These plants have been badly mistreated, and some may have suffered freeze damage. Many seem to have active fungal infections that will be deadly if untreated. Some of these plants are doomed (e.g. the second to last plant is not salvageable). The scars are permanent in every case. You could try to save something cutting off any healthy growth above damaged tissue. As you cross section the columns, the rot will show as annular darkened tissue. This is the plants vascular system clogged with fungus. It move upwards towards the growing point, so you need to keep cutting towards the top until you have a clean cross-section. Being Euphorbias, they will be full of a white latex sap which is a powerful skin and eye irritant. Wear gloves and eye protection. The first three plants are E. ammak, a large tree Euphorbia, The next three look like E. ingens, another tree. 7-8 look like E. grandicornis. All of these plants are tree Euphorbias that can grow to 10-30 meters. I would toss out almost all. There is just too much work to salvage too little. There are a few branches/pups that are still healthy Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Good job! I wonder why they didn't mention the age of the "retired librarian" in the next paragraph... or are librarians more secretive than gardeners.... Claire

Always use the search box on the bottom of the page rather than the top! One further note: Threads drop off the Forum list about 6-8 weeks after the last post. So, if you have a thread that no one's posted to in the past couple of months, it will most likely have rolled off the Forum list and no longer be found when you do a search. Sometimes, a Google search will find an old thread, but there's no guarantee and, in my experience, you usually don't find them. However, IF you bookmarked the thread and it had at least one post after November/December 2007, you will probably be able to bring it up via the bookmark. [Posting to a thread after it's dropped of will not get it back on the list, but the later post(s) will show up if anyone links to the thread directly.] BTW...the 6-8 weeks is an estimate. It depends on how active the Forum is. In the case of Kitchens, we have 67 pages to the thread list...but if you look at that page you'll notice that the "oldest" post date/time right now (as I type) is Fri, Dec 5, 08 at 16:03

hi Sal, if you haven't found an answer try this. take a piece of yarn run it in the tenison this will clean out dust that has build up over the years.the thread goes throught the thread guids down to the tenison up to the take up bar down to the needle. if the thread is bunching up be sure the needle is in right. (meaning)the needle has a grove on one side and a scof on the other. be sure the thread goes in the needle on the grove side.it should thread lift to right or from front to back. now the bobbin thread should pull fairly free but not loose. and oil it good. I hope this will help. Yardnut in SC