Fukien Tea - growing temperature - Paul Lesniewicz

Interesting, looking through - Bonsai in your Home - I see Fukien tea listed as

[1] Needing only 1000 lux to grow
[2] Temperatures of 50 to 75 deg.F [ 10 to 24 deg.C ] indoors all year round.

Now I grow this plant in Full Sun, and it undergoes a rest naturally from after Christmas until February or so.
You can actually see no new shoots for a period of time.

So is the 50 deg.F also a daytime temperature as well as a night temperature ?

What exactly is the cold tolerance of this shrub, it is obviously not Tropical, can it handle frost?
Later.
Khaimraj

good evening my friend,

in the Uk this tree usually dies outdoors but will live in a protected well lit area like a conservatory. it is sold as an indoor tree by importers but usually dies off quite quickly due to dry air and poor air movement. i have one friend who grows a miniature variegated species on his kitchen windowsill with great success but it is not a tree i would ever encourage a Uk grower to buy so they do not become disappointed with the bonsai hobby if their tree dies

cheers M

Just my personal experience here - I bought a Fukien Tea from a local garden centre, looked healthy, decent price, and it has been thriving since October 2012 on our bathroom windowsill. However, it came in the original Far East clay/sand/stones muck covered with a thin layer of potting compost, all of which I washed off and repotted in free draining mix. It has been flowering continuously, even grew a single berry, but new shoots have only been evident in the last two months, ie at UK summer temperatures. They have been vigorous and mostly removed, I have also successfully rooted three hardwood cuttings from unwanted branch prunings and have a further dozen softwood cuttings in course - future Carmona forest maybe? Weekly feeding with liquid seaweed diluted to normal strength.
I understand that min temperature for this species is around 50F, it certainly wouldn't cope with frost. I think the humidity in a bathroom or kitchen environment is an advantage and it clearly gets enough natural daylight throughout the year. It has had maximum temperatures around 90F recently and hasn't flagged. Given the right conditions it is a good indoor bonsai - nevertheless, probably not for a beginner (I have been a keen gardener for 30 years and been interested in small trees for nearly 20) and I researched the tree's needs as best I could before buying it.
Hope this is of interest, and maybe help to anyone considering purchase of this species.

Dave

Marcus and Dave,

thank you very much for taking the time to respond.

Yes, the first tree I got from the UK came in basically clay and was outdoors for the month of November, before it went
home with me, around the 14th of December.
You can see it in my gallery.

I am trying to establish the limits of the dormancy temperature, but would need someone to just grow a seedling in U.K weather outdoors from late spring until winter.
The reason being, that the trees I took home, Ulmus, Ligustrum, Sageretia and Serissa, all were in that clay soil and took at least 3 years to shake off the really poor treatment they got from being chopped out of growing soil in China, and then further shipped in darkness for I believe two months by sea, to the Netherlands.
Finally further driven to the U.K.

It probably is the poor treatment that kills off these poor plants, and not so much the weather.

What is needed is for someone with experience to start them off in late spring, and allow their normal cycles to come into play.

I think it would be easier on newbe nerves if the true zonal limits could be established.

It is obvious that these plants need some form of winter's rest, which they go through down here. I suspect that they burn out with the being forced to grow continuously.

When properly grown the Fukien tea, can have trunks of over 20 cm [ 8" ] in diameter, and make exceptional Bonsai, it would be an asset to any zone 8 or 9 grower, if it was proven that they could like the Snow Rose grow outdoors, with no special treatment.
Later.
Khaimraj

*The reason I keep asking this is because these trees come from fields in possibly South China, and are given no special treatment.
Here's the catch, South China is supposed to have frost and snow, and so ???????

Don't go by anything in Lesniewicz's book. It was ghost written. He didn't know anything about bonsai. At least that's what I was told. I have run across people who are growing Ehretia microphylla (the correct name) indoors. It is a tropical & does not require dormancy. Keep it outdoors in the summer.
Iris

Ms. Iris,

thank you for taking the time to type a response. Yes, I remember someone mentioning the ghost writer bit back in the days when IBC was an e-mail list.

However, the shrub does go dormant on our side, as I stated before. It also resists drought, by dropping most of it's leaves, and going dormant as well.

I guess until someone up north doesn't just try seedlings or cuttings outside, this situation will never be resolved.
Oh well I tried.
Later.
Khaimraj

Don't go by anything in Lesniewicz's book.

Iris beat me to it, but I was gonna write it in ALL CAPS.

Fujian province has a temperature range of - -6.6 to 4.4 deg.C [ 20 to 40 deg.C ]

http://www.oocities.org/zhuzi.geo/Hardines.JPG

So does that mean both snow and frost ?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/snow/how-is-snow-formed

So does anyone wonder, is the Fukien tea - Tropical ????????

Of course this goes with Fujian provence being one of the homes of the Fukien Tea.
Later.
Khaimraj