Banyan Ficus

[themilkman647]

Hello all , i recently joined this website after reading and learning so much from it the past 7 years i have known about it. I just thought i post some pictures of the ficus tree that i have been growing in my horizontal terrarium. The species i think is ficus macrophyllum. I have been training the tree for approximately 5 years, but the tree itself is roughly 10 years old. Enjoy!

[froggsong]

VERY cool... how do you go about keeping one small enough to fit a horizontal tank? I know they make good bonsai trees, but I'm not as good with plants as I am with herps...

[themilkman647]

it might not be clean in the images, but the tree is at an angle. What i didi is kind of cheating though , but ill tell you anyways. I grew the tree in a pot for a while, and like most trees, it grew vertically, then i trimmed it back down and then planted it at the base of a rock out cropping i made in my terrarium. The terrarium itself is sealed, so the humidity is at about 80-100%. The tree put out aerial roots freely, and i just let them hit the ground and thicken up. The real task is to stay on top of the tree cutting it back and making it o horizontal, this is usually done by wiring branches, like they do with bonsai trees. I keep the tree small by doing what people do with bonsai, i keep it in a small pot. The side that its on has a glass divider under the soil, making the corner its own pot, kind of, restricting the roots and keeping it from turning into a monster tree

[froggsong]

Cool, thanks... I am building a fairly large vive for my CWD, and I am interested in planting some sort of smallish tree in there... I know he'll love it