actually! For decades, I would pick cuttings off the top and throw the base away when I ran out of room for it
It's 30 years old now! When I think about how thick the trunks I have are now and what they could have been had I not been throwing away the "good" part for 20+ years...sigh...
This is the largest trunk I have currently:
It's just over 2" at the base. I spent the past year looking for a better pot to support the semi-cascade style I've been growing it in. I was never able to find anything heavy enough to support the cantilever it makes...turns out storing water in your trunk makes you heavy!
I've recently decided that it gets too heavy and can't support itself well enough in this configuration no matter what pot I put it in. I'm afraid the trunk will eventually snap as it gets heavier and heavier filling in the foliage I wanted. I've recently repotted it to be upright again...which makes it look really stupid with all the foliage on one side and now pointing mostly down! It might be 2 years before it starts looking normal again...but some part of this plant is with me until the day I die so I'm not too worried about how long it takes
Mine flowered for the first time in 30 years this past winter.
To be fair, until the last few years, I've only ever grown it as an indoor houseplant. I had a bucket list item to get it to flower, but I was not actively trying to make it flower.
They need to cold nights to trigger flowering. I think most people...myself included...tend to bring them back inside (or grow them inside year round) before it get's cool enough to trigger flowers. I left my "outside" cutting out until nights were dipping below 40F last fall before I brought it back inside. And I got a smittering of flowers
I now have 2 main plantings from the original gift. One with multiple trunks that I keep as a house plant and water only about once a month:
and one trunk that I keep outside during the summer to try and thicken up/trigger to flower:
Note: that's the same trunk as the cascade in the red pot above. I told you it looked stupid now! I'll likely defoliate it in and prune back a little more in the spring to set it on a more upright path. For now, I'm hoping I can get it to flower again first
Besides these two main plantings, I have uncounted other trunks from the same original plant in various places scattered about. I gift them, trade them, experiment on them, neglect them, etc...I do end up throwing away a large mass of ovata every year...but it seems I can't make the hard decision to part with
all the "extras"...
So yes, crassula ovata has a very special place in my heart and home
