Thank you very much Tedhort. You did it. My friend had mentioned something similar to Cherry Bella, and Exocarpus cupressiformis is also called cherry ballart. The tree was from You Yang's regional park in/near Melbourne, Asutralia. The following link has a picture of where it is known to exist in Australia. http://asgap.org.au/e-cup.html Thanks to all of you for the help and a special thanks to Ted.

My one australian tree fern is doing well. I am in San Francisco. They may not be getting enough light and root space. My tree fern takes up much root space, and I apply top compost dressing often. It's hard to find something to fill in the deep shade. Ferns are fussy and difficult. I would suggest other shade plants not ferns. Mimulus, for example, can take the shade of other plants, and will work as a ground cover. Can you post a photo of the area?

Yes, they do love humidity. They also drink water from the little hairs on the trunk. I have misters that spray up the trunks, they seem to grow quicker that way. It could well be that they dried a little in the heat.Though they dont have to have a lot of water [if you are short] they need dampness. Do you know which ones they are? Cyathea cooperi maybe? This would help, some like the heat more than others. Your feeding ideas sound perfect, they adore all that mulchy stuff.Sand is no worries with all those goodies added.I have heaps of them, lots of different ones. They are really beautiful arent they, I adore them. cheers L

I currently have 3 grown from seed that I've had in for about 10 years. They took a few years to flower but once they did they developed multiple heads and while they still look ok, they aren't as attractive as when they had just a single head. Flower/seed spikes go up each year and are very bird attractive, when the spike falls or you cut it down, if you leave it on the ground to rot down seedlings spring up. The thing with grass trees is they like a fire through them every few years or if you can't provide that a good cut back will benefit - you may have noticed that after a bush-fire grass trees are the first plants to regenerate. I've managed to transplant them ok by restricting root disturbance as much as possible, however, they generally don't like being disturbed and can take up to 2 years to die as a result.