Fascinating tree with a long historical background. Dragon tree's sap has a long record of use in Chinese medicines. Before Mao came to power, Chinese intellectuals gathered for companionship in groves of paulownias, as they are said to promote chun-tzu, the becoming of a man of complete virtue. In Chinese legend, the tree was an omen of good fortune because of its association with the phoenix, since like the mythical bird, thay sometimes regenerate after a fire. All Paulownia trees are highly sensitive to insecticides and weed killers and will die or be severely damaged if exposed to them. It shouldn't be hard to poison the stump with something like Glyphos, but I never use those sort of herbicides, so I'm not certain.

First, if your pots don't have drain holes, your plants are at grave risk of over-watering and a build-up of salts in the soil. An ample supply of oxygen in the root zone is just as important as an ample supply of water. I think it would be very beneficial if you follow this link and work toward using the information as a framework you can build on. I wrote it to help less experienced growers avoid the pitfalls they're bound to encounter on the way to a green thumb. Al

Shoody, thanks for the video! So I cut some of the stems and separated the different trunks (there may have been some root loss when removing the very old soil, nothing major) because once the soil was removed the roots were easily loosened from each other’s grasp. I repotted two of the trunks in the pot it came from and put the other two in a different pot. So they each have more room than they did before. Both are reacting the same way. Wish I had known about repotting times :( I had seen a video that said late summer was the perfect time to do it for this plant. It’s still hot where I live so maybe the prolonged sunlight/temps will make up for it.

hi ken! Yes, it was definitely exposed to cold, spent 4 days in transit being delivered in 5-10 C degree weather. I'm hopeful it could recover on its own as you suggested. I tied it up because I couldn't keep an eye on it today and wanted to avoid the leaves falling down where our senior cat might try to chew on them. no chance him jumping up on the counter on his own :D When you said fert you meant fertilizer right? did you mean the fertilizer won't help it recover from the shipping stress or that the fertilizer won't stress it to this point? the seller is notified, also asked them for advice in case they have any suggestions too. cheers! patricia