help please

dayioglu

hello all

I have bought a Fukean Tea 6 months ago and until 2 months we were very happy together. Then I went to a vacation and asked my friend to take care of it and instead of the daily or once every two days watering it got, it was watered twice only in a week when it was very hot. When I came back it looked to be in a poor condition and I think I overwatered it to get it back to normal. then the poor thing has lost most of its leaves and looks comatose. I have noted a shriveling in the trunk of it where it used to look not so shriveled at all in the past. I checked the roots they do not seem to be burnt. It did have around 10 good looking leaves and 10-15 poor dried leaves ready to fall of the moment I touch them. I posted on bonsaiweb and I was advised to drop the dried foliage and switch to drinking water. Everything was fine for a while where I still had the old foliage drying up and falling off but I had new leaves coming out. We did the bark test as well and all the bark was fully green. one thing that worrried me was that the bark was shriveled. I kept the nurturing for about a month now but all leaves are gone and the tree is completely bald. I did the bark scratch again yesterday and all is still green. but I simply do not have any new leaf growth for over a month. I have not fertilized and I have brought down the water feed as with no leaves the tree does not need that much water anyhow. I do not know what to try next. Someone had suggested it might be a root problem but I do not know how to diagnose whether it is a root problem or not. Can someone help? I am pretty sure this is not a good time to repot but it could also be that the pot is a bit small for it as I have some root coming out of the drainage hole at the bottom of the pot. Can someone help please.

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TreeBay

> one thing that worrried me was that the bark was shriveled

Do you have a photo?

You might have root rot as a result of the root system drying completely and then being overwet.

If the trunk is shriveled and soft, it mightl be dead regardless of the color. Anyway, if you have a photo of the shriveled trunk, please post it. Otherwise you need to be very careful not to overwater it as it attempts to recover.

You could also slip it out of the pot and inspect and smell the soil. Be careful, because if the roots are rotten, it may completely fall apart. Healthy root tips are white for most species (oak and persimmon roots may be black)

Good luck,

Matt

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dayioglu

Thanks for the reply. Here is what the tree looked like a few weeks ago. now it is completely bald. I believe I need to go into the roots now and see if anything is wrong. can you tell me what I should try to see when I take the plant out of the pot? What is good and what is bad in the roots? Having pulled it out, do you think I should just repot to a bigger pot with new soil?

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TreeBay

I'm sorry It looks dead to me. If that was two weeks ago, there isn't much hope now. That reverse taper at the soilline is not encouraging, nor the orange peel texture of the bark. You wrote that it's still green when you do the Scratch test?

What you would hope to see, as I wrote:

Sorry about this, but I don't believe it matters what you do at this point. Don't give up though. Everyone loses a couple, sooner or later. Sounds like this one wasn't your fault.

Regards,

Matt

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dayioglu

I did the scratch test 2 days ago. the bark is still green at the soil line and all the way up to the branches. I will still check the roots and repot it. at the worst it is already a dead tree and maybe if I am lucky, it could spring back, who knows. should I prune some roots while I am at it?

shohinbonsai

Hello there! I just read your story and it absolutely reminded me of a Fukien tea I have... It is a much similar tree in size and shape! What happened with my tree was that one morning I just found it pushed from a quite high stand (by my neighbours' cat I presume), with its pot broken and roots drying out of the soil... I repotted it in a new pot as soon as I could, but it started loosing leaves and just like yours - they were drying and when touched - they fell... I assumed it would finally die, but I just kept it amongst my other trees and watered when the soil got dry. And to my surprise, this week when I came from my holiday, I found it sprouting lots of leaves! That is about 3-4 months after the falling accident. So, if the branches are still alive and do not break when you twist them, my advise is - just keep it and be patient, it might come back to life!