A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Schefflera? Help identify and advise on care

I believe this is a Schefflera/Dwarf Umbrella plant - can anyone confirm this or let me know what it is?

I brought it outdoors to take the picture but it usually sits on our porch in the summer and in the living room during the winter. This past winter it started dropping leaves. In the spring I put it in a larger pot, from a 8" to a 10", and moved it out to the porch. It's not dropping leaves anymore, but as you can see from the picture below the leaves are now concentrated at the top third of the plant. The main stems range from 18" to 24" tall, measure from the top of the soil.

My questions:
1) Should I prune the plant to get it to fill out more? If so, how much should I prune?
2) Is this supposed to be more tree-like, meaning upright? When I transplanted it I tried to make the stems site more upright but they want to lay to the side. This may be related to my first question as maybe they are top heavy.
3) How do you propagate these plants?
4) Was the dropping of leaves due to over/under watering or light? This was the first time it dropped leaves in 6+ years of owning the plant.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

You are right. Its a Schefflera arboricola.

It takes well to pruning and is shaped by the gardner's preference. Its most popular as a bushy plant. You can shape the plant the way you like it by pruning a little (results in taller skinner plant), or a lot (results in bushier plant). Some people even braid the stems. It can be cloned easily by taking branches you've cut when pruning and then planting those. These cutting should be at least 6 inches.

You can also use air layering to get more leaves on the lower half of the plant.
The benefit of air layering as opposed to simply pruning is that you'll get healthy rooted cuttings to propagate the plant instead of just sticking the pruned branches and waiting for the root system. I am a little too impatient for air cuttings, but they do work well.

The leaves could have dropped for many reasons. It does like bright light, either sunny or indirect, and likes moist soil but not overly wet.

Hope this helps :)

This is my neighbor's braiding of her dwarf umbrella. Its about 15 years old.

Welcome, Imeinmn. It is a schefflera. I'm not sure about the dwarf part. Mine began as a wee little thing and is a tree now taller than my house. But if you have had it for 6 years without it growing a lot larger than it may well be a dwarf.
Yes they can be pruned and respond very well to it. I would take off at least half of each clump of greenery leaving at least 2-3 leaves per end of the branches to begin. Once I go growth below those cuts I would trim it down further.
I have had good results taking cuttings from my schefflera. I would take a few inches of the end of each stem you cut, leaving the very top leaves and strip the others. Put it nearly up to the leaves you left in damp soil and keep it moist. Mine have developed roots in a few weeks. I put about 3 or four cutting into a 6 inch pot and divided them when they began rooting.
You can add a post or pole and tie them to encourage more upright growth. But turning them so they don't have to reach for light may also help. They do like high light. Mine get a little bit of direct California desert sun each day and light dappled shade the rest of the day.
The dropping leaves can be one of many things. Any changes can cause that. But if re-potting helped then you selected correctly.

Looking at my first picture and the branch that is standing more upright in the middle, where would you cut it? You said the cutting should be at least 6 inches - that would leave only the bottom most leaves/stems on that branch. Should I lop off the whole top to force what is left to sprout new leaves?

Then I can take the part I've cut off and plant it in a separate pot or in the same pot? Do I just put in right in the soil and it will root?

I submitted my follow up questions and found more replies that answered them - Thanks Tina and Debbie!

Just thought I'd follow up to say my schefflera is looking great! I pruned the top off of 4 of the main stems, put three of them in a separate pot and the forth one in a glass of water just to see what happened. One in the pot failed but the other two have many roots now. The one I put in water has only one root but I think it will do well.

Thanks again for your help!

Thank you for the update. I am glad it worked for you. I am still not sure why it dropped leaves last winter, and it could very well do so again. I would definitely turn it so it got more even light during its indoor time.