No matter what else you do it will take time. You've helped it along by moving them into bigger pots, that's a good thing. The other is allowing them to go vertical as much as possible; the taller you allow a tree to grow the more it will fatten the trunk and surface roots...but still, over time. While this is going on you can, of course, pick the front-style what will be the final design and (pretty important) figure out where the apex will be in the future and where you will make the cut to top it when it's ready. Actually, after a few years, you can have it to the point where the final tree has it's branches wired and refined to the point that all you have to do is make the final 'top' cut and finish styling the apex. By this time you will have raised the tree a few times, continued to expose surface roots and it should be about ready to pot. Bob

Yeah they will shrivel to nothing in dry air when they are all white and fuzzy. If you want to keep them,I'd advise cutting a drinking straw to lengths suitable to guide the the roots into the hydroton. Once they get down in there they should start hardening off and looking more woody before too long. Previous to slipping the cut straw pieces in place,I would also advise cutting a slice all the way from top to bottom of each one. This will make it possible to remove them later. Also the ficus needs to be back in the bag to provide the necessary humidity to continue aerial growth for now. Hope that made sense! lol

What great timing! I was having the same question about my water-started ficus as well! I had read this guy's blog (http://i-grow-stuff.blogspot.com/2010/01/how-to-propagate-ficus-benjamina-in.html) So I took a cutting from my ficus alii... maybe two weeks ago? three weeks? four? (I wish I had written it down!). I followed his directions to cut it where it was not yet woody, but not completely green either. I removed one leaf and left two, and following instructions from another website, I cut through the leaf node to encourage rooting (I don't think this did anything, because no roots are coming from the cut area, just the other intact side). The cutting is inside a jar with filtered water that I change now and then, and that jar is inside a container I filled with water in hopes to "insulate" the cutting jar and also perhaps add some humidity as the water slowly evaporates? The cutting is next to my other plants and the mother tree, and gets some direct light (oops!) and mostly indirect SE window winter light. It's winter here in Minnesota, and the mother tree (actually 4 trees braided together) faces a SE window... in other words, not a ton of light but not bad either. It's not putting out a ton of new leaves like it does in summertime outside, but it looks like she is doing well. I made a cutting from the end of a middle branch that was getting too long. I have since read a lot of posts on here that say putting cuttings in water is a bad idea, since they grow water roots, not soil roots, and will just have to grow new roots once they get put in soil--oops! So I'm hoping my cutting will make the transition. Eukofios, what are root initials? Can those turn into soil roots? I'll include a picture of the cutting so you can see the size (1-2mm?). I've never intentionally grown anything from a cutting before, only tomatoes and mint and basil cuttings that I threw in water since I didn't want to watch them wither and die. Today I am going out to buy some perlite perhaps, and maybe some other things to make a rooting medium--exciting! Thanks to everyone on this forum for sharing all their experience and knowledge of ficus and other plants--invaluable to a beginner like me! OK, I can't figure out how to move images in the post, or attach more than one image to the post, so below is a picture of the cutting "roots." This post was edited by wndy on Fri, Mar 8, 13 at 17:00

How aggressively you CAN root prune depends on your tree's stored energy level. Heavy root pruning of a weak tree can be damaging or disastrous, while root pruning a healthy tree while it's growing robustly can usually be done with impunity if follow-up care is appropriate. As you know, the best time to work your (tropical ficus) tree hard is early summer. There is a window between Father's Day and Independence Day that in which I do as much repotting of houseplants and tropicals as possible. Root pruning isn't an all or nothing affair. I've been working on the roots of a Taxus (yew) as a bonsai for more than 8 years, trying to reduce a very deep root system to where I can get the tree in a bonsai pot. The top makes a very impressive bonsai already because I've been working on its refinement, but a plastic clothes basket doesn't meld with the tree in harmony as attractive as a discerning eye might demand. The point is, it's often better to consider the viability of the tree and work in stages than to shoot for the moon in one fell swoop. I'd set some time aside to bare root, and I'd keep at it until you accomplished that worthy goal. Future repots will be easier, and leaving the hardened soil only assures a limited tree. Here is something that explains the seeming paradox about why plants need air in the soil. I'm copy/pasting from something I left on another thread, but it should still offer an understanding: Though roots form readily and often seemingly more quickly on many plants propagated in water, the roots produced are quite different from those produced in a soil-like or highly aerated medium (perlite - screened Turface - calcined DE - seed starting mix, e.g.). Physiologically, you will find these roots to be much more brittle than normal roots due to a much higher percentage of aerenchyma (a tissue with a greater percentage of intercellular air spaces than normal parenchyma). Aerenchyma tissue is filled with airy compartments. It usually forms in already rooted plants as a result of highly selective cell death and dissolution in the root cortex in response to hypoxic conditions in the rhizosphere (root zone). There are 2 types of aerenchymous tissue. One type is formed by cell differentiation and subsequent collapse, and the other type is formed by cell separation without collapse ( as in water-rooted plants). In both cases, the long continuous air spaces allow diffusion of oxygen (and probably ethylene) from shoots to roots that would normally be unavailable to plants with roots growing in hypoxic media. In fresh cuttings placed in water, aerenchymous tissue forms due to the same hypoxic conditions w/o cell death & dissolution. Note too, that under hypoxic (airless - low O2 levels) conditions, ethylene is necessary for aerenchyma to form. This parallels the fact that low oxygen concentrations, as found in water rooting, generally stimulate trees (I'm a tree guy) and other plants to produce ethylene. For a long while it was believed that high levels of ethylene stimulate adventitious root formation, but lots of recent research proves the reverse to be true. Under hypoxic conditions, like submergence in water, ethylene actually slows down adventitious root formation and elongation. If you wish to eventually plant your rooted cuttings in soil, it is probably best not to root them in water because of the frequent difficulty in transplanting them to soil. The brittle "water-formed" roots often break during transplant & those that don't break are very poor at water absorption and often die. The effect is equivalent to beginning the cutting process over again with a cutting in which vitality has likely been reduced. If you do a side by side comparison of cuttings rooted in water & cuttings rooted in soil, the cuttings in soil will always (for an extremely high percentage of plants) have a leg up in development on those moved from water to a soil medium for the reasons outlined above. ******************************* You can skip the rooting hormone and fungicide if you want. They're not necessary. I do use a little Superthrive (for its auxin) as a root soak after repotting, though. I've done some experimenting with loose controls in place and while it has proven useless as a 'tonic', it is effective at stimulating root growth and root division. I fill a tub with water and a little Superthrive & fully saturate the soil in the tub immediately after repotting. Securing the plant to the pot so it can't move in relation to the pot fractionalizes the time it takes for the tree to establish in its new digs, too. Al