Indian umbrella

Some years ago I was allowed to take some cuttings of a species of Schefflera, collected in NE India. These were the biggest cuttings I'd ever taken, being two feet long and over an inch thick and I had to build a special propagator for them. Fortunately I got one of the two cuttings rooted and it grew into a wonderful tree nearly 20ft tall, with three foot long leaf petioles.

They eventually flowered and my late friend Jamie Taggart collected seed and grew some seedlings on, giving me several when they were a couple of feet tall. These I have now planted out. They are quite hardy at Arduaine and very different from any other hardy shrub. There are a couple of species grown as houseplants, but many species are hardy and this is one of the best though I've never discovered which species it is.

Unfortunately a couple of years ago a larch blew down one stormy night, by the sheerest bad luck hitting the original Schefflera and uprooting it! We cut it down to a stump, replanted it and now it's growing again, but with several stems.