Beginner Gardening: schleffera, 1 by plantladylin

plantladylin wrote:
manyseeds: WELCOME to The Garden! You will LOVE it here!

I have two HUGE Sheff's planted in the ground in my backyard. They used to be houseplants many years ago! I began a few years ago to pull all the bottom branches/leaves off to make a nice canopy and to be able to see the flowers/plants in the flower bed beneath the trees. Every fall they begin losing leaves! I think it's just the normal seasonal thing. Some leaves will turn yellow and fall off, but some just fall off still green, or as I said, I will pull them off as they begin sprouting. It could also be stress related as ecrane3 said from moving them from one location to another. Or, could be a watering factor .... too much, too little. What is the location you have it in the house? Is it near a heat vent? Sometimes that can cause leaf drop too. A lot of plants just hate being moved from one place to another. That happens big time with Ficus trees. I used to have huge Weeping Fig Trees that would lose EVERY leaf, go completely bare if I moved it from one side of the patio to another! Some plants just like to get set in one spot and don't like being moved.

Here's a photo of one of my Sheff's in my backyard! If we have a hard freeze or even if it gets cold enough that we have frost, these trees are mush .... brown soggy leaves down to the ground with nothing but dead looking sticks left. But, in Spring I pull off all the dead, brown leaves, trim it up and by summer it's huge again. It comes back from the roots!

Lin