Is that where it normally sits? In an office with no light? First, it needs light. If you can't put it in outdoor shade, put it as close to a window as possible. Secondly, remove all of those dead trunks. They most certainly will not grow back. They are decomposing in the pot and creating rotten conditions. That's fine in a south American wetland, but not in a container. When you remove the dead trunks, you'll want to re-pot the live trunk in a mix that is porous and free-draining - a mix that can be thoroughly flooded and then drained well. This will help avoid root-rot during the Winter. Two weeks after the re-pot and re-location, you'll want to begin fertilizing the plant. Josh

turbokat89, it is beginning to wilt. If the medium is dry, water it. If it improves in 'posture' and/or color, then that is what it needed. If it improves in posture only, then it probably needs fertilizer. The standard is a balanced water soluble product at half the labeled rate; applied instead of water, not more regularly than once a month. You can return to the regular plain watering program as soon as the desired effect has been attained,

Hello Ken. Thank you for the detailed response. I have considered that I’m loving it to death and have tried to space out the stress points. This started a few months ago at least when I was definitely not loving it to death. When I first noticed it, I thought it was a light issue, so I moved it to the windows. After about a month of deterioration, I sprayed it with the anti pest/anti mildew then waited about a month, then wiped down the leaves with water to remove the dust and waited a month, then repotted it and pulled some of the dead leaves off. Maybe that’s still too much stress, but it seems to be deteriorating rapidly, so I didn’t want to waste too much time. It has been about three weeks now since i repotted it. The soil seems to be draining/drying fine. I did bare root it to see if there was root rot, but I did not see any, and the old soil smelled fine. I used completely new soil. I think it gets plenty of light by the southerly window. It is near a vent, but we rarely have to use our heat believe it or not, and this all started before it was near the vent. The picture with my hand in it is one of the last shoots that made it past a bud. I included it because of how the leaves are deformed. There are a lot of buds that have sprouted and then just stopped growing entirely by the looks of it. Some of those smaller ones in the picture have been that size for at least a couple months. At this point I’m planning on letting it alone for a while and hoping the repotting and extra light of the spring will revive it. To your point, I don’t want to stress it anymore, but I posted this in case someone could look at the leaves and say, “this is a clear case of this kind of mildew...” or something like that. Thank you again for your response.

I stop fertilizing when temps rise above 80-85*. High temps make roots and the above ground parts of plants very lethargic when they need water most. How readily water moves into cells depends on the level of solutes within the cell. The higher the level of solutes in the cell, the easier it is for water to pass through the semi-permeable cell membrane and into the cell. Conversely, the lower the level of solutes in the soil solution (free water in soil), the easier the cell solution passes the membrane into the cell. For a high % of terrestrial plants other than cacti, root function begins to drop off at root/soil temps of about 80*. If the pot is shaded, root/soil temps usually lag ambient air temps by 10-15*F due to evaporative cooling, so as long as the soil is moist, air temps in shade would need to be in the mid 90s before there was a serious issue with root function. In full sun pounding the pots, soil temps can be much higher - at least 15* higher than ambient air temps in most cases, though that varies too with soil moisture levels and air movement. High root temps are a stealthy attacker. Most often, you won't even realize the damage done to roots (especially trees) on the sunny side of the pot until late fall or even early spring when branches on what was the sunny side of the tree start dying and root rot becomes an issue to deal with. So to be safe, I stop fertilizing at 80*F which facilitates water uptake and movement in the plant. That is also why I try to use controlled release fertilizers sparingly. Their release rate is driven primarily by temperature, so when temperatures reach the point where you want to pull back on the level of salts in the soil solution, controlled release fertilizers will have rendered the grower with no control other than trying to scrape the fertilizer prills off of the top of the soil. I like and feel as though I need the control over nutrition offered by synthetics like Foliage-Pro 9-3-6 in order to achieve the best results. I do use Osmocote-Plus sparingly for younger plants which need to develop more mass before they are started along the path to becoming a bonsai, but not on the trees which are in the stage where I have started developing finer branching and am reducing leaf size. That and beyond is when control is most important. For other hobby growers not saddled with the concerns that come with bonsai, it's simply trying to make it easier for the plant to get water when it needs it most. Al