Thanks for all the info guy. :) Hey Toni. Sorry about your violets. Thats a big hit to take. Luckily I only had 3 indoor plants at the time of the mealy invasion. I ment that my variegated rubber tree has reddish young leaves that turn white and green when they mature. It looks like yours where the top leaves are reddish but not the bottom ones. That is an impressive tree! I hope mine gets that large someday. My tree seems a bit slow growing. I had never seen the Crassulas at home depot before so when I saw them I had to pick a few up. They are so interesting looking. I also grabbed a really nice kumquat tree for just $23.(sounded like a steal to me) I've never had a fruit tree before but from what I've read they're one of the easier trees to grow here in southern California.

Thank you Al. Maybe I did not describe it good. LOL The pink is horizontal across the leaf in different areas on leaves. The pink areas were anywhere from almost half the leaf to 2". It is very pretty to see the dark leaf with the pink areas running across the leaf. Sort of a dark pink strip across the leaves. I have found some unusual plants at this nursery. They also sell plants for special occassion baskets and what does not sell they pot up seperate and sell them indiviually. If it is not sold when I go back and I do not buy it I will still take a pic. I really do not want to give them the price they are asking. They had two when I went back one had sold.

Happy Anniversary all around! Mine isn't until November, but we don't usually celebrate... a small vocal acknowledgment, and the day goes on... lol! I'm, also, experiencing deafness these days... age is catching up, I suppose. We constantly fight over the volume of the television, but if it's not loud, I can't hear it! And don't even get me started on teeth! We've both been blessed with genetically horrible teeth, and are both at the point where root canals and crowns are not an option... yank them out, I say, and save up for a new set! Abscesses are common, as are infections in the jaw, for both of us... and the list of items we can eat without problems is getting smaller! I do know that tooth and gum infections can actually affect blood pressure, so be careful! Get an antibiotic, and use it until the infection is gone... then, get that tooth pulled! :-) I'm not worried about the "Plant Police" coming to my home to see if I'm properly using chemicals, but I AM worried about killing all the good bugs along with the bad when using them! I've got a wonderful Praying Mantis population out in the gardens, but they can't seem to eat fast enough! How do we get rid of those annoying, voracious Japanese beetles? They're destroying my roses! They seem to multiply overnight, and picking them off by hand is too big a job! Any suggestions that won't kill my beautiful Praying Mantises?? Oh my... I just realized... this is the Houseplant Forum! See? The memory is going, too! I'm falling apart, I tell ya! Well... I'll still take any and all suggestions regarding those beetles! If there were any more, they WOULD be trying to get in my house for my plant collection!

Bare with me, I just started turning my black thumb into a green one this year so I'm slowly working my way to different kinds of plants. :-) I finally graduated to house plants a month or so ago, and I went to the nursery for a stromanthe and ended up also buying a pretty rubber tree. I'm not sure if it's doescheri or tricolor but I'm pretty sure it's one of the two. Anyway, my stromanthe seems to be doing just fine (it was looking a little sad at the nursery tbh, I think it's filled out a little). However, I've noticed a few things with my ficus. The first is that it seems to be dropping a lot of leaves. I've picked up four off the floor in the last few days. Some of them had brown spots on them, some of them didn't. There are no brown spots on any of the leaves still on the tree. I searched the forums but all the spotting issues I saw were way worse than mine. I've just had some pretty small, round brown spots - not the extreme patching I've seen on other plants (yikes!). It seems like the consensus on those brown spots was watering and/or fertilization issue. I have never used fertilizer on any of my plants. I doubt I have been overwatering as I have been waiting for the soil to dry out in between waterings, and so have only watered it a couple of times (it's due for another today). I haven't repotted it from the nursery pot because the rootball was too big to fit into any planters I had, and I haven't been able to find a pot w/ tray in the correct size yet (the guy at Home Depot told me terra cotta is a SEASONAL! item? What?) so I haven't changed the soil. So second thing. The plant seems to be doing well other than that. It is growing new leaves. The new leaves are much shinier than the other leaves (I'm assuming this is normal), however, they are somewhat curled and not flat like the others. Is that normal? (I'm guessing they come out of the little red offshoots on the plant, so curling doesn't seem out of the question). They are also much more pink than green/cream like the other leaves. Do baby leaves go through color transitions? I read that the coloring is dependent on the light. I have the ficus on my coffee table in my room, it's in front of a south facing window. However, there's a building and a large tree on the other side of the window, that limits the amount of light that comes in. I figured that this perfectly fulfilled the suggestion of "bright but indirect" light. I could be wrong, this is the only light loving plant that I have indoors at the moment. I know that the succulents don't get enough light in my room, and I have gotten completely mixed suggestions on the amount of light that a stromanthe should receive, so I'm currently experimenting with a mostly shady corner of my room. I'm also experimenting with the ficus, because my room does get sunlight but I'm not sure if it's adequate enough to satisfy most plants, and I'm hoping to grow many more plants in my room (going for a Poison Ivy's lair look). Sorry, I don't have any photos of the brown spots because in a sleep-deprived stupor I tossed them without remembering I was going to ask you all about it. I can take some photos of the plant itself if it would help. Thanks!