Thanks for all the info guy. :) Hey Toni. Sorry about your violets. Thats a big hit to take. Luckily I only had 3 indoor plants at the time of the mealy invasion. I ment that my variegated rubber tree has reddish young leaves that turn white and green when they mature. It looks like yours where the top leaves are reddish but not the bottom ones. That is an impressive tree! I hope mine gets that large someday. My tree seems a bit slow growing. I had never seen the Crassulas at home depot before so when I saw them I had to pick a few up. They are so interesting looking. I also grabbed a really nice kumquat tree for just $23.(sounded like a steal to me) I've never had a fruit tree before but from what I've read they're one of the easier trees to grow here in southern California.

I looked at the other pictures and can see there is 'something' going on with your plant, but I don't know exactly what. There is a cultural condition your plant doesn't like, and the way it is telling you so can be seen in the shedding foliage. As plants prepare to shed foliage, the sap flow, which contains the bio-compounds that serve as the plants defense, is shut off by the abscission layer at the base of the leaf. This makes it easy for any number of fungi that cause rot or leaf spot diseases to get a hold, their presence being manifest in the symptoms you're seeing. The cultural condition I referred to, if we go only by the odds, is likely related to a decrease in the amount of light the plant is getting, or to over-watering. The over-watering may be caused by less than ideal watering habits or a poor soil. Most often, it's a combination of the two. You can keep working on fixing the problem you have, or you can concentrate on learning how to supply better cultural conditions so the plant is better able to take care of itself, the later being the best path, by far. Look at it a little like preventative maintenance - the difference between changing your oil in your car or never changing it .... One way takes more effort, but the rewards are certainly worth it. It wouldn't be a bad idea to get your watering under control after inspecting roots for rot and correcting if required. You're fortunate in that in about a month, the plant will be in the part of the growth cycle when the plant tolerates repotting best and recovery is fastest. I'm not sure how interested you are in learning all this 'stuff', so I'll just see what you have to say about what you'd like to do. Al

Bare with me, I just started turning my black thumb into a green one this year so I'm slowly working my way to different kinds of plants. :-) I finally graduated to house plants a month or so ago, and I went to the nursery for a stromanthe and ended up also buying a pretty rubber tree. I'm not sure if it's doescheri or tricolor but I'm pretty sure it's one of the two. Anyway, my stromanthe seems to be doing just fine (it was looking a little sad at the nursery tbh, I think it's filled out a little). However, I've noticed a few things with my ficus. The first is that it seems to be dropping a lot of leaves. I've picked up four off the floor in the last few days. Some of them had brown spots on them, some of them didn't. There are no brown spots on any of the leaves still on the tree. I searched the forums but all the spotting issues I saw were way worse than mine. I've just had some pretty small, round brown spots - not the extreme patching I've seen on other plants (yikes!). It seems like the consensus on those brown spots was watering and/or fertilization issue. I have never used fertilizer on any of my plants. I doubt I have been overwatering as I have been waiting for the soil to dry out in between waterings, and so have only watered it a couple of times (it's due for another today). I haven't repotted it from the nursery pot because the rootball was too big to fit into any planters I had, and I haven't been able to find a pot w/ tray in the correct size yet (the guy at Home Depot told me terra cotta is a SEASONAL! item? What?) so I haven't changed the soil. So second thing. The plant seems to be doing well other than that. It is growing new leaves. The new leaves are much shinier than the other leaves (I'm assuming this is normal), however, they are somewhat curled and not flat like the others. Is that normal? (I'm guessing they come out of the little red offshoots on the plant, so curling doesn't seem out of the question). They are also much more pink than green/cream like the other leaves. Do baby leaves go through color transitions? I read that the coloring is dependent on the light. I have the ficus on my coffee table in my room, it's in front of a south facing window. However, there's a building and a large tree on the other side of the window, that limits the amount of light that comes in. I figured that this perfectly fulfilled the suggestion of "bright but indirect" light. I could be wrong, this is the only light loving plant that I have indoors at the moment. I know that the succulents don't get enough light in my room, and I have gotten completely mixed suggestions on the amount of light that a stromanthe should receive, so I'm currently experimenting with a mostly shady corner of my room. I'm also experimenting with the ficus, because my room does get sunlight but I'm not sure if it's adequate enough to satisfy most plants, and I'm hoping to grow many more plants in my room (going for a Poison Ivy's lair look). Sorry, I don't have any photos of the brown spots because in a sleep-deprived stupor I tossed them without remembering I was going to ask you all about it. I can take some photos of the plant itself if it would help. Thanks!

It's most likely shedding leaves in response to growing in low light conditions. It takes energy to sustain that many leaves, and it can't do that if it isn't receiving sufficient sunlight. I grow mine in direct sunlight almost all year long. At least until it comes back indoors for the winter. It does perfectly fine, just so long as I keep it well watered. Since yours isn't used to that much sunlight, I would suggest increasing the light it does get to bright, indirect sunlight. This will give it more of the energy it needs.