Schefflera arboricola - Dwarf Umbrella Tree

[Steven]

G'day,

Here's my Schefflera that was well and truly due for a haircut! I think it's also in need of a different pot. Any suggestions?

October 2010.jpg

October 2010 defoliated.jpg

I find it difficult to keep the leaf size down. Does anyone have any advice for this?

Regards,
Steven

[NBPCA]

Looks great Steven, try a shallow oval pot - it will really accentuate those aerial roots.
Cheers,
Leigh.

[bodhidharma]

Looks great Steven, try a shallow oval pot - it will really accentuate those aerial roots.
Cheers,
Leigh.

It is looking good Steven. I agree with Leigh's suggestion of pot. Defoliation is one way of keeping leaf size down but you know that. How about defoliating a few times during the season and less fertilising? Also desheathing your leaves but it is tedious work and maybe only works on Ficus?

[bonsai4life]

beautiful specimen Steven
agree with Leigh and Bodhi an oval pot ...maybe in a light aqua glaze, a little wider than what its in now. Just so u can see where the roots enter the earth better.
Love the aerial roots
Scott

[craigw60]

Thats fantastic Steven, I would cut it harder there seems to be lots of strong straight twigs in there, you should shorten all of them.
How old is this plant ? where did you find it ?
Craigw

[Chris H]

If it was mine Id put it in a large oval dish where there is a lot of space off to the side and have a very small accent underneath it. (it migh take up a lot of bench space that way though)

[tex048]

Hi Stephen nice umbrella.

How often do you totally defoliate and how much does the leaf size reduce??

[Steven]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Craig, I have had it for a couple of years now. I think this one came with some figs I purchased from a market seller. It was extremely root bound in a plastic terracotta look pot. I suspect it was an ex-rental.
Tex, I defoliated it twice last year which increased the foliage/ramification 3 fold but didn't seem to have any effect on the leaf size. They are very hardy so I will do it more often this year and see what happens.

I'd like to see a virt of an aqua oval dish. Where's Jamie when you need him?!?!

Regards,
Steven

[craigw60]

Steven, the more twigs you get the smaller the leaves will be. More vigorous pruning could help.
Craig

[Steven]

Thanks Craig! I'll give it a go.
S.

[JayP]

Looks great Steven, try a shallow oval pot - it will really accentuate those aerial roots.
Cheers,
Leigh.

agreed!

[Graeme]

Steven, if you were asking for my advice I'd tell you to chuck the weed in the bin and work on something worthwhile.............. until.
We had a lady in our Club in Darwin, who either 1) loved these things, or 2) just wanted to annoy me at every chance. Each workshop she would bring in another b*^##@ Umbrella for us to work on, I think she must have had hundreds of them . Anyhow, work on them we did and they grew really nice trunks, branches and root systems, aerials as well, but no matter what we did we couldn't get the leaves to reduce, even tho' we knew they would reduce from the magazine photos she had. Anyhow after a few years of trying her and her Husband went away somewhere for 2 years (I think) for work. She left her trees with her kids to look after while they were away. Needless to say, kids being kids the trees got watered accasionally, never fertilized and definately never repotted, although they did cut off any roots that grew out of the pots. None of the trees were planted in a pot deeper than around 1.5 inch, as we couldn't get any bigger pots up there back then.
Anyhow, after being away for 2 years Cynthia bought a couple of the b*^##@ umbrella's in to a meeting to start repotting them ( ). The things were so rootbound we had to break one of the pots to get it out (lucky it was only a cheapie ). But the big news was that the leaves had reduced to amlost tiny size. By way of experiment we root pruned one of the trees quite heavily and the other one I only very lightly root pruned. putting them both back into fairly shallow pots. The one we rootpruned heavily grew leaves about twice the size, still smaller than normal. The tree I tip pruned kept its small leaves, but improved in health.
I guess what it showed is the tree responds best to being pot bound if leaf reduction is the aim, but care has to be taken as tree health can suffer, as with any tree.
Now, where was that bin?

[Jamie]

couple of quick ones Steven i think a dark brown shallow tray would work well too.

virt for steven shef.jpg

virt for steven shefa.jpg

Jamie

[Istari]

very nice tree steven, I havent seen one of these since my mother had one out the front of her place. I wonder what happend to it...

[Steven]

Thanks for the virts Jamie!
Graeme, that's interesting about them liking being pot bound. When I got this one it looked like it had been in the same self watering plastic pot all its life. I'm sure that's what has caused the aerial roots to grow.

I have taken CraigW's advice and pruned it back harder to remove the straight twigs. All branches without movement have been cut to the first or second node. After looking at the picture I think it may need more off.

October 2010 defoliated_2.jpg

When I was trimming it the other night I thought it might be fun to play around with the 360° technology.

Schefflera Trimming animation.

What do you think?

Regards,
Steven