Introducing: the ugliest mallsai

Today, I have done the unthinkable. I have bought a Ficus microcarpa mallsai. The ugliest mallsai which, even at its very best, features shapeless, bulging rootstock and grafted little twigs in a chaotic bush unless it's a taperless thick spiral with sorry little grafted tufts for branches. Yet, I found an exceptionally ugly specimen.

Did you think I'd just splat it onto your poor unprepared retinas?

Two roots forking apart like they hate each other, distorting the totally dry pot; one barely-surviving graft with humble girth and quite a drastic bit of over-bend damage, next to no foliage elsewhere, a smattering of timid tiny buds...

Ugly, and mislabeled! Miniature F. benjamina this ain't.

So, here we have an informed impulse buy—both to see whether I couldn't make it a bit less ugly, and to get familiar with the species before I sooner or later procure a pricier specimen. I've been eyeing F. microcarpa mallsais for a good while, since my conditions should suit one.

This cost me a few coins, not bad for a learning project. It was a general store, but I was able to talk the already slashed price a deal lower since the plant was not only mostly dry and lifeless, but the best branch was, as mentioned, bent to hell.

Just wow.

For now I can do little more than try and promote good health and we'll see where we can get from there.

Short term: resuscitate and establish decent health. Attempt to save the over-bent branch. Keep scissors down.

Medium term: repot with proper medium, investigate possibilities of new grafts.

Long term: investigate possibility of creating a separate item from the thinner root by air-layering.