My schefflera is going to live!!

[flamin lib]

I’ve had this plant for almost 20 years. When I first got it the little thing was about a foot tall. Now it is 7’ to the top of the stalk and another 18” to the top of the leaves. Over the dormant season it developed brown spot and most of the leaves died or had to be trimmed to keep the fungus at bay. It got down to just a few broken leaves on each of its stalks and it was such a sad sight.

I treated it with fungicide and trimmed the brown spots off the leaves in an effort to keep it alive until the growing season came ‘round and sure enough it’s going to make it. Now that it’s warm enough to put on the deck and the brown spot seems to be under control it has four new leaves peaking out.

I find bright spots where I can these days . . .

[Magrittes Pipe]

1. Scheffs are pretty resilient.

Good job with the pruning and fungicide. Who knows? You might be rewarded with 20 more years!

[ThomCat]

2. They're hardy plants

My mom turned one into a stick. I watched the last leaf fall off. After taking it away from my mom and giving it some tender care it came back and grew into a monster bush (no relation to our current pResident).

[Pied Piper]

3. They're more than hardy...

they're immortal. I moved one from Michigan to Boston. It sat in the back of a moving truck for three days in the summer heat.

In the summers, we would move it out to the back porch. One year we forgot to bring it back in. That winter we had a huge snow storm. The snow went halfway up the sliding glass door. We opened the door to see if the snow would collapse into the house, and when we peeked around the corner, we saw the very top leaves of the poor thing. Oops. But no matter. We just brought it inside, and all was well.

All these 16 years I still have the plant. It reminds me of "Little Shop of Horrors."