ficus question !

Jut

hello guys,
i had been given a couple of wild ficus ( dont know the exact type though) a year back. i planted them in grow boxes and they grew like crazy.......ive never seen a plant grow so fast ! they also grew aerial roots like there was no tomarrow.........all in all this seems to be the tree for me but the thing is that when left to grow untouched it has leaves that are at the longest 6-7 inches long. i know reducing that size of leaves is quite tough.......if not impossible. so the question here is should i keep on growing this breed of ficus ? even though it has suck long leaves? how far do you think the leave size can be reduced ?.......... maybe due to the leaf size making smaller bonsai would be useless but i bet if grown to become larger bonsai the leaf size problem would be less of a problem ?........so what do you guys think should i go for it ?.........ill paste the pictures of the tree as soon as possible.............


Jut

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rmiller042577

6 to 7".. better make a house plant out of em.

RM

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lance111

Hi!!
If you are set on growing them I would pick the height you are looking (for your finished Bonsai) gives you something to aim for. Then design your shape on paper (what you are looking for out of the tree) then start aimming toward the style you drew..
I wouldn't worry too much about the leaves, as the ficus reduce very well, I am currently training a ficus and the top leaves were rather large, now they are tiny (it didn't take too long) now the bottom one's are still a bit large, but with pinching them back, they will reduce small...
best of luck, cheers Lance.

rmiller042577

Ficus does reduce well.. but 6-7" leaves are still not going to reduce by more than half.. you could still produce a nice looking tree but why not start with a species of ficus with 1-2" leaves.

RM

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weeijk

Sorry but this is a crap answer, Ficus leaves reduce very well till 1 inch. All you need is sufficiant light. Reduce all leaves or cut back your tree so extreme, that there are no leaves or branches left. With enough light, they don't grow bigger than 1 inch.

See my exampletree (Ficus Benjamina), it was 1,75 mtr high and was reduced to 30 cm. At the moment its 36 cm high.

Take this answer to your advantage or do nothing with it, thats up to you.
Good luck with you Ficusses.

Attached Images

	Ficussen001 17-11-2005.jpg (36.1 KB, 72 views)
	ficus benjamini201 6-5-2006.jpg (63.4 KB, 83 views)
	ficus benjamini203 1-11-2006.JPG (58.9 KB, 85 views)

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RedPine

pup

Very easy just defoliate in the warm weather and in Pakistan thats just about all the time. Pup

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rmiller042577

One inch or less is just not going to happen unless you start with a species that has smaller sized leaves. It does not matter how much light you give a plant that has 6-7 inch leaves naturally. It's not going to change that even with pinching ect... This is not a crap answer there are hundreds of types of ficus and weeijk is generalizing. Only about 20 species of them are "good" for Bonsai... Anyone will tell you large leaf species are not good for Bonsai.

religiosa from what I have seen though does not have 6-7 inch leaves and you could posibly do such with it....

As for crap.. it is crap to call anyone elses post crap.

weeijk I am sorry it is your opinion not a fact that any ficus can be reduced to one inch. only those species predisposed to such area able.

RM

Mortalis aequo.
In death all are equal.

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weeijk

Your quit right here, I thought the initial question was about Ficus species suitable for bonsai, like Benjamina, Retussa and Microcarpa. (with all there different undertypes) At least for these, light, defolliage has good leafreducing effects.


I was a little out of line here, I hope you can see what I meant by this comment.


For the species mentioned above, I think its a fact that the leaves can be reduced .

Wessel

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