Root Reveal: Sandpaper Fig (Ficus sp.)

22 Nov

Posted By kristi 0 Comment(s) 3 View(s) Horticultural Bits , Air-Pot Containers , Bonsai , General Interest

First published 22nd November 2025

Some time around winter 2025 (I stupidly didn’t take notes) I uprooted a self-seeded sandpaper fig (there are several species buit this one is most likely to be Ficus coronata), took a bunch of cuttings, and placed the remainder into this used 4.1 L Air-Pot seed tray. As with the silk floss tree cutting, this was a used one ready to go, otherwise I would have used the very similar 4.1 L bonsai training pot instead.

I liked the butressing already developing, and the thin side branch lower down on the trunk:

New leaves were growing by late September (this photo was taken on 4th October 2025):

But it was beneath the surface that the real magic was taking place, as this root-reveal photo shows!

Using this particular Air-Pot — one of my first and many years’ old now — allows me to show just how tough and great quality these are. It takes many years and many screwing-unscrewing cycles of the fixture for the slightest bit of damage to ever appear. Here, a small fracture has developed on this cone where the fixture inserts. This really is insignificant and has no bearing on performance whatsoever. If that hole ever becomes unuseable down the track however, I would simply use another cone,

Tags: Air-Pot, Air-Pot bonsai training pot, bonsai, sandpaper fig, Ficus sp.,

Short Bio

Kristi Ellinopoullos
BSc(Hons), U.Syd. - double major in biochemistry and microbiology, with honours in microbiology
PhD, U.Syd - soil microbiology
Stumbled into IT and publishing of all things.
Discovered jujube trees and realised that perhaps I should have been an agronomist…
So I combined all the above passions and interests into plant-related websites and blogs, on which I write about plants, gardening, botany, soil chemistry, soil microbiology and biochemistry!

If you have any deep interest in microbiology and/or biochemistry, and how these apply to plants, I’m writing a deep-dive online book From Soil to Fruit here.

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