linnea, I don't see a photo of your soil or the pot size relative to the plant, but I recently repotted a rather desperate leggy schefflera and found pretty much what you did: aside from a lot of thick woody roots that circled the pot and went in all kinds of less-than-useful directions, there were only a few small clumps of healthy looking roots which I pruned off, except for a few inches of a couple to support the unbalanced plant while I tired it down. I'm fairly positive that the culprit was overwatering due to a pot-full of old, collapsed, very fine soil along with mineral buildup from bottom-watering, both of which killed most of the roots. I had pinched the growing tips of this plant's branches a few weeks before finding this site, and got even worse results--no branching or new stems, although a single little lead did emerge from the smallest branch. The inauspicious timing contributed to the lack of growth, but after repotting it seems obvious that the lack of a functioning root system was the main problem. Now the schefflera is in 5-1-1. I can't stand not knowing what's going on in there, so I'm going to gently depot it next summer just to see what the roots look like!

It depends where, I suspect no in most cases, I tried a Schefflera arboricola last winter, I was unlucky that it coincided with the coldest winter in my lifetime certainly. It did however attempt to grow back before dying, I'm therefore convinced it would have made it through a normal winter. What you can do though is grow it in a pot outside and bring it into a shed, greenhouse shelter during the winter?

Thx for the advice, both of you! Tiffany, my main inspiration for the idea is a ton of stuff from GardenWeb member petrushka re: ficus. And I've read some of al's threads on the topic as well. Also, I had forgot inosculation, it's a word I learned from you (via GardenWeb) :) I do enjoy words like that, will try not to forget this time. It's not about just inosculation for me, but this particular plant since I ended up with so many (tropicals are often such a deal!). Now it's a mission. So there were 6 plants shoved into a shallow 4 inch pot, moved them to 2 6 inch pots for the summer (both still quite full), hope they gain some height this season (will be outside as soon as they recover from repotting a bit) and maybe next year I'll attempt insoculation. Could probably have used more pots, didn't have enough. Plenty of space for roots for now. Used a combination of pine bark and pumice (about 50/50), with "some" turface thrown in. Because that's what I had... Daniel

Update on the situation - I saw some more infected leaves, and this time, I found what appear to be eggs. I also saw other (unidentifiable) alien structures on my plant, shown below: An "egg"? A possible other "egg" Up-close shot of the "veins" Not even sure what these are. There are some more images, that may or may not make things more clear.