[Dingus] Willow Leaf Ficus (ficus nerifolia) #1 & #2

Carol 83

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only the salicaria that I did heavy root work on dropped all their foliage when brought in. Those that I did little or no root work on dropped a few leaves here-n-there but mostly held onto them. I'll be keeping that in mind as I work on these guys in the future.
Mine has dropped it's leaves every winter for the past 5 years, since I've had it. It didn't leaf out this year until almost June. BUT this year, it didn't lose it's leaves and I have no idea whatsoever why.
 

LittleDingus

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Mine has dropped it's leaves every winter for the past 5 years, since I've had it. It didn't leaf out this year until almost June. BUT this year, it didn't lose it's leaves and I have no idea whatsoever why.

Interesting. They seem almost as finicky as BRTs this far north :)

I currently have 2 sets of salicaria (well 3 sets if the cuttings I planted today strike). I have these 2 and I have two that are smaller but are two halves of the same tree. I had cut the top off above the fat roots to see how the two would develop differently. I have a thread somewhere on those two also. They are grown right next to each other and not so far from these at all times.

The winter after the chop on that set, they both threw all their leaves when brought in. This year they aren't any bigger being in small pots, but they hadn't been disturbed and both kept their leaves.

Correlation does not equal causation...and my sample set is very small. It's just a curious observation and something I'll keep tabs on going forward is all. I put stuff like that in these threads because I'm lazy and don't document my work anywhere else as I probably should.
 

LittleDingus

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These guys had a rough spring. There was a lot of construction going on around my house during the spring...still ongoing actually...with enough activity in/around the garage that I was having trouble maintaining a proper two-step. They both got frostbitten a couple of times. Then they got stuck in the dark garage for a week because excavators were digging up my lawn. I thought it would only be a day or two so I didn't bring them back into the basement...but it wound up being much longer before I could get them back outside during the day.

They both ended up dropping all their foliage and some of the smaller branches and were starting to look convincingly dead-dead...but now that heat has been turned on and we've had almost a full week on 90F days, they've begun to wake up again.

Haters gonna hate on the whole geode thing...but I rather like this larger one:

20230602_150330.jpg

It really is a nice tree when it's all filled in. Hopefully I can keep some weep in the larger branches and start working on better ramification and fullness later this year and into next. It's starting to look as I initially envisioned. I was initially thinking an air root or two...but I'm going to forget about even attempting that and just focus on filling out a canopy and hoping the exposed roots don't plump up too much more...

Even though this was always the "backup" tree, it's starting to show some poential:

20230602_150220.jpg

It needs some more root work...especially on the back. It was worse off than it's sibling though so for now it's just grow-grow-grow to gain back some vigor.
 
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