I, too, love Polyscias! The last ones I bought were just the other night, in fact. I was browsing around Wal-Mart and went into the garden section (outside) as I always do just to look. Its now November and it was about 60 degrees but has been getting down into the 40's at night recently. Anyway, outside there were an assortment of tropical plants, the usuals. Then I look down and see 3 beautiful little variegated Balfour Aralias. I couldnt believe that I would find these at Wal-Mart, but they were outside and I couldnt stand to think they would spend another night in the cold so I bought them all at a whopping $5.88 a piece. They are about 5-6 inches tall and in nice little autumn tin containers. I found that to be a very pleasant score! Back on the topic of Aralias or Polyscias, I have several others, all of which are in a set of 3 large north facing windows. They get bright afternoon sun and they love it. I have 2 small fountains set up beside them for humidity and have all of them on wet pebble trays. I also mist them in the morning a few times a week. I allow all of them to dry out considerably before watering again. When I water, I drench and let all excess drain out. I keep all of mine in lightweight plastic greenhouse pots so that I can pull the rootball out and examine it every so often. I'm giving all of this advice because I have never had one complaint from any of my aralias, so I guess they are loving their environment. I keep the heat on 67 in the fall and winter and a/c on 76 in summer. I prune them usually late winter-early spring. As for the ones I currently have, I have 2 Mings (one scraggly looking one I purchased at Home Depot recently, now 4 variegated balfours, 1 4 foot parsley, and 2 small variegated parsleys. Can you tell I like Aralias? Hope some of this information helps. -Chris South Carolina

I agree, most will think you're a Hoosier (resident of Indiana, USA.) Not that there's anything wrong with Indiana or any of its' residents, but the advice might be all wrong for your climate. Nobody appointed or elected me spokesperson for the forum, but your 'thank you' should not hang in mid-air without a 'you're welcome,' so I'm sure everyone involved sends an unsaid 'you're welcome!' If there are any you are still unsure about, take a new pic & start a new discussion so everyone will know it's a 'new' mystery not to be ignored by those who might think they've already seen all of the pics here. Generally, do you have access to some kind of potting mix? It looks like dirt from the ground in the pots. It's more difficult to grow great plants that way, even if they are fantastic while growing in that same dirt in the ground. The texture of all fine particles is what causes the trouble. The air gets forced out, so roots no longer access oxygen, and takes too long to dry out. If water is scarce, that may be desirable, a balancing act.

The first 3 pictures are our Ming Aralia - Polyscias fruticosa. This was an HD plant we grew in a pot on the patio until it got too big - about half its current size of almost five feet tall. It's been in the ground for 3 years and was in the pot 3 years. Notice how the Yucca has claimed the space. This and all 4 of our 'Aralias' are on the north side of the garden and have withstood all three hurricanes with minimal damage. The next two picture are False Aralia - Schefflera elegantissima. This one came from Boynton Botanicals, who grow some of the largest I've ever seen, about 8 years ago. It was in a pot for two years and then moved into this spot. It's now 10' tall and you can see the differences in the old versus the new growth. This has bloomed every year for the past three. This is an Aralia I got from Jerry at TreeZoo last spring. It's doubled in height since going in the ground. I don't know the genus or species. And this one has been in this pot less than a year. Neat cup-shaped leaf. From HD and it's doubled size as well.

Frank, (and other members - but please note that I am particularly delighted to have found another forum member from Toowoomba) There are Bat's Wing Coral trees on the downhill side of Prince Henry Drive, which I assume to be naturally occurring. They are scrawny specimens compared with the glorious things we saw in the Aramac-Muttaburra area recently, which were a mass of red flowers and shrieking lorikeets, on a good big rounded canopy, in the most miserable country! I don't know whether the locals I've seen are just young, or whether that's how they grow round here. Atalaya hemiglauca goes well out there, too. With the predicted big global-warming fuelled dry-out of our climate, those of us who plant trees like this may be feeling very self-satisfied with our future planning, in twenty or so years time! On the same grounds, I think Brachychiton rupestris and populneus might be better than the others where a green tree is wanted. Their fire-resistance could have a much-needed firebreak effect when bushfires roar up the range as they were doing in Oct 2004. I have a suspicion that Ficus obliqua might be better than platypoda, but am never quite sure which tree it is I'm looking at when I see a fig in a sunny spot some hopelessly dry paddock around here. Do you know? Despite having written the book, I still have so many things to learn! The trick to identifying them is to catch them in fruit... To my great delight, some celerywood (Polyscias elegans) have come up spontaneously ("volunteered" as the Americans say) in my garden - and this in mid 2005 - Toowoomba's driest winter for more than a century. The area where they apeared is not one that I ever water. I suppose this is my reward for re-establishing a bit of a canopy. Tree cover of some sort is probably the "natural" environment as opposed to the dairy farms that would have been here for a century until supplanted by suburban sprawl. Someone else's comment in this forum about Angophora floribunda being a sign of a clean aquifer is interesting, isn't it? I wouldn't have thought of it as a rainforest tree - not even "arid rainforest" (love that expression)- but this is probably my unreasonable tendency to exclude Eucalypts from the "softwood scrub" category. It's hard to know where to draw the lines, isn't it, between "softwood scrubs" "dry vine scrubs", "dry rainforest" "marginal rainforest", and "rainforest". Especially when some of the same species seem to appear in the full range. Geijera parviflora definitely fits in the dry, sun-hardy end. It has a reputation of being very hard to germinate and establish, but I think there are local nurseries which have it. Love the plant, and it must be as tough as old boots once established. Are you growing it? I believe Petalostigma pubescens would be hardier than triloculare. In practice, I find that different people look at the same trees in my yard (I bought some labelled triloculare, I think) and are about evenly divided as to...