Sick mallsai

TreeBay

Hi Ari,

It's difficult to maintain many bonsai indoors. It requires some experience and practice, and most of that is learned through a series of failures. It's a process that leads some folks to success, while pthers arrive at the viewpoint that it is better to select and maintain trees that are winter hardy in their climate and can be grown outdoors year-round. Not a few give up the hobby entirely without ever understanding why they weren't an instant success at the indoor bonsai thing. It's actually possibly the most difficult type of gardening there is. In any case, let's hope we can keep you in one of the first two categories with some sound advice and encouragement!

Without knowing what type of tree you have it is difficult to make any specific suggestions. If you could photograph your tree it would go a long ways toward helping us provide you with some specific advice.

There are a number of possibilities, including wooly aphis, a type of aphid that wallows in a secretion of honeydew that develops a protective, cottony mold. Another possibility is that your tree might have a fungus of some type. These infestations tend to be less severe outdoors because the pests aren't confined to a single host plant. Indoors they have nowhere else to go.

Outdoors, the plant has better ventilation and the UV light from the sun tends to help reduce the incidence of certain mold spores that can thrive indoors, and it removes all the natural predators from the environment.

If you don't have one, you might think about requesting a digital camera for the holidays, or maybe you can borrow one from a friend?

Best regards,

Matt

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