What I would do is place your baby in a larger (wider) pot with light soil (research bonsai soil). You also need to place it in a place where it can get some light. Make sure the pot you choose has a drain hole. You will have to take care of it for another three to four years before you start training your precious baby.

If you're serious about wanting to save the plant: I think your best bet is to get the plant into a highly aerated soil and hope it recovers. Cuttings from a plant that is circling the drain have little chance of striking because they are almost certainly lacking in any energy reserves, probably the most significant factor in determining the likelihood that a cutting will strike. I would carefully bare root the plant, making sure the roots stay moist while you're working on them. Then, pot the tree in a 50/50 mix of perlite and chopped sphagnum moss (not peat moss) . Tenting the plant so it's surrounded by high humidity is desirable, as TC suggests. While waiting for the verdict, you can get over one of the major hurdles faced by those of us with an affinity for growing trees in small containers. Understanding the importance of getting your soil to work FOR, instead of against you, is a requirement if you're to be successful. See below for more. Al Here is a link that might be useful: Help with understanding soils here.

It sounds like it's in a bonsai pot & is likely wired into the pot. Don't fret about cutting and removing the wires and lifting the plant to inspect roots. The wires are only to prevent the plant from toppling until it's established firmly in the pot. Roots should be tan/white and succulent. If some are dark and stringy, they need to be removed & you need to cut back on watering. Look for the mealies while the plant is out of the pot. You may as well learn how to tend to the plant now (if you don't already know), because it will require similar active maintenance to maintain vitality for as long as it's viable. I suspect the sticky substance is from a scale infestation. The sandy, yellow substance might be the vehicle the former owner used to deliver Imidacloprid or another systemic insecticide in an attempt to cure a scale infestation. Can you recognize scale? Check the plant carefully for evidence other than the honeydew. Look for their protective shells attached to branches, leaf petioles, and leaves. Let me/us know. Al

Awesome - thanks! Al gave some brief advice about this tree on a different thread of mine (regarding my large jade). You can see that I removed about 90% of the trees top mass in the picture above. I can show you pictures of a half dozen more that had similar or even more severe treatment if you like. Point being, now is a good time to prune or repot, but not both and not for much longer - it's getting late for the Steeler's fans. Allowing the plant to continue to grow more leaves at the ends of branches is just going to make it harder to chase the foliage back (closer to the trunk). ..... no need to train the low branch further downward unless its current position is an optical illusion. If you prune that branch back to tiny branches so there are only a few leaves on the whole thing, you'll get back-budding back at least as far as the distal aerial root, which I assume you want to keep, and more likely all the way back to the trunk; then you train THOSE new branches that occur. If every leaf that is on the tree right now were to remain viable indefinitely, none would become a part of the composition. The branches that will make up the composition are yet to pop. Also, the top is already very heavy and hogging all the energy. If you don't prune/reduce it to remove the heaviness and to slow it down, you're going to get a LOT of dieback on lower branches because the tree is genetically committed to its top third unless you trump that by pruning. You need to reduce the top third significantly to strengthen the middle & bottom third of the plant before your only recourse is a chop and a do-over. So he seems to be indicated at least a moderate prune of the top, but not sure if chopping major branches would be going too far. At this point, I removed a few small branches and cut off the growth tips. Also, not sure if he is indicating that I should cut the growth tips on the lower branches to get back budding, or just let them grow.