My Tiger Bark Ficus (from a workshop by Jerry Meislik) is now compost.
I had decided that I didn't like the base, so this summer I air-layered
it. I separated the layer in August, and the tree seemed to be doing
fine. In September we had a cold snap, so I brought all of my tropicals
inside. It remained apparently healthy until about a week ago. Last
weekend I was gone for a couple of days, and when I returned, the soil
was still rather wet, and it had lost a lot of leaves. Obviously a root
problem. I put it in my ICU, a large terrarium, but it continued to lose
foliage. Probing of the cambium revealed that there was no living tissue
anywhere on the trunk, and black mold was forming on the bark. The
post-mortem revealed dead roots (of course) but they did not appear to
have rotted. Neither did they seem to have grown much since I separated
the layer.

I'm puzzled by this. I've never had a tree go from apparently healthy to
dead so rapidly. Any idea what happened?

Jay


--
Whenever one comes to close grips with so-called idealism, as in war
time, one is shocked by its rascality.

H. L. Mencken

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