remist17
Shohin
I have two ficus now and I see alot of people stripping all the leaves off them. Can you point a me in the correct direction?
- Why defoliate ?
- When to defoliate?
Thanks
- Why defoliate ?
- When to defoliate?
Thanks
...When people tell me to cut back to the 3 node? Is that the third set of leaves on a branch?
lol I was thinking this when I read that post near-top saying 'go ahead defoliate-fully'.... my 1st-ever trunk chopping was to a nice Ficus Benji topiary, watched it die for months lol...sometimes they'll backbud I've got a 4-5 ficus.b 'clump/group' planted w/o foliage now and have several spots clearly wanting to break-open, we'll see this week!You need to remember, too, that not all figs defoliate well. I am NOT a figgy person, so I can't tell you all the figs that do defoliate well. I do know, however, that F. benjamina and its look-alikes do NOT like to be totally defoliated, and often don't care much for partial (an individual branch) defoliation, either. So don't go out and haphazardly rip leaves off any ol' Ficus. It may not work.
The only Ficus I work with are the willow-leaf figs. They take defoliation extremely well. But the heat of summer with lots of warm and sunny weather ahead of them for regrowth of the canopy is when you do it. In Pennsylvania, you are much too late.
You need to remember, too, that not all figs defoliate well. I am NOT a figgy person, so I can't tell you all the figs that do defoliate well. I do know, however, that F. benjamina and its look-alikes do NOT like to be totally defoliated, and often don't care much for partial (an individual branch) defoliation, either. So don't go out and haphazardly rip leaves off any ol' Ficus. It may not work.
The only Ficus I work with are the willow-leaf figs. They take defoliation extremely well. But the heat of summer with lots of warm and sunny weather ahead of them for regrowth of the canopy is when you do it. In Pennsylvania, you are much too late.
So much to digest here am gonna need a few spaced-apart reads, thanksWhen you defoliate, you force the tree to replace the entire canopy at the same time. If it is done just before a tropical tree would normally begin replacing last year's canopy, all the leaves will be new and about the same size. For instance, in spring. If it is done in June after the tree has already replaced last year's canopy it becomes an emergency response for the tree which has just used-up a normal amount of the resources accumulated in the last year to make this year's new canopy. Since it has not had time to replace those resources, all the leaves will be significantly smaller and all the same size, if and only if the primary buds at the tips of the stem have been removed. It is necessary to remove every primary growth bud, -those at the tips of branches, to force the tree to direct growth to the secondary buds, those present and immediately interior on the stem, and some tertiary buds, those that normally are reserved for emergencies and would not be expanded, ever. Tertiary buds are even closer to the trunk. The resources of the tree are evenly divided between the new leaves which are smaller because the tree has very limited resources. The tree will grow less in that growing season, and slower, and put on less wood than in a normal season. If you do not remove the tips, all the resources will be directed to the tips and you will get nearly standard size leaves growing on stems that are elongating, usually not helpful for bonsai purposes.
There is an inverse correlation between the normal lifespan of a leaf and the response to grow a new canopy. The longer the normal lifespan of a leaf, the poorer the response. It is true for figs with big leaves like F. elastica and F. benghalensis, and for most Boxwood and Holly and other evergreen or semi-evergreen species. It can take two years for a boxwood to replace an entire canopy, and with no positive attributes.
Some trees can be defoliated more than once in a season, like Maples. But, since this is very stressful to the tree, it is playing with fire to do so. There has to be enough of the growing season left to grow the new leaves and also mature new buds for the following spring and store enough resources to expand the canopy, or you will have a silent spring. If the winter is particularly hard they may not be able to support a new canopy and perish while leafing out only partially. Some trees have a single flush of growth per year and if defoliated stay that way for the balance of the season. Euonymus alatus is one.
When defoliating, it is necessary to not damage the new bud in the axil. The best way to guarantee that is to cut the petiole at the base of the leaf instead of at the branch. The tree will look stupid for a couple weeks, but the stem will be drying and will be kicked off by the expanding bud. If you feed the tree immediately before this operation, or any time before the leaves are fully expanded, they will be bigger. If you feed immediately following full expansion of the leaves, you are feeding next season's buds and flowers.
Trees that flower of the tips of the stem most likely will not have flowers if you defoliate as late as June (and remove primary buds). Normally a tree needs one full year's worth of growth in order to flower, so you prune hard immediately following flowering, whenever that is. That would be in conflict with defoliating, for example Stewartia pseudocamellia.
So, you defoliate for reasons: to get this or that, and pay the price, and take your chances.
I don't think I understand this. The basic rules of bonsai guide us to have space between branches/layers/clouds so that we can have healthy lower branches. That characterizes a formal or informal upright design. We create the spaces to style the tree, but the tree wouldn't have healthy lower branches without this "styling" procedure. This is a chicken-and-egg statement. You can't have one without the other. If you have a helmet design of a broom, you only have foliage on the ends of branches. That's also part of the design. Brooms are helmets and not balls because foliage won't grow on the underside of the ball.I'm going for rapid-growth so I can have the proper branch-structure to then enact principles alluded to in your^ post... I de-foliate individual leaves or branches (or 'areas') very frequently so that stronger apical growth on, say, my Maples isn't shadowing-out and killing lower-branches' foliage and to help promote more balanced growth...
Apical growth is the default. If you leave the apical bud after denuding, it will grow the typical way growth does, it will extend the tip and add a few pairs of secondaries, too, and I speculate all or most of the lower secondaries would be abandoned. If you want to encourage apical growth, do nothing, and the second & third flushes will grow from the tips."If I do this (defoliaging) and intentionally leave apical tips, wouldn't it force more growth in a given time-period"?
Yes you are seeing negative effects. Just because you are getting what looks like vigorous growth the following spring doesn't mean there is no net loss of vigor. You are, indeed, stealing resources and converting those resources into leaves that have been lost. The tree is recovering, but it would would grown more if you didn't steal those resources. You will have a second and third flush with Maples only to the extent that you didn't steal so much in resources to preclude either or both....it's here that I tend to intervene and force another vegetative flush (or at bare-minimum removal of flowers), I know it's 'stealing' resources from the next flush but every spring they're still more-vigorous than the year before ie I'm seeing zero negative long-terms...