Hopefully one of our ficus experts will stop by, but I'm pretty sure all ficuses behave the same, so the pruning advice elsewhere in the forums will be helpful until someone who can advise you.

That big branch on the left appears to be reaching for a distant light source. Ficuses love lots of direct sunlight, so yours is likely to keep straining towards the light as long as it's light starved. In addition, more light will both strengthen the stems and help the plant respond well to pruning, so I'd recommend moving it right in front of a window that gets direct sunshine for as much of the day as possible.

In truth I'm just learning about pruning myself, so I'll let someone smarter than me share their wisdom.

I forgot to say what pretty leaves your ficus has. I'm going to keep my eye out in hopes I stumble on one.

You have 2 options. You can cut the top back to a leaf that is growing back toward an imaginary line straight up from the center of the pot, or you can cut back harder so you take the crook out of the picture and make the top straight. The grower cut the trunk back and that's how the branch that became the new leader grew. What the grower should have done and you can still do is this:

What he SHOULD have done is, cut the top back only part way so there was a stub left, then tie the new branch to the stub so it grows straight:

****************************************************************************************************

Your idea to prune back to the leaf growing back toward the center is what I described above. It's ok to do that if the distance from the soil line to the first crook in the trunk is longer than the distance from the crook in the trunk to the branch growing back toward the middle. IOW, as your tree zig-zags, the distance between the direction changes has to grow increasingly smaller as your eye moves from bottom to top. This is because (in nature), branches get much closer together near the top of trees, and that's what your eye expects to see. If you DON'T see the sections between turns getting shorter toward the top, it will look odd, even if you can't put your finger on the precise reason why. If the distances are transposed, I'd cut the crook out and do what I illustrated above.

Al

Thanks so much for the detailed response! I am new to this forum and just spent a while reading back through your comments on other posts and learned a ton!

I think I am going to cut back to just above the new branch that is moving in towards the center (the idea of cutting all the way down to the original crook is a little too overwhelming for my first pruning i think! haha). The distance between it and the original crook is a bit smaller than the distance between the original crook and the soil.

I will try and root the top cutting into a new plant :)

Thanks again!! your note about letting it grow past the center line is super helpful, I don't think I would have thought of that. I think I'm going to try making a bonzi with something soon - as I recently visited a bonzi garden here in oakland, ca and loved it!

Anyways... I made the cuts! and have the cuttings in some pots. I dusted the cutting bottoms with a rooting hormone. I mixed pumice with some regular potting soil, but it is mostly pumice. Photos below. I took off most of the leaves but left the top two on each.

Let me know if you think I should remove them. I have seen some posts that recommend cutting the leaves in half? I know that the plant with no roots is going to have a hard time moving water up to them...

Will add a tiny bit of water to the soil and cover with plastic bags for a few weeks. and update with progress over time :)

cutting 1 ^ (middle piece from original main stem)

There is no rule that says your plant has to exit the soil at a 90* angle to the horizon. You can slant the cutting so the branch that will be your leader will be vertical, or closer to it. You could also turn your cutting into a mallet cutting, which would easily allow you to have the leader exit the soil vertically, if that's what you're looking for.

Al

All, if I could 'love' a post I'd love your last one. It reminded me that I can root sections of what I will prune from my rambling old schefflera to get at least a few plants with vertical main stems, which I'd somehow forgotten (all but the last few inches of all the branches are curved from bad pruning and reaching for distant windows in my pre-gardenweb days). Thanks!

Did you leave a chunk of the big branch on the bottom of those cuttings? Unlignified (green) wood of ficus doesn't always root well - often rots. The green wood would be the handle or the mallet and a chunk of the branch it's attached to would be the head of the mallet - as in the mallet cutting I linked too. The mallet part gets buried just deep enough into the soil that you can be sure it stays moist.

LB - If your scheff is healthy, you can cut your pruned branches in 2" chunks, lay them on the top of moist soil in a horizontal position, and then press them into the moist soil deep enough so 1/2 of the cutting is covered by soil and half is exposed above the soil. Figure a way to keep the humidity high and you should have 100% rooting success. 1-2 weeks.

Al

It's certainly healthy now, thanks to all I've learned from your posts. Does the piece I use need to have a certain number of nodes?

Is there a way to root cuttings in gritty mix? The RH is low enough that I'd have to tent plastic over the cutting even if it were in MG, but I don't know if it would work in gritty mix when the RH gets to 20% or less.

This has been one of the most informative threads I've found on pruning/shaping a Ficus benghalensis (Audrey)! Thank you so much.

I just did my own post about it, you can check it out here.