Toni is right in advising you to inspect carefully for insects - particularly scale and mites. Scale are evidenced by small bumps on leaves and stems/soft branches. They can be removed mechanically with a toothpick or other such object. Mites will leave a yellow residue or can be seen if you hold a white piece of paper under leaves and tap branches to dislodge them. They will look something like moving specks of fine pepper on the paper. Even though it's apparent your problem isn't due to under-fertilizing, I would like to take a second to point out again, that the advice to "never fertilize a sick plant. You cant feed a sick plant into health ..." should not be given as a blanket statement. There are so many instances where the plant is struggling or in decline from a nutritional deficiency that the ONLY way to reverse the decline is to fertilize. I have pointed this out a number of times on this forum after similar statements. I may not understand you correctly, but it seems as though you are saying that because you have watered in a particular manner for an extended period, that it eliminates the idea that the problem might have arisen as the result of watering methods. Since the effects of salts from fertilizer and irrigation water are accumulative and take time, it would be a little like saying, "I've been tossing a few pennies into this jar every day for over a year and it's never been full; so it can't be overflowing." It sounds like a high fertility/salts level is a very likely suspect - especially if you can eliminate a pest infestation. Fertilizer stakes/strips don't fertilize just one area of the container. The fertilizer is soluble & dissolves in water. The water diffuses in the soil and the entire root mass is fertilized - as long as it is damp. Farmers often side-dress their crops so fertilizer can disperse in the soil as water diffuses, and the self watering containers with a fertilizer strip on top seem not to lack in fertilizer dispersal - even tough they are not top watered. You didn't mention how root-bound the plant is, or how long it has been since the last repot (potting-up). Tight roots can also cause the symptoms you describe. Al

Thanks! :) Your rooted cuttings make a lovely little tree but I'm not sure it's gonna be happy in that glass for long. My plantlets haven't grown much for a good while, only they filled their pots with roots. Not sure if the same's gonna happen to yours but if they grow, there won't be enough space. And to flush the medium you need holes at the bottom. All my semi-hydro plants are in normal pots with holes and saucer/cache pot underneath. The ones in non-draining glasses are bromeliads and they only get sprayed with water every now and then. I just wondered, how come your mother plant has plain green and variegated leaves at the same time?

@JMJ 4Life Really sorry to learn about your tree. I assume some part of the root mass is fused, so the soil/root mass remains intact like so: If the answer is yes, unpot the plant and set the root/soil mass on a stack of newspapers, rags, old towels, dry sponges - something that will PULL excess water from the soil. Allow it to rest on the wicking material for an hour or two before returning it to the pot it fits. Use a wooden "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water, because with no water loss from foliage, the plant will require very little water. Using a 'tell' Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need plenty of air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support the kind of root health most growers would like to see; and, a healthy root system is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips in order to avoid over-watering leads to a residual build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil from tapwater and fertilizer solutions - which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma and creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell' (more reliable than a 'moisture meter'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) works better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half or in several pieces, depending on how deep your pots are. Sharpen both ends of each tell in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell's tip comes out nearly dry. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

Plastic pot with holes on the side would certainly allow more air to get in quicker. I had done that once. I had to be more careful watering since some of the water will exit from the holes leaving less to reach the bottom and the core. If the soil dries out a bit too much it will shrink a bit and create an air space around the pot. So more water tends to escape through the holes when watering from the top. Dunking it in a tub of water is a lot safer.