Some kind of sap sucking bug has been at work. Do you have a magnifying glass? There are creatures visible in picture two, I believe. Meanwhile keep this one well away from the others and check them thoroughly too. To be brutal, I would dump the wrinkly one as being more trouble to cure than it is worth. Scheffleras are so easy to root from cuttings you could just make yourself a new one, providing the others are healthy .

No magnifying glass, but can you say (or circle) which leaves you're referring to? Just took a close look and all I can see on the leaves are bits of dust/potting media from being repotted, no scale or anything like thatthat (but I know some bugs are too small to easily see)

I don't disagree that there is likely some sucking insects at work on your plant, but please tell us how you're fertilizing, and, if you made your own medium, what all went into it.

Al

The plants just arrived, so any non-insect-related issues are from the seller's end. They were in a peat-based potting media, heavily amended with perlite (broke apart very easily, wasn't compacted at all when they arrived - the roots were very easy to untangle too though so they may have been potted very recently). No idea what the seller's fertilizer regimen was.

Now that I have them, they're separated into 3 individual pots. 1 is in a gritty mix from bonsai jack, which is a larger particle size (closer to 3/16-1/4), and the other two are in a mix from rePotme (1/16-1/8" particle size, approximately 5.1.1 pine bark/turface/perlite). I'm testing out the rePotme mix as a more water retentive option for my desert conditions, but it drains just as quickly as a regular gritty mix. Fertilizer is Foliage Pro, same as all my other plants (I'd give an exact amount per gallon, but I honestly eyeball it and don't worry too much since none of the plants sit in water )

OK - Forget I asked. I noticed the malformed foliage that looks potentially like a Ca deficiency that could have been actual (low Ca levels in the grow medium and soil solution) or culturally caused (soggy and/ or compacted soil can severely limit Ca uptake), but it sounds like those potentialities are off the table, at least from this point forward.

Have Fun! Keep us posted.

Al

I googled photos of plants with calcium deficiencies, and that does look a lot closer to what my leaves are like than some of the other things I looked up - interesting!

I'm looking forward to seeing how they do now that they're in gritty(--ish) mixes and getting the FP fertilizer, hopefully they start to thrive.

I will give them a spray with some insecticidal soap/neem oil just to be safe (had a bad run with scale on my citrus when I brought them inside last winter, so I definitely don't want any other pests in the house) but I'm hoping it was a nutritional deficiency that is easily corrected rather than pests.

Please cover the grow medium to prevent the soap from getting into the medium. While the leaves of schefflera are tolerant of IS applications, the roots of plants are not.

I'd say the malformed leaves could be but is not likely to be a result of a nutritional issue. The grower would have had to used a medium with an insufficient level of Ca or kept the plants habitually too wet. One other potentiality would be a highly compacted medium which severely limited O2 availability.

I have grown the plants in the gritty mix and they love it.

Al

delivered this weekend

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so the pot.. was taken from its mother greenhouse.. its stressed ..

then it was packaged and sent cross country to you.. it was stressed more ..

then you got it. and ripped it from its pot.. bare rooted it.. and repotted them individually... that is a big dollop of a lot more stress ...

YOUR PLANTS ARE STRESSED .. why does it surprise you they might look .. wait for it.. stressed ...

why cant you see the white dots in the second pic flora refers too.. why do you need us to circle them ..

other then watering your plants properly.. leave them alone and isolated for a month or 3.. and see what new growth looks like in the meantime... lets try not to heap more stress on them ... unless you can definitively ID a problem to respond to ...

lets try not to kill them with too much love..

ken

ps: ALL NEW PLANTS SHOULD BE ISOLATED for a few months.. before being introduced to your collection ...if you havent been doing this.. youve been lucky so far ... and if your plant does have bugs.. i would never buy from that seller again.. ever ...

Ken, the "white dots" were bits of potting media/dust, so if that's what Floral_uk was referring to then there's no need for concern. That's why I was asking what they were specifically referring to, so I could tell if it was something that I'd already identified as a non-concern.

Of course I expect plants to be stressed after being shipped and repotted, but I've done this many times before and not seen the wrinkled leaves that I have with this plant, which is why I asked about that specific concern.

I'm not sure I understand why this would need to be shipped. Any store that sells plants is likely to have this. Maybe not every day, but if you look occasionally, you will see it.