Ficus obliqua 'figaro' work in progress

[Dendrophile Dave]

Hi all, i recently purchased 3 large Ficus obliqua 'figaro' from a nursery in 50 litre pots, this cultivar is supposedly dwarfish, it does seem to be a fairly upright grower from what i've seen so far and an earlier one i purchased did not like the recent cold winter we experienced in Melbourne. Anyway here is the first bit of work on 1 of the 3, it's definitely got some character so hoping it will develop nicely, there was a natural void half way up the pot which you can see by the red felcos sticking out in the photo, this provided a nice point to chop the root ball. If anyone has experience working with this cultivar please chime in, i'm thinking of going back and buying more stock but they were a bit expensive and i'm not sure how they'll go...

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[TimIAm]

You've got plenty to work with there and definitely looks healthy. Don't know anything about this cultivar, but you've got some work ahead if you want to bring it in and reduce the leaf size, but that's the fun part.

Do you have any idea what final height you're hoping to get? It's common for people to add a can of something (soft drink) next to the tree to see the size you're working with, I'm definitely curious how big this is. Also interested on a ballpark for how much a tree this size costs, I've never seen large ficus nursery stock except for fruit trees or larger developed trees not nursery stock.

Looks like a fun project with plenty to keep you going

[Dendrophile Dave]

Cheers Tim, i'll post some more pics so you get a sense of scale, i didn't want to reduce the height down just yet until i see how it responds to the root ball being cut in half plus it is perhaps a bit late in the Summer here in Melbourne for heavy branch reduction?
I paid $60 each (they were half price as they've been in their pots for way too long) general landscape line material

[Dendrophile Dave]

90cms tall from soil level to top of canopy. pot is 40cms across

[TimIAm]

i didn't want to reduce the height down just yet until i see how it responds to the root ball being cut in half plus

Ah... that sounds like a reasonable plan.


I think that was a good price to pay if you like ficus. You've got a really interesting base to work with. The price range of the developed-large stock I've seen is $2k and above.