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There Schefflera it is a beautiful plant with palmate and bicolor leaves, partly green and partly creamy yellow. It is a decorative plant that can also be grown in pots and it is not too difficult to please it and allow it to grow healthily. Let's find out its main characteristics with some advice on how to best welcome it in our green space.
Schefflera: characteristics
With its tree shape and its long stems that hold the leaves, this plain belongs to the Araliacee family and the genus includes about 150 species native to India, East Asia, the Fiji Islands and New Zealand. It looks like a shrub or a tree of limited size, it is perennial and its own leaves are palmate or digitate.
Schefflera: cultivation
To start cultivating it we must put it at ease, this means finding a position that is right for it, Usually it prefers areas with a lot of light but it is better not to subject it to direct rays of the sun which can damage it, especially if they are those of the summer season, more powerful. At the same time we must ensure that it is not exposed to air currents that can disturb its development. As for the temperatures, we are not facing a plain that loves the cold, the ideal one is greater than 18 ° C and if it goes below 12 ° C the leaves have a hard time sprouting and developing, if they are green, if they are variegated they need at least 16 ° C. .
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Schefflera: watering
The land around ours Schefflera it must always be humid but never too wet because it is strictly necessary that there is no risk of stagnation water. Let's water it quite often in summer while in winter only every now and then and better if we can do it in the evening. It is also a good idea to vaporize it and keep it in a humid place by placing the pot in a dish of wet gravel.
If we have already tried to cure one Fatsia Japonica, we already know how to treat this plant which proves to be quite sensitive to the amount of water received, especially if in the apartment. It is important not to leave the roots in the wet for too long. In this sense, the idea of using water reservoirs that allow ours can be a solution Schifflera to take the water it needs without exaggerating.
Every two weeks while watering the plant we can also fertilize it by adding a few drops of harmonic stimulant, 5 drops for each liter of water and every month a little seaweed extract by adding 2 g of iron sulphate dissolved in half a liter of water. Furthermore, during its vegetative peak, the use of a liquid fertilizer balanced approximately every two weeks.
Schefflera in pot
When we are growing this plant in pot we must pay attention to some precautions because its leaves are fragile and they should not feel suffocated. Let's start by not putting it too close to other plants so that they don't bump into each other as they grow. And if it is in the correct position with recommended light and temperature, then it will thrive.
To avoid continually subjecting her to gods repotting, we immediately start growing it in rather large pots in which there is room for the roots to develop for a long time, the fact remains that when they have exceeded a certain limit, we must still transplant the schefflera in another pot and this can also happen every year, especially in the first years of the plant's life.
Schefflera: flowering
So far we have only talked about leaves but there Schefflera also produces flowers, not always and it is not always easy to notice them because the leaves certainly do the great show. These are racemic greenish inflorescences that make space between the foliage depending on the temperature season. However, do not expect to see flowers appear if you are always growing the plant inside your apartment.
Schefflera bonsai
When it grows in its natural habitat, the Schefflera can also reach tree heights, in our part of Italy it is rare to see it exceed 2 meters in height which is still a considerable altitude. The Schefflera is quite another thing in bonsai version, format in which it retains its elegance, but also its delicacy and its low propensity to flourish in the apartment.
Schefflera: fallen leaves
Sometimes plant diseases and pests lead to leaf fall, this can happen even if the temperatures are too low, or if we are wrong to dose water and fertilizer. This is not a frequent problem because the Schefflera tends to be hardy. Its enemies are scale insects and aphids, and lice, better wash the leaves with cotton soaked in alcohol for the first two, or get a specific pesticide for the third
Schefflera: origins
The name of this plant is inspired by the naturalist J.C. Scheffler a botanist also dedicated to teaching in his city of Gdansk. This flower arrives in Europe at a rather late age, only in the eighteenth century and was not immediately recognized, many thought it was a genus of Aralie.
We use it mainly for decorative purposes but in the world there are populations that use it for its wood such as for example the Maori, in New Zealand. They use it to obtain fire by means of the friction of two dry woods, of different hardness, rubbed together until a spark comes out.
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