The "fan tree": Schefflera arboricola (syn. Heptapleurum arboricolum) is a flowering plant in the family Araliaceae, native to Taiwan and Hainan. It also goes by the common name "Dwarf Umbrella Tree" It is an evergreen shrub growing to 3-4 m tall, with weak, often trailing stems scrambling over other vegetation. The leaves are palmately compound, with 7-9 leaflets, the leaflets 9-20 cm long and 4-10 cm broad (though often smaller in cultivation). The flowers are produced in a 20 cm panicle of small umbels, each umbel 7-10 mm diameter with 5-10 flowers. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schefflera_arboricola

The single larger lump just above the second branch from the bottom may be the precursor of an adventitious root, which are often referred to as air roots, aerial roots, prop roots or sometimes stilt roots. Adventitious roots, by definition, are roots that form in unusual places, and as such shouldn't be taken as an indication your plant has rooted. As I look at your cutting, I see it has a lot of leaf surface from which water is being lost. The cutting may very well be losing water faster than it can take it up. When plants are in this predicament they usually recognize it as a drought situation, and their drought response is to shed foliage. This is very true of scheffleras. While adding more water to the soil won't be helpful, reducing the leaf surface area of the cutting would be. Schefflera's leaves are called 'compound' because each leaf is made up of a number of leaflets. I would snip off all but 2 leaflets from each compound leaf to give the cutting a better chance at striking. Alternately, you could remove half of the compound leaves by cutting through the petiole (long leaf stem) half-way between the leaf and the trunk/branch, or, you could cut all the leaflets in half across the veins. This isn't a schefflera, of course, but note how I prepared the cutting for insertion into a rooting medium: Al

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

If the plant doesn't wilt, you're not under-watering. I believe what you're seeing is a drought response caused by over-watering, or a high level of dissolved solids (salts from fertilizer solution and/or tapwater). Obviously there is no way for water or salts to escape the pot, and that always ends in disappointment for the grower. I would get a tall collection saucer. Drill or melt a hole through the sidewall of the pot AT the pot bottom. It's important that you remove at least a little of the inside bottom of the pot so there is no reservoir at the bottom of the pot to collect water. The pot should not sit on the bottom of the collection saucer as this allows a pathway by which the effluent flushed from the pot when you water can make it's way back into the soil. Something similar to what you see here. ^^^ I used a shallow collection saucer for a better view. There are some other tricks you can use to make your pot drain better, too. You could tip the pot after watering, which forces a lot of excess water from the pot. In the image below, the shaded area is saturated soil. Compare B to A for an idea of how much difference tipping the pot makes. You might also consider learning about how to use ballast in the bottom of the pot. Image D shows an overturned pot used very effectively as ballast. There's lots more to explore, but I don't know how interested you are, so I'll wait on questions or a response. FWIW - the rocks keeping your cat out of the pot should not be against the trunk. As the trunk thickens, it will grow around the rock. IOW, the trunk will thicken everywhere except where the rock is touching it. It wouldn't take long for sap and nutrients moving downward to roots immediately under where the rock is applying pressure to be affected. I applaud the plan to repot - good idea. Soil choice very very often makes the difference between success and bad news. Two things you might consider asap are flushing the soil, and start using a "tell" to "tell" you when it's time to water. I'll leave some info I wrote about using a tell and flushing the soil. Before you move ahead with pruning, maybe we could discuss some options? 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. Flushing Soils When you water, you should be able to flush planting's soil to eliminate the potentiality of salts from fertilizers and tapwater accumulating in the soil, thereby limiting the plant's ability to take up water and the nutrients dissolved in the water. If you think you shouldn't flush the soil during your regular water applications for fear the soil will remain saturated for a lengthy period, limiting root function or worse, you should consider a different soil or take steps to reduce the amount of excess water your soil can hold. By whatever means necessary, getting to the point you can water correctly is going to make a very big difference in the opportunity to realize as much of it's genetic potential as possible. Once you can water correctly, you no longer have to do battle with a water-retentive medium over control of your plant's vitality. There are several methods of limiting how much water your planting can hold, all but 1 or 2 are completely passive, requiring no effort on your part other than set-up, which is monkey easy. I can help if you have interest in that, I'm continually improving my proficiency at monkey easy tasks. To flush the soil of a planting: Water with room temperature water until the soil is completely saturated. Allow the planting to rest for 15 minutes to an hour to allow as much of the salt accumulation as possible to go into solution, then pour a volume of room temp water equal to at least 10X the volume of the pot the plant is in slowly through the soil. This will remove most of any accumulation of offending salts and resolve any skewing of nutrient ratios. It's a good idea, no matter what time of year, to fertilize most plants immediately after flushing the soil. Try to be sure you're using a fertilizer that has a ratio as close as possible to the ratio at which the plant uses nutrients. The NPK % listed on fertilizer packaging is not its ratio. 7-7-7 and 14-14-14 are 1:1:1 ratios. 9-3-6, 12-4-8, and 24-8-16, are all 3:1:3 ratios. Container growers should try very hard to avoid use of fertilizers advertised as 'bloom-boosters', or any number with a middle number (Phosphorous) higher than either the first or third numbers (Nitrogen or Potassium). These fertilizers can badly skew nutrient ratios with even the first application). On average, plants use about 6x as much N as P, so there is NO potential for a positive outcome when supplying many times as much P as the plant requires. I, and a large number of other members, use Dyna-Gro's Foliage Pro 9-3-6. It's designed to closely mimic the uptake ratio of the average plant, and has many other attributes not commonly found in other fertilizers. It also has ALL of the nutrients essential to normal growth. Summarized, it makes fertilizing as easy as it can be, and from 1 container. Al