How long does it take for a FLF or a plant in general to bounce back? It depends on what's wrong, where the plant is located, current cultural conditions, and how close the plant was to dying. Plants decline when something cultural is forcing to operate at or beyond the cultural conditions they are genetically programmed to tolerate. When plants aren't in their cultural 'sweet spot', it causes stress. Operating at or beyond what they're programmed can cause consumption of more energy than the plant produces. This is something beyond stress, called strain. Strain, uncorrected, always leads to death unless corrected, because no organism can function for long when consuming more energy than it's producing. The better you are at identifying and eliminating cultural limitations, the faster the plant will recover, but the short list of variables I offered all impact recovery.

My FLF had some poor new growth due to lack of watering. My dean told me it didn’t grow properly because of the salts and minerals in the soil. So he recommended that I flush that plant. Soak it. Wait about 3 hours, do it again. Then wait about 30 mins and give a lift more and some fertilizer. I did that. I made sure he was good a drained before taking him back into the living room. I’ve seen videos where they suggest cutting off damaged leaves. I have a few that are. But it’s not that bad..so should I cut them off? My usual recommendation for flushing the soil is to first saturate the soil completely, wait 10 minutes to an hour, then slowly pour a volume of room temp water equal to at least 10x the volume of the pot the plant is in; so, we're pretty much in accord re that step, though I don't see any conspicuous evidence in the pictures of a high TDS (salt) level in the soil solution. Ficus usually manifest symptoms at leaf tips and margins, and there is no necrosis apparent in the images.

When leaves become net users of energy instead of net producers, chemical messengers will notify plant central that it has a slacker. The plant will begin extracting mobile nutrients and breaking down other bio-compounds for use in other plant parts as part of the initial process of shedding the lazy leaf. Since the plant 'knows' whether or not it's to its benefit to shed a leaf, it's better (from the plant's POV) to leave leaves with green tissues on the plant and let them fall on their own. That said, there is very little harm in removing an unsightly leaf here and there from a healthy plant with plenty of foliage. If the plant is circling the drain - best to leave the plant to its own devices.

What more can I do, to encourage the leaves to sit up again the way they did 3 months ago? Ficus is known as a genus with many species that might have difficulty restoring leaves to their original attitude once wilting has occurred. In F lyrate and elastica, leaves often only partially recover after wilting. How long the loss of turgidity (the plant's internal water pressure) lasts has considerable impact on leaves' ability to return to their formal spatial positions. There is no practical way to fix this, unless you count mechanically repositioning leaves where you want them for several weeks as being practical. Plants' natural turgidity is highest at night and when the entire soil mass is damp, when no part of the soil mass is saturated, and when TDS levels are low but sufficient to supply the plant with all the nutrients it needs to function normally.

Sorry it took me a while to respond to your message - very busy at work & with family stuff for the holiday upcoming.

Al

Thanks, Bianca. Happy New Year!

Al