Hi...I have a White Bird - indoors. It's still very young but stands about 5 feet. I've had problems with those brown spots...I don't know which pest it was but it seems to be under control/gone now. I am waiting for it to become root bound so I can pot in a clay pot. Anyway I love these plants/trees. I have 10 seeds and 5 seedlings on their way to me. I know how to care for the seedlings, but does anyone know about the seeds? I have the seet starting soil...purchased tiny clay pots to start them. But I really have no clue what I'm doing. If anyone could send me instructions on how to start from seeds that would be great. Thanks!! Here is a link that might be useful: My Link

If you have room in your house for two separate pots, that is what I would recommend. As you are probably aware, they will clump over time and fill a pot, but will be slower to do so indoors and so far north, unless you have them growing in a heated and artificially lighted greenhouse, where their growth speed will be closer to how they grow in warmer climates such as South Africa or California.

Hello Secretsquirrel007 Sorry for my late response, I need to change my settings so I get notifications! My next response will be faster! Oh thats very interesting & I think the plant is at the age of flowering. Do you have any ideas about why its taking one leaf over 3 months to 'sort of' open and why the plant is generally shrinking and majorly slowing down (its usually flourishing making new leaves every month or so... for the last 9 months its basically been dormant). Im in zone 4. Thanks again : )

I have an S. nicolai that I bought several months ago (maybe Feb/March?) from Lowe's or Home Depot, 3 stems in I think a 1.5 gallon pot (can't quite read the label). It seemed happy enough for each stem to send up a new leaf in the spring/early summer, but one of leaves -- the tallest one -- never opened (for months, while the others opened within a month) and just this week it bent over, apparently under its own weight. We were away for the weekend and it's possible that it didn't get enough water over the weekend, but I suspect something else may be wrong since it never opened. Other background info: - I never repotted it; it's still in the original soil and plastic pot it came in (although I dropped that into a metal pot with soil at the bottom under the pot, to give it somewhere to drain to) - I water weekly - It gets fairly bright indirect light on one side (~5 ft from window) and less bright indirect light on the opposite side (it's in a wide door/archway btwn rooms and this side is probably 13+ ft from the windows) So two questions: 1. Did this leaf fail to open/get too tall or leggy because the plant isn't actually getting enough light, and it's just happened to muddle through so far? Not enough water? Pretty sure I'm not overwatering; I check that the pot is 90%+ dry with a dip stick before watering -- although I suppose it is possible that that bottom inch of the pot is causing root rot. 2. What can I do about the bent leaf? I read these can't really be pruned; what happens if I just cut off the bent leaf where it emerges from the previous leaf? (It bent about an inch above that point; the rest of the stem below is still fine.) Might it send up a new leaf from within the stem next year (assuming it makes it that long)?