Hello,

we haven't repotted the tree yet. But we do keep it indoors. This is
our first bonsai and the book we bought said that it should be kept
inside, since it is, supposedly, sensitive to draft. Also, we don't
have garden, since we live in an appartment...

We could buy some extra light and / or open the windows more.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that we removed about a half inch
of the soil from the top and replaced it with another one. The reason
why we did that was that the soil was full of rotting leaves and
flowers... Only later, we found out that the soil we purchased doesn't
probably have the right composition. It was about 70% of fired clay
and only about 25% of pine soil. I noticed that this layer probably
prevents the rest of the soil from breathing so it's possible the we
kept that plant overwatered for a several hours.. Could that be the
reason?

For now, the plant seems to be doing OK. Its berries are even bigger
and tend to ripe to light red color. The berries we used to see drier
very fast...

I noticed several black spots on a few bigger leaves. It can only be
seen from under, so I hope it's not the spiders or other parasites

Thanks for your help!

David







(Dad) wrote in message news:000701c47010$1ff5b300$fcc12f18@computer...
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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