Advice on this ficus

[hawkeyes]

Hi, I need advice on this ficus. Has been neglected for awhile. I think it needs lopping, any advice would be appreciated.

[Shaady]

It certainly does look in need of some aggressive pruning, however I would wait for warmer weather before doing any Ficus work.

[hawkeyes]

Thanks for quick reply Shaady. Could you advise me where I should prune. I will wait for next month. Just trying to get some ideas.

[benbonsai]

Looks like a Benjamin fig
These can pretty much be cut back anywhere and they will send out new shoots.
I have a couple of them and have cut them back hard and left no green on them and within weeks there are new shoots.

[Bougy Fan]

It does look like a benji, but there is a type that is very brittle and grow with a different type of growth that it is not straight. It looks that that type to me. Anyway regardless it is a fig. It really should be cut back quite hard to about the third branch to get some taper happening. Problem is in a bonsai pot it will be very slow to regrow a new upper section and it will need subsequent cuts at various heights, otherwise you will be back where you started from.

[Shaady]

I honestly tend to disagree that Ficus grow slow or poorly in Bonsai pots. Ficus has evolved to be able to grow and even thrive in very shallow and poor soil. I recently rescued a large benjamina growing on my mates chook pen roof, growing only on the leaf litter collected on the rooftop (yet this never seemed to slow it down in the slightest). Most if not all of the Ficus seedling I have growing in small plastic bonsai training pots are actually grower better than those planted into larger pots to grow out and a lot of them actually start to develop a caudiciform growth habit. You can generally prune Ficus anytime when the weather is warm and humid, I personally wont be touching any of my (now rather excessive) tropical fig collection until closer to the end of spring but that is more that I prioritize repotting alot of my other trees first because the figs don't mind being repotted in the summer heat. As for where to prune that is completely up to you but I would look at pruning somewhere around the first few branches. For me personally figs seem to be unkillable, so I would not fear over pruning. I collected a benji that germinated in an already full pot of house plants, it was lanky and ugly both above and below ground so I cut it back to a 1 inch stick with one leave and one root and potted into a tiny bonsai pot in full sun and it has since thrived.