Complete reverse of last time

No dead leaves so far besides what the plant arrived with, plus I've witnessed several new leaves start and become fully formed and green. I never got any growth with the last plant, so this is a definite improvement. I'm also trying an air layering technique by Arjibuh of miracletaste.com with one of the lower branches. It still looks pretty sparse, but if it continues to grow new leaves that shouldn't be a problem.

Got my plant!

It arrived! Hooray! A little later than I expected but still in good shape. The plant definitely had less leaves than my first one, but about twice as thick a stem. There were a few dead leaves but nothing too bad... Something interesting I noticed is that the leaves had a much different texture than my first plant... Maybe from being in high humidity?

I also saw that some roots were trying to leave the bottom of the pot! It IS a pretty small container, but I'm not sure if I should transplant it just yet. I didn't find any flower buds and I'm not sure why. My first plant definitely had some when I got it and it was about half as old.

I got four stakes and stuck them in the soil and put a plant humidity bag over the whole thing, being careful that the leaves didn't touch the sides. I have a little tray with pebbles and water in the bag next to the plant to try and up the humidity a little more. It's by an east window with a T8 4ft cool light fluorescent about eight inches above it, and I also have a fluorescent compact rig I can put next to it if It's not enough.

Plant in its packaging


Unpacked!


In its new home, hopefully for more than a few months!


As comparison, this is my previous plant.


I was wondering if anyone could help me with this... A few leaves had these round circles, and it kind of looks like a disease. Does anyone know what they are?

update

The larger miracle fruit plant has lost all but two (two!) of its leaves. It's in 100% humidity right now. I'm trying to revive it, but I don't give it very good odds. I have one seedling left and it has about eight leaves and a pretty thick stem. It's currently in a bottle terrarium.

I want to start over growing a larger plant, this time not shipped halfway across the world. I just ordered one from Mark of black river nursery. Looking back, I really didn't follow the common growing instructions. It often got cold, I couldn't provide high humidity, didn't get enough light, and the PH was too high. I'm better equipped now. I have plant humidity bags, a grow light setup, ph tester and sulfur granules, and a small plant heating pad.

I'm determined to do better this time.

It has been freed.

Today, finally, after six months I freed my larger plant from its plastic bag. Since I've gotten it, it has lost about 50% of its foliage and shown pretty much no improvement. In the hopes that this will help it, I've cut away the bag and will just spray the leaves several times a day.

Interestingly, when I picked up the pot the roots were trying to climb out of the bottom of the pot. When I first planted it, the root ball filled about a third of the pot. That's quite a bit of root growth for zero foliage growth. Maybe that's where all its energy went?

Nope.

Both flowers have completely fallen off, along with some more leaves, so it's back to square one. Actually, square one would have been better, because the plant was in picture perfect health then. I've noticed that there hasn't been any condensation in the bag, so I thought that the problem might have been humidity. Before, the bag was sort of pinched under the pot of the plant, and a lot of moisture probably got through. Also, the soil was just as moist as it was months ago, and I thought the roots needed some air, so instead of having the opening of the plant underneath the pot I taped it around the base of the tree.

That was about a week ago, and still no condensation in the bag, so I thought maybe the plants weren't respiring at all. To get the bag humid, and maybe get the plant healthier, I tried to pour water into the sealed bag by making a small hole in the top and sealing it later. Oops! I tour a five inch gash in the bag, and had to use a lot of tape (after pouring water inside)to seal the patch. Hopefully this will do something.

I also sealed the final two seedlings in an aquarium, explained at gibberellic.blogspot.com

Pictures enclosed are a full view of the larger plant and the aquarium setup.

Is it fruit?

So a few weeks ago I noticed two healthy, fully formed flowers on my plant, and tried to pollinate them. Usually, the flowers shrivel up, turn black and fall off within a week. One of the flowers has shriveled up, but the base of it is still latched on to the tree, unlike the other flower. I think there's a chance that if the flower has been on so long, it might be because there's a developing fruit inside. I guess its just wait and see for now.

Hooray! Larger MF plant update

So in the four-ish months since I've had my largest miracle fruit plant, I at first saw stability, then loss of foliage, and for the most part after that, nothing. No new growth, no loss of leaves, and I began to worry that: A, my plant was dead, B: it was defective, or C: I was doing something wrong. Because it was unlikely I would have a "defective" plant, and it would have been obvious if it was dead, I was probably doing something wrong. The obstacle of correcting this is that I didn't know what I was doing wrong. I contacted the seller and in short, was told to keep doing what I was doing. This was about a week ago.


Yesterday, I looked at my plant and noticed that a couple of leaves had turned brown, so I opened the bag and checked to see if there were more dying leaves. I didn't find any, instead to my delight I saw that at the top of the plant there were two perfectly formed flowers! I looked carefully, and found there were actually a dozen or so tiny buds growing on the branches, and a few small red leaves, which I think are newly formed. I took a cotton swab and brushed against both of the flowers to hopefully polinate them.

I think my plant has finally overcome its transplant shock. I just wish I could find what I was doing differently, so I can keep it that way.