If you have a shady spot where nothing else will grow, I'd suggest moving rather than discarding the wineberry. I think they're quite delicious, and they're incredibly easy to grow. I planted mine a couple of years ago on the north side of my two-story house -- at most, they get an hour of early morning sun and an hour of late afternoon sun. Nonetheless, they've grown and spread prolifically (they'll tip root if you let them), and are producing a very large crop this spring. For me, they're the ideal worry free fruiting plant -- no insect or disease problems to speak of, birds don't seem to bother them so I don't have to put up netting, they require very little sun to thrive, and they're reasonably drought tolerant once established.

That plant is definitely etiolated -- light starved. "Direct sun" should be taken with a grain of salt. First, just in case you did not know, "direct sun" refers to sunlight shining directly on the plant as it would early in the morning streaming through an unobstructed east facing window. A very bright window in which the sunlight does not actually do so would not count. That would be considered "indirect lighting". Next, even in the case of direct sun there comes a whole range of intensities. Unfortunately, plant tags never make any such distinctions. Direct sun outside is more intense than direct sun indoors. Direct sun early in the morning or later in the evening is a completely different story from direct sun during the afternoon. (Afternoon sun is much stronger.) This is true both indoors and outside. Many indoor plants (dare I say "most"?) will do quite well with a little direct sun early in the morning or late in the evening. The stronger direct sun they might experience from around 10am to 4 or 5pm is where things often get too intense for shade lovers. In addition, one needs to consider one's latitude. The direct sun experienced by those close to the equator is very different from that of those in the far north of the northern hemisphere or far south of the southern hemisphere. To complicate matters even further, is the direct sun being discussed obstructed or unobstucted light. For example, if you have a west window with a large tree in front of said window then the direct sun that makes it through might only amount to "dappled shade" as the tree's leaves block much of the sunlight. In contrast, that same situation with no trees, buildings, window blinds, etc would experience far different (much more intense) lighting. Is your head spinning yet? So the upshot is you must look to your plant to tell you what it needs. In this case, your plant showing distinct signs of being etiolated -- weak skinny growth with a great deal of space between leaf nodes. This is the result of insufficient lighting. Your plant is stretching in an attempt to reach a place of greater light. The segments of stem between each layer of leaves should be MUCH closer. This is, then, tells you that the plant wants more light than it is currently receiving ... no matter what its tag says. So DO move it to a bit brighter location if you can. If it continues 'stretching' then move it to an even brighter location. Repeat bit by bit until the plant is growing in a more compact manner. I hope that helped.

Do birds factor in with these kind of seeds? We have a lot of mockingbirds, crows, and scrub jays around. The closest thing I saw was in another backyard about a block away, looked something like this -- I mean it didn't have the standard triangular form. Most of the cone evergreens I see around here are green, yellow green, or dark green. If it IS like the ones I saw, then it would grow too huge for where I was thinking to plant. :-( This post was edited by melle_sacto on Fri, Nov 14, 14 at 13:23

Hello everyone! So it turns out it really is ficus cyathistipula. I had to prune it a bit, luckily not too much though, so we were able to fit it in the van. Now it happily resides in our bedroom (and covers some of the holes on the wall that await fixing:)). I couldn't resist hanging up some fairy lights, and telling our toddler it is a fairy tale tree. Perfect! Thank you all for your help!