dead or ALMOST dead?

pardon the sideways photo.

i got this lovely azalea bonsai from my grandmother's greenhouse. it has been living inside my apartment and is subjected to the dry heat and fluctuating temperatures of an old radiator-heated brooklyn apartment. it lost some leaves initially from the shock of the move, but then seemed to be doing fairly well for a couple of months. i went out of town for about two and a half weeks, and came back to find the leaves all dead, though still attached to their branches (and as such, from a distance may have looked alive to my plantsitter, who i suspect may have forgotten to water it.

at this point, it seems dead. i've been watering it for the last week and a half, since i've been back, but i haven't seen any new growth.

how can i check to see if there's any hope at all whatsoever, or if i should just bury it and call it a day?

Scratch the bark with the sharp point of a knife & see if the cambium is still green. If so, there is a chance it will recover if it was doing ok before it lost it's leaves. Whether or not the drought hit did it in, and how much energy the plant has in reserve to push a new flush of foliage are the factors that determine the likelihood of it recovering. Be very careful not to over-water. With no foliage, the soil will dry slowly.

Al

Thanks, Al. I cut in at the base of the trunk with my pocketknife maybe a 1/2 centimeter deep...didn't look green. And I noticed that the plant uprooted very easily. I think that answers that, unfortunately....

Yes - unfortunately there's only one degree of dead. ;o(