Fukien tea does tend to drop leaves occasionally. I wouldn't worry about
it, unless two other possibilities occur:
1. It has not been transplated in the past two years.
2. It is kept indoors.
Although it is tropical, it should be kept outdoors all summer.
Marty
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Soukal"
To:
Sent: Thursday, July 22, 2004 12:55 PM
Subject: [IBC] sudden increase of leaf loss of our fukien tree


Hello,

I just wanted to ask somebody with experience in growing Fukien trees
for an advice. We noticed sudden increase in the rate with which the
tree loses its leaves. We were surprised by that because - to our best
knowledge - nothing has changed in the way we care for the tree...

We water the plant as required (never letting it to dry out completely
nor leaving to stand in water) as we always did. We feed it regularly.
We fought and killed (with help of this community) the mealy bugs that
attacked it.

But recently, the number of leaves on the floor has increased. If I
blow a little bit of air from my mouth on the tree, there will be
several leaves - seemingly healthy - that fall off. It seems as if the
leaves were not hanging tight onto the branch... they will fall off
easily on touch. (Not all of them though.) There were always leaves
that would fall off but these seemed dead and dry. The new ones and
young and green.

I also think that all the leaves are little bit lighter that they used
to be. Though they are still green not yellowish.

But then again, the tree still has many dark, lush leaves. It still
grows buds and has fruit as it always did. Overall, it seems to be
doing fine.

We didn't notice anything odd otherwise. No parasites, no physical
damage. We haven't moved or repotted the tree. We did prune it a
little bit.

The only thing I can think of as a culprit is that the weather hasn't
been that good lately. We had a lot of cloudy days with colder
temperature (but still about 70).

We were just being curious whether this is reaction to the weather
change only or a symptom of something else/worse (under/overfeeding,
too little/much watering...).

Thank you for any comments!

David & (Eva)


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