[Humid FL] Trunk-Chopping Schefflera's below foliage OK? Just got a mini hedge-row :D

SU2

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So I just took a break to come home with a mini hedge-row (3) of crappily-developed schefflera's, a straggly mass of thin branches reaching maybe 2.5' from the ground, anyways I basically just pulled them out of the ground (minimal hand-sawing with a drywall knife to avoid tearing any thicker roots 'the wrong way' when pulling), hosed them til they were soaking & mostly bare-rooted and left them in a big (covered) tub in my yard.....Can I trunk-chop these guys to lil 1-4" trunks? Are forest-plantings a dumb idea with this specie?(am at a loss for what to do besides a generic "chop & see what it gives ya") And last but not least, how aggressive can I be on those roots? I'm OK with anything from simply potting-up / sticking in-ground the whole bunch as-is, to chopping 95% of the upper&lower portions off and putting them in shallow pots, just unsure what the usual approach is in a semi-tropic 9a area when starting-out with larger schefflera stock! (For context of 'grow environment', my ficus grow so many aerials I've begun removing some for aesthetic reasons...)

20190301_114318.jpg

Thanks a ton for any&all advice on these guys!!! Never had a dwarfed schefflera (don't feel right calling it 'bonsai' for some reason lol, even though I think I'd argue it is) so am totally on-a-limb here and don't have the time to watch hours of youtubes to get acquainted (am even unsure how bad the 'wet bucket' temp-storage right now is for them!) Again thanks for any thoughts, my first 'creative instinct' was to get (not now) a scoria slab to carve-out and make as the slab for a forest planting of these guys, I feel like I've seen various foliage-types on these things and think this *is* the smaller type so perhaps it would take to reduction for a lil forest, would obviously be a silly specimen in the end *but* I could still see it looking really cool, the vivid yellow&green against a red scoria slab!

[edited-to-add: I should mention that I'm treating/want to treat this as "spring-time" even though it's not, the reality is it is a spring-time environment here and, if/when we get any last cold spurts, my overwintering setup is more than redundant so zero concerns/weight should be given to supple new shoots in early March]
 

Bonsai Nut

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Yes you can cut them back hard and they will bud on old bark... however I'm not sure it is best if you do that at the same time that you are reducing roots and repotting. It might work, it might not. If it were me I would trim them moderately right now, get them situated in a container so they are well established for the summer, and then cut them back hard next spring.

I cut back my landscape scheffleras every winter (compete defoliation), and they are never the worse for wear.
 

Michael P

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From my experience, don't prune too much top growth until they are established and growing well in a training pot. That might be as soon as early summer this year, maybe next year. Then you can do drastic pruning to shorten all those straight trunks.

The usual style for this species is a banyan clump with lots of aerial roots. I have seen convincing forests, but they tend to be big because of leaf size.
 
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SU2

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Yes you can cut them back hard and they will bud on old bark... however I'm not sure it is best if you do that at the same time that you are reducing roots and repotting. It might work, it might not. If it were me I would trim them moderately right now, get them situated in a container so they are well established for the summer, and then cut them back hard next spring.

I cut back my landscape scheffleras every winter (compete defoliation), and they are never the worse for wear.
Thanks a ton, very informative!!!! I took them all and got them into (3 or 4?) pots, pruned every shoot/branch down to its last good cluster/pad, defoliated some of the older leaves & leaves that wouldn't be facing the sun, and am now just letting them get sun til ~1.30pm + intermittent misting (manual, not automated, probably [gently!]blasting their foliage, aiming not to over-soak their roots, 2-3x daily whenever misting my new BC's)

With it barely being the start of the growing season, and with me getting almost 2 growing seasons annually here (in terms of how fast I can grow, relative to others' pictures, I get the impression I'm growing things around 150-250% faster than most ppl), could it be viable to let them take to the containers now, start growing again *then* go and do the hard-prunes in ~May-->June? With it being a tropical, and with the incredibly fast growth here (environmental & horticultural), I feel like waiting an entire year is wasting time - if it were a bougie, crape, ficus, bald cypress, heck any specie I already own and know, I'd definitely do it all this year - are schefflera's particularly sensitive (if you happen to know!)? Sometimes I feel the "1 insult per year" just doesn't apply (it's such a "black & white" rule-of-thumb, I mean someone working a spruce in colorado versus me working schefflera in FL, just completely different games!) Do you happen to know if the species is more sensitive to root, or canopy/foliage, work/stress/insults? I was able to get them into containers w/o having to remove much roots, just some redundant larger ones got snipped in half but mostly just potted what I pulled out of the ground :)

Do you happen to know about aerial roots on these? I've browsed 'schefflera bonsai' and am seeing plenty of gnarly aerial-roots and my immediate Q is "do they grow them as profusely as a Ficus?" lol!! W/ Ficus I can grow absurd aerial roots, in fact during my spring-prep for my lil Microcarpa I'll be cutting off some excessive aerials, some spots have aerials that're getting as thick as the branch, a problem I expect very few have to deal with ;D
 

Michael P

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Schefflera arbicola is just about indestructible, so given your conditions you may be able to cut back drastically in early summer. In my colder and much drier climate they must come indoors in the winter, so things are a little slower for me. The biggest challenge is learning to work with their growth pattern which is different than the other species you mention. I do clip and grow almost exclusively on mine.

They produce more aerial roots than any of my ficus. Here the aerial roots get started in late spring/early summer when it is warm and humid. But they dry out and die in August if not protected in some way. You will have more aerial roots than you know what to do with. I really enjoy working with the species, and plan a root over rock project this year.
 

Silentrunning

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The one thing I noticed about Schefflera is they thrive on abuse. Like @Michael P said above, they are indestructible. The only time I had problems with mine were when I would pamper them. I had 2 in Florida that were over12 feet tall. The dwarf I have now is thriving and the only care it gets is to be brought indoors for the winter.
 

SU2

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From my experience, don't prune too much top growth until they are established and growing well in a training pot. That might be as soon as early summer this year, maybe next year. Then you can do drastic pruning to shorten all those straight trunks.

The usual style for this species is a banyan clump with lots of aerial roots. I have seen convincing forests, but they tend to be big because of leaf size.

Thanks a lot!!! This is "what I was hoping to hear"!! Do you know whether their aerials form more/less easily than a Ficus' would? Or, w/ variety amongst ficus, would you say they throw aerials more like a benjaminan or a microcarpa? I guess I'm picturing that, since these need trunk-development (ugh...I'm a collector/not a grower!), if they're able to produce aerials w/ any reliability & control-ability then I can setup to grow a *ton* of them, as mentioned in post#4 I actually grow too many aerials on my Microcarpa, I figure that with this "batch" of schefflera stock that as you say the approach should be a banyan type clumping/arrangement, am actually thinking this will come out incredible in ~1yr (the "start") when, after getting the trunks a lil thicker & getting a ton of aerials, when I carve-out a large scoria slab to make a group planting (or is that a faux pas with banyan style stuff? If so, would you be thinking to make multiple specimen here, or to fuse everything up together?)
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Can you tell by the pictures if it's a dwarf cultivar? I'd swear that the leaf-size on schefflera is usually larger than these guys... Here they are today, potted-up and placed in sun til 1.30p (when the house blocks it for the rest of the day), blocking the sun from cooking my BC's pot ;D
 

Michael P

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There are dwarf cultivars, but they aren't common. A friend found two that we think are dwarves at a big box store, but they were only labled "houseplant". She is going to give me one this spring, and I will speed up its growth as much as I can. The leaves are about half the size of normal, and both had huge numbers of aerial roots.
 
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SU2

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There are dwarf cultivars, but they aren't common. A friend found two that we think are dwarves at a big box store, but they were only labled "houseplant". She is going to give me one this spring, and I will speed up its growth as much as I can. The leaves are about half the size of normal, and both had huge numbers of aerial roots.
Ah ok so am unlikely to have dwarfs here then :/ Meh, the foliage seems to reduce quite well and, while I've yet to get any bud-break, they seem VERY eager to back-bud, I took the crummiest trunk of the batch and trunk-chopped it, thinking "it's FL and these will explode w/ a massive flush if I hard-prune now", anyways it's only been days but the already-visible latent/epicormic buds on these guys' trunks are all swollen-up and am expecting some to burst today or tomorrow, the minute I get bud-break on the tester I'm chopping the whole batch and going from there, just uncertain whether I should grow-out/develop them individually or as-a-group, as they'll all be 1 group-planting on a scoria-slab (so eager to get to the landscape-supplier and find a good slab to carve :D )

[edited-in: and re aerials, our humidity here in semi-tropical central-FL is so high that things like Ficus.M just throw aerials w/o you doing anything and, if you try and foster them, they can be grown out.of.control, so if schefflera is anything like that then I can basically pick&choose where & how-many aerials I want as part of the final group-banyan planting....or is it "clump planting"? "Forest" isn't what I have in-mind, kinda picturing just smashing them together so they all fuse - **VERY** interested if anyone's got tips on this, or just thoughts on it, I guess I'm picturing bare-rooting at some point and using wires/zip-ties to merge them all into "1 plant" that'd be a clumpy, gnarly banyan-grouping that, over time, would become indistinguishable as multiple trees and just look like 1 gnarly beast!]
 

Michael P

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In my climate, if I defoliate and cut terminal buds in early summer the leaves reduce very well.

Late last summer I decided to try to fuse two large branches. I scraped the bark off where the branches would touch and used vinyl grafting tape to to bind them together. I don't want to remove the tape until the tree goes back outside and is actively growing. But I will let you the result when I do.
 

eb84327

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I bought a dwarf variety from widgerts and had it shipped to Idaho. They don't grow that great here. I winter it under big LED grow lights to make up for Idaho winter's. So far the leafs stay around the size of a quarter. I have not defoliated it yet. They back bud well and I am planning on cutting my it back at the end of next winter. I have another that came from fuku bonsai in Hawaii. I have defoliated this one and I did notice a reduction in size. The one from fuku produces long stems from leaf to branch vs the one from widgerts is nice and compact.

They shoot out aerial roots pretty easily. I kept a couple cones in a humidity chamber made from clear plastic at around 70+ humidity (dry winter) and within a month had Aerials.

they will fuse over time naturally also. fukubonsai.com has some awesome information too on how to grow dwarf schefflera as bonsai.
 
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