Not a horticulturalist/botanist, but I travel in the same circles. I do many presentations and demos/workshops for area gardening communities. Thanks for asking. It's normal, especially under low light conditions like you usually find indoors, for trees to shed their lower and inner foliage. This happens in nature, too, because the tree is able to 'recognize' parts (leaves/branches) that aren't pulling their own weight. IOW, they are using more energy than they are making. The tree recognizes this as a bad deal, as far as its survival is concerned, and sheds the parts. Before it sheds them, it 'recycles' all the nutrients and bio-compounds it can from those parts, and uses it to grow longer or taller - usually in search for the light that the shed parts weren't getting. You can trump this natural tendency by fooling with the tree's hormones. If you cut off the growing tips of branches, you greatly reduce a hormone (auxin) that stops dormant buds from activation. This is why your shrubs can be pruned in neat little cubes & balls of tight foliage. Cutting off the tips of branches or stems makes lots more branches behind the pruning cut. Where the new growth occurs depends on several things. How much you cut off, and how many of the growing points you remove. This is a pretty complicated subject, but basically, the more energy your trees have stored, and the more energy they are capable of making at the time of the chop, and the more you cut off, the greater will be the surge of new growth from back-budding. Right now, you're lacking the 'energy it can make now' part - unless you have very good supplemental lighting. Because you lack the 'right now' part, it's better to wait until next summer to do the hard cutting, but you can prepare for the work now by some light pruning and getting cultural conditions as close to perfect as feasible. Air layering is used to make new plants. It isn't very effective as a tool to create back-budding until the layer is separated. You might be able to root the cuttings you take off the top. I'm not familiar with propagating your plant, but I can find out and help you with instructions if you like. It's not that I'm not familiar with whatever method works best. Once you terminate a branch or stem by cutting off the apical meristem (the growing tip of the branch), the branch can never extend again; but, if you review the way I cut back the China Doll, you can see that I simply took a newly emerging branch and trained it vertically as the new leader. You can't even tell. This technique is used very often in bonsai to make the trunk tapered and look old. It's also useful for correcting houseplants that can't support their own weight because they are starved for light. Whenever you work on trees, you need to be patient. They don't respond to us being insistent that they hurry up. ;o) They're on tree time & we're on people time, they're different. Chopping the tree at the right time will usually yield a branch you can train to the vertical within a few weeks. Tip-pruning now MIGHT force a branch you can NOW train to the vertical so that when you DO make your chop (just above the new branch), you already have the new leader prepared. Unfortunately, now is not a good time to do any serious work. Your plant needs its foliage for the low-light winter ahead, but you can tip prune. That is you can remove all the growing points at branch ends, which will force back-budding and more branches. There are some other cultural things that would be good to pay attention to as well. If you need guidance I'll help you with those issues, once you decide how you'd like to move forward. Take care. Al

It resembles Kalopanax pictus (Synonym:Kalopanax septemlobus) Here is a link that might be useful: Castor Aralia

as with all chemical or biological products... you read the label and apply it according to those written directions ... i would not defer to other authors or sources for information, unless that source wrote the instructions on the package ... anyway .. off the soap box ... now devils advocate .... JB's fly ... how is treating your little slice of heaven.. going to stop them from flying to your yard and .. on a side note .... if you buy a lure type trap.. since we are on the subject ... give them as presents to the neighbors upwind ... so the darn things will be lured to their garden/yard.. and not yours... one year.. all of a sudden it struck me... WHAT THE HECK WAS THE GOOD OF LURING THEM TO MY GARDEN????? finally ....one years overwhelming plague does not mean it will be this years problem ... one years its the JB's... last year for me it was cicadas ... one year it was those darn biting weird ladybugs .... and they seldom ever come back in droves the following years ... go figure on that ... on that logic ... you MIGHT not need to be all that proactive in most cases ... i realize that milky spore is pretty harmless ... so have at it ... but too many homeowners use way to many controls/chemicals.. that just arent necessary ... or they use them improperly based on third hand knowledge .. or figure if they say one teaspoon per gallon of water.. then the whole bottle sans the water is even better ... etc ...oops.. sorry .. got back on the soapbox.. lol ... good luck ken

Deanna your ASK is beautiful. This summer has been kind of weird, it was hot/cold/hot/cold with humidity, many of my plants got some kind of moldy fungus including my coleus and autumn joy sedum. Anyway, I am thinking of transplanting a mature one to another spot of my shade garden this weekend, has anyone tried transplanting in September? Will there be enough time for the roots to settle before frost hit? I prefer to do it now because temp is cool so easier on my body, doing it in spring is cold and wet :) I remember FrozeBudd has done dividing a mature ASK before but I can’t remember if it was spring or summer or fall…how much root did you have per division, like 1 - 1.5 feet long? I remember you mentioned the roots were woody and difficult to cut, how are your 2 ASK doing now?