Developing a large Willow Leaf Ficus

[markyscott]

... and lessons learned.

This was a tree I purchased in about 2008. Being a slow learner, I wasted a lot of years of work on the tree. I defoliated it a couple of times a summer and wondered why my growth was so poor and development was so slow. Starting in 2013, I completely changed my approach and I’m so much happier with the trees progress.

Here’s the tree in September 2012.


Scott

 

[markyscott]

I defoliated it that day thinking that this was how it was done.


Scott

 

[markyscott]

I remember thinking how great the tree was at the time. But looking back at these pictures, there are significant problems. Here’s one:



Primary branches are stick straight with no movement or taper. Also, there is no primary ramification. This comes from repetitive defoliation resulting in lack of back budding. Because there’s no back budding, there’s nothing to cut back to. No cut back, no branching, taper or movement.

S

 

[markyscott]

Here’s another problem - look at this branch pattern:



Remember that old “rule”? Branches start more horizontal toward the bottom and get progressively more vertical toward the apex? Well on this tree, they’re going any which way. The spirit of the “rule” is that the branches should be organized in a way that makes sense for what your trying to achieve. If they’re disorganized like this, it just looks messy.

S

 

[markyscott]

And here’s another problem:



Primary trunk (1) is smaller than the secondary trunk (2).

There are many other problems. But the tree has some redeeming qualities too. It has a nice lower trunk and Willow Leaf Ficus grow great in Houston.

Scott

 

[markyscott]

Here’s the tree in November 2012, about 3 months after defoliating.



It’s grown new leaves, but that’s about it. Very little back budding. No extension. Nothing to work on, really, and no progress toward correcting any of the defects. After 4 years, it was clear that this tree was going to take decades (or more) to ever look decent. Whatever I was doing was insufficient to the task.

Scott

 

[markyscott]

I really owe the change in approach to Boon. He taught me to let the tree grow and get strong. Stop fully defoliating trees in development. When the tree is strong and full of growth, cut back - this will produce back budding. As the tree grows after pruning, mange the growth by partial defoliation and pruning to let light and air into the interior.

What do I meant by partial defoliation and pruning? It works like this:

When you prune and let the new shoots develop, WLF will produce dense branching at the ends of the branches like this:


If you let this remain, a full outer canopy will develop, preventing light and air from getting into the interior of the tree. All of those back buds you created by pruning when the growth was solid will weaken and die. If that happens, there’s nothing to cut back to - those stick straight branches will remain.

S

 

[markyscott]

So we need to thin. First, pull off the old leaves from every shoot, leaving the new leaves around the growing tip. Don’t prune the growing tip and don’t remove all the leaves.



Repeat on all of the shoots. It’ll look like this when you’re done:


Scott

 

[markyscott]

Once the partial outer canopy defoliation is complete, examine the shoots and thin to two. One choice is to remove shoots growing on the bottom of the branches and make edits where three or more shoots are thrown from the same location on the branch. Here’s a before and after:



Better - now light and air can get to the interior of the tree.

Alternatively, if you have a strongly growing interior shoot, you can cut back to that. These cut backs are very important. The big cuts give movement to branches at angles that you will not be able to accomplish by wiring alone. They create branch taper. And they cause more back budding giving you options for more cut backs in the future.

S

 

[markyscott]

So I let the tree grow - here it is in the summer of 2014, about 1 1/2 years after the last complete defoliation. The tree is much stronger, but not nearly as strong as it got by the following years. I’ve pruned a couple of times at this point and you can see significant extenion on the young shoots.




Scott

 

[markyscott]

By 2015, the tree is responding very nicely. Here it is in July, 2015. It’s very strong.


Here it is after I’ve worked it on the steps I’ve outlined above. 1) remove old leaves, 2) thin shoots to two, 3) cut back where possible to strongly growing interior branches, 4) wire, and 5) let it grow.



I can do this 3-4 times a year on this tree.

You can see that I made a decision to remove the secondary trunk.

Scott

 

[markyscott]

Falling into a pattern now.

Here’s the tree after working it in early July, 2016



Here’s the tree after working it at the end of August, 2016


Scott

 

[markyscott]

Here’s the tree before working it in July, 2017.



It is really str0ng and healthy. New shoots have developed into branches that are already as thick or thicker than what was on the tree originally.



That’s a one year old shoot.

Time to go to work:


Same process - remove old leaves, thin the shoots, cut back to strongly growing interior shoots where possible, and wire.



Scott

 

[Victorim]

Hi Scott, would you advise applying this principle to other ficus types?

 

[markyscott]

Pulled off the

Hi Scott, would you advise applying this principle to other ficus types?

Yes!

Scott

 

[markyscott]

And here is the tree today - just pulled off the remaining wire from the summer work. Looks like a completely different tree.



Four years of defoliating and wiring the same branches over and over = a waste of time and wire and a weak and unhealthy tree with the same defects present when I bought it.

Four years of informed effort = a complete transformation and a very strong and healthy tree with prolific growth every year. Thanks Boon!

Scott

 

[Victorim]

Pulled off the


Yes!

Scott

Hehe. Apologies.

Great sharing once again.

 

[ColinFraser]

Great thread and progress
Thanks for sharing!

 

[markyscott]

Once the partial outer canopy defoliation is complete, examine the shoots and thin to two. One choice is to remove shoots growing on the bottom of the branches and make edits where three or more shoots are thrown from the same location on the branch. Here’s a before and after:

View attachment 166682 View attachment 166683

Better - now light and air can get to the interior of the tree.

Alternatively, if you have a strongly growing interior shoot, you can cut back to that. These cut backs are very important. The big cuts give movement to branches at angles that you will not be able to accomplish by wiring alone. They create branch taper. And they cause more back budding giving you options for more cut backs in the future.

S

Forgot to mention - there was a potential shoot to cut back to in this image. See here?



If this was summer and since this is a Willow Leaf ficus, I would have cut back to that interior bud without hesitation. On other species I might wait until that shoot gets a bit stronger. Cutting back to that point, however, gives you better movement/taper and produces a more compact outline. Cutting back there will also produce better back budding. But this tree will go into my greenhouse as soon as we get our first freeze, so I’ll wait until next spring.

S

 

[markyscott]

The question about whether to ever defoliate has come up before. For most trees I rarely, if ever, defoliate. I practice partial outer canopy defoliation. For Willow Leaf ficus, I don’t have a problem with full defoliation, especially if you’re getting ready for a show or after the main branch structure is in place. The point here is that I see a lot of young ficus trees in development on this site and the first thing everyone wants to do is defoliate them. In my opinion that’s very counterproductive for a tree in development and I wanted to share one of my experiences that led to that opinion. Full defoliation is a refinement technique and many would be better served by NOT defoliating and focusing on growth and the wiring/pruning techniques combined with partial outer canopy defoliation I talked about here.

Scott