I would say you are right with your water-on-the-leaves assumption. Ficus trees are VERY tempermental. Even moving the tree a few feet can cause leaves to drop at an alarming rate. I lost all but THREE of my leaves last year on my 8 ft ficus tree. I think my cats were climbing up in the tree at night though and disturbing it. I placed it outside where it gets sun for 2 hours and shade the rest of the day. It is doing great this year! On another note.....Ficus's have very specific watering needs. They like to be saturated with water, and left to dry out completely before watering again. Sometimes I do not give my Ficus water outside for 2 weeks. Keep this in mind, as overwatering will DEFNITELY cause leaves to drop.

Hi Jeff I know I'm waking up rather late, but I see you have Erythrina sykesii on your list. Is there any chance of you being able to mail me a cutting or two? I am a collector of Erythrina, as you will see from my page, and I would love to get E. sykesii, and I know it doesn't set seed as it is a hybrid. I can buy it from you, or swap for seed or cuttings of many southern African or Madagascan plants. Thanks Peter

honestly i'm not sure. hopefully someone else will chime in on your situation because i'd definately like to learn whats going on myself. for the ficus, i doubt it's a watering issue. they look very well established and are drought tolerant. some ficus-haters might not believe me, but there's alot of people around my neighborhood that underwater their ficus to keep from having to prune them too often. but ficus are quick to drop their leaves if they get too little water, or it gets too cold. so if you were seriously underwatering them the leaves would just drop, they wouldnt burn like that. thats what i've seen in my experience though but i'm not a master-gardener either. your leaves look to me like sunburn. do you ever spray your tree when you water it? does it get hit with a sprinkler, or your neighbor's sprinkler? even if it gets wet at night and is dry during the day the residue of whatever is in the water could damage the leaves in full summer sun. the trunk stains i can't explain and may or may not be related. do you fertilize your ficus? maybe it's fertilizer burn? i cant comment on the elm at all since i have zero experience with those trees. are there any other trees in your neighbors' yards or in your neighborhood with the same symptoms? if i were you i'd take your pictures to at least 2 or 3 nurseries and see what they say before it gets much worse.

I missed the 4th picture from the top, which shows the leaf arrangement to be 'opposite' (leaves arranged in pairs on opposite sides of the branch). Ficus leaves are alternate (arranged singly along the stem in alternating locations). So whatever it is, it's not a Ficus. Some good Samaritan who's better at IDs than I, will come along and tell you what it is. Your soil should be something you can water to beyond the saturation point (so you're flushing accumulating salts from the soil) without the need to worry the soil will stay soggy so long it affects root health or function. Your soil choice is probably going to have more impact on how easy/ difficult it will be to keep your new pals healthy. I'm not sure how much effort you want to put into learning about the importance of soil choice and it's impact on plant vitality; if you're interested this link covers it, and probably represents the largest step forward a container gardener can take at any one time. The goal for fertilizing containerized plants can easily be described. Ideally, we would work toward ensuring that all the nutrients plants normally secure from the soil are in the soil solution at all times, in the ratio at which the plant actually uses the nutrients, and at a concentration high enough to ensure no deficiencies yet low enough to ensure the plant isn't impeded in its ability to take up water and the nutrients dissolved in water. This goal is easily achievable using one water soluble synthetic fertilizer. You CAN use organic forms of nutrition, like fish/seaweed emulsions or various types of meal, but that makes it much more difficult to achieve the goal. I use Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 because it has ALL the essential nutrients in the ratio at which plants actually use the nutrients, and it gets most of its N from nitrate sources, which helps to allow plants in low light conditions to remain compact and helps keep them from getting leggy. Al