If you have a spot in open or dappled shade, I'd defoliate it completely by cutting through the leaf petiole (stem) immediately proximal to the body of the leaf. The stub will fall off in a week or two. Matters of import: * your plant will use very little water after you defoliate because transpiration will reduced to a small fraction f what it had previously been. For that reason, I would consider using a wooden dowel rod as a 'tell' - to 'tell' you when it's time to water or if water should be withheld. * If the periderm (bark) was corky and fissured, you could just site the plant in direct sun, and the new leaves would come on line acclimated to full sun. Since there is green periderm tissue that can also suffer sunburn and death there from, you need to acclimate the tree to anything more than dappled or open shade. Open shade is full shade with open sky above - like you would have on the north side of a fence, outside the northern drip line of a shady tree, or in the shadow of a building on its north side). * Fertilize when you see the tree back-budding and pushing new growth. * Let's look at the tree in it's defoliated state before you decide what to do about pruning it. 4 images from 12, 3, 6, and 9 o'clock, or N S E W compass points, or after rotating the tree 90* between images. The tree in the most recent image you posted is actually way overdue for a pruning. The 2 branches should have been pinched when their length was about 1/2 of what it is now. Had that been done, the tree would have many more branches and leaves. For most trees as houseplants, the apical meristem (growing tip of the branch) should be pinched back to 2 leaves when the 3rd leaf on any branch is mature or nearly mature. This will help you maximize branch and leaf density. Al

Hey guys, first of all, thanks to everyone that's helping. I've learned so much in the past two days. Specially Dave and Al...thank you teachers! :) So sorry about in the instrusion, I'm another one with fiddle leaf problems. I think I was sold a sick FLF...the guys just told me that it was in direct light all day long, so I thought the brown spots were justified. Until I got home and realized the soil was really compact...really....compact and soggy...and loads of rocks on top, which probably wouldn't help. So what I've did pretty fast, I went into despair...I've tried to repot it...and..of course I the roots just broke in half, and they were almost black and quite smelly... I didn't have anything around other than regular soil with perlite, so I just moved the lyrata and the now shorter roots too a new dry vase with some brick pieces at the bottom and that soil...the soil it's very loose and didn't compressed whatsoever. Didn't watered since, two days now. So after reading all of your kind info, Tomorrow I'm going too: 1. Clean the remaining roots as well as I can without damaging it more.. 2 .Repot, with 5:1:1 mix...Pine bark, Turf (should I?), Perlite; and some brick pieces in the bottom. 3. Water the lyrata once like flushing, right? And then again.. 4. The bottom leaves are very very rigid almost like they are about to break, I've read one Al's comment about "the end of life" process of these leaves...Should I cut the last leave and put the trunk deeper so it forms new healthy roots? (if this makes any sense at all) 5. Pruning, I was thinking about cutting the top (last picture), but as the bottom leaves are so stiff, maybe they aren't able to produce that much "food" and I should keep the top one for now? (I'm I thinking stupid??) 6. The only I had to cover the pot was sawdust, with which I have been lucky in protecting my plants from pests and mould. Again...in a despair act..should I maintain this? Can you help me please?? I'm based in Sintra,Portugal; very warm and humid location, actually humidity is a problem around here. Any advice is most welcome! thanks!

Without seeing it, all I can say is a single root out of a hundred attached to the base of the tree can prevail when the rest of the tree is dead. In consideration of the fact you can always remove the dead parts of the trunk at a later date, but you cannot restore the living parts you removed because you might have been in a hurry. I suggest you put yourself on tree time (everything happens slowly for trees [except lightning strikes]) and wait to see what else develops. Be sure you do not over-water. Best strategy would be to use a 'tell' to tell you when it's time to water. Don't fertilize until you see new growth ....... and even then it might be wise to look at the bigger picture of watering habits, soil choice, light levels, temps, and try to figure out the best nutritional supplementation for you going forward. There's just not enough info to help any more than that. Something about Using a Tell Over-watering saps vitality and is one of the most common plant assassins, so learning to avoid it is worth the small effort. Plants make and store their own energy source – photosynthate - (sugar/glucose). Functioning roots need energy to drive their metabolic processes, and in order to get it, they use oxygen to burn (oxidize) their food. From this, we can see that terrestrial plants need air (oxygen) in the soil to drive root function. Many off-the-shelf soils hold too much water and not enough air to support good root health, which is a prerequisite to a healthy plant. Watering in small sips leads to a build-up of dissolved solids (salts) in the soil, which limits a plant's ability to absorb water – so watering in sips simply moves us to the other horn of a dilemma. It creates another problem that requires resolution. Better, would be to simply adopt a soil that drains well enough to allow watering to beyond the saturation point, so we're flushing the soil of accumulating dissolved solids whenever we water; this, w/o the plant being forced to pay a tax in the form of reduced vitality, due to prolong periods of soil saturation. Sometimes, though, that's not a course we can immediately steer, which makes controlling how often we water a very important factor. In many cases, we can judge whether or not a planting needs watering by hefting the pot. This is especially true if the pot is made from light material, like plastic, but doesn't work (as) well when the pot is made from heavier material, like clay, or when the size/weight of the pot precludes grabbing it with one hand to judge its weight and gauge the need for water. Fingers stuck an inch or two into the soil work ok for shallow pots, but not for deep pots. Deep pots might have 3 or more inches of soil that feels totally dry, while the lower several inches of the soil is 100% saturated. Obviously, the lack of oxygen in the root zone situation can wreak havoc with root health and cause the loss of a very notable measure of your plant's potential. Inexpensive watering meters don't even measure moisture levels, they measure electrical conductivity. Clean the tip and insert it into a cup of distilled water and witness the fact it reads 'DRY'. One of the most reliable methods of checking a planting's need for water is using a 'tell'. You can use a bamboo skewer in a pinch, but a wooden dowel rod of about 5/16” (75-85mm) would work better. They usually come 48” (120cm) long and can usually be cut in half and serve as a pair. Sharpen all 4 ends in a pencil sharpener and slightly blunt the tip so it's about the diameter of the head on a straight pin. Push the wooden tell deep into the soil. Don't worry, it won't harm the root system. If the plant is quite root-bound, you might need to try several places until you find one where you can push it all the way to the pot's bottom. Leave it a few seconds, then withdraw it and inspect the tip for moisture. For most plantings, withhold water until the tell comes out dry or nearly so. If you see signs of wilting, adjust the interval between waterings so drought stress isn't a recurring issue. Al

You have a good plan working for you. The important things I can think of right off the top of my head: * In a pot that large, there is probably a lot of water in the lower parts of the pot, such that the soil there might be fully saturated when the top couple of inches of soil seem dry. So, try to rely more on your "tell" than your digital water meter (finger). *When you water, you should be able to observe water soaking into the entire top of the soil surface instead of running across the surface, then down through the void between the soil mass and the pot wall. You want the entire root mass to be completely saturated somewhere around every 4th time you water; then, pour an additional volume of water through the soil - maybe about as much water as the pot would hold when full, to flush the accumulating salts out of the soil. It makes most sense to tie your flushing and fertilizer regimen to the number of times you water instead of the calendar. The easiest way I've found to keep track of when your plants need flushing or fertilizing is to determine how often you want to do it, then use marbles or other objects as your counter. Example - every time you water, drop a marble on top of the soil. When you're about to drop the 4th marble, it's time to flush and fertilize. Alternately, place 4 marbles on the soil surface and remove 1 each time you water. When the marbles are gone - time to flush/fertilize. *If you're worried your soil might remain wet too long after you water, take note of how the shaded areas (representing soil saturation) change when you tip the pot (B) or when you use a wick (E). Through the use of a little simple science, you can 'trick' almost ALL of the excess water your soil would normally contain into exiting through the drain hole. * If you look at the label of your 24-8-16 fertilizer, you'll see it contains no magnesium or calcium. If using a commercially prepared soil, it's almost certainly pH-adjusted with lime, which supplies both of those elements. A potential issue arises from the fact that the magnesium component of the lime is roughly 125X more soluble than the calcium fraction, causing the magnesium to be depleted after 1-2 years. If you're repotting and changing the soil regularly, it's likely a nonissue; but, if your plants are in the same soil for more than 2 years, you should include a source of magnesium in the fertilizer solution when you fertilize. This is easily done by adding no more than 1/4 tsp of Epsom salts to a gallon of fertilizer solution. This can also be made a nonissue by switching to a fertilizer that contains calcium and magnesium, as well as ALL other nutrients essential for normal growth. Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 has the same NPK ratio as your 24-8-16 (a 3:1:2 ratio) and is a very good choice as your 'go to' fertilizer. Questions? Al