Random plant event: Euphorbia milii flowering

In May 2009, I bought a Euphorbia milii. I was never all that crazy about them, but I like Euphorbias in general, and Plowing Through Life (who was still Water Roots at the time) spoke highly of them, so I figured it was only sensible to give them a try. I picked out one with lots of salmon-colored flowers on it, brought it home, and watched as it dropped all the flowers.

And then, for another seventeen or eighteen months, basically nothing happened. The plant got taller. It grew some new leaves, it dropped some old leaves, but it wouldn't rebloom. Did it need fertilizer? I fed it, then fed it again. Nothing. Did it need more light? Well, too bad, because I didn't have a brighter spot for it, and anyway it was in a pretty bright spot already. Was it, perhaps, rootbound? Pulled it out of the pot to check and found that, if anything, its pot was too big, that either some of the roots had died or it had been over-potted from the start.

So this, though only a single flower, and not even a particularly interesting flower at that, is a huge deal:


What changed? One of the plants in a spot with really good light got big and had to move, freeing up some space, so the Euphorbia milii has had maybe two or three months of some sun, plus supplemental artificial light. Apparently the problem was light all along, even though it was in what I thought was a pretty bright west window. Live and learn.