Money tree

Getting started

almost always arrives as a finished braid, already a year or two old — most owners skip this whole chapter

• day 0–105–10 days

  Germination

  A chestnut-sized seed that cannot be stored — it stays viable a few weeks dry, but floats for months in water and sprouts where it strands. Sown fresh it germinates almost without fail in well under a fortnight.

  Sown fresh, it comes up in a week — this is one of the easy ones.

  see it on the strip ↑
• day 10–120~4 months

  One leaf, then three

  The seedling shows you its homework: a plain simple leaf first, then a three-fingered one, and only then the palmate hand of the adult plant. Almost nobody who owns a money tree has seen this.

  Watch the leaf shape change — simple, then three fingers, then the full hand.

  see it on the strip ↑
• day 120–730~2 years

  Finding its height

  Fast for a tree — a seedling can put on three metres in two years given light and root room. Nursery stock is braided in this window, while the five green stems are still soft enough to plait.

  The stems are still soft — this is the only window in which a braid is possible.

  see it on the strip ↑

Typical timeline

• the plantMAR – OCT

  Pushing

  The growing half of the year: new leaves from the crown, roots working, real thirst. This is when to repot, prune and feed — everything you want it to recover from, do it now.

  New leaves are coming from the crown — feed fortnightly and let it drink.

  see it on the strip ↑
• the plantNOV – FEB

  Ticking over

  Evergreen, so nothing dies back — but indoor light falls by three to five times and growth all but stops. It keeps every leaf and asks for almost nothing.

  Growth has parked itself for the winter. Keep the leaves, drop the watering.

  see it on the strip ↑
• flowering · rareSEP – NOV

  Shaving-brush flowers

  In its native range: five strap petals, up to 30 cm long, peel back like a banana skin at dusk to release 200-odd stamens, white at the base and red at the tips, over a lilac-ish perfume. Each flower is finished by the next midday. Bats take the pollen, hawkmoths take the nectar. It needs a mature tree in the tropics — a braided plant indoors will not do this, and the honest reading is that you will never see it on your own.

  Someday, somewhere — the shaving-brush flower is the trophy of this plant.

  see it on the strip ↑
• fruiting · rareAPR – JUN

  Woody capsules

  A rusty woody pod up to 30 cm long and a kilo or more, splitting into five valves around 10–25 seeds in white pulp. The seeds taste of peanuts raw and cocoa roasted — cook them, always. Ripening is timed to the flood, so the pods drop into high water and are carried off downstream.

  The pods ripen with the floodwater and sail away — a tree that posts its own seedlings downstream.

  see it on the strip ↑
• undergroundMAR – SEP

  Roots working

  Warmth and light in the crown mean roots below. This is the window in which a root disturbance — a repot, a snapped root — actually heals.

  see it on the strip ↑
• undergroundNOV – FEB

  The rot window

  The danger season, and it is not the cold. Light collapses, so the plant stops drinking — but the watering habit doesn't change, and a still, warm, airless pot is exactly what Pythium and Phytophthora swim in. More money trees are lost here than to anything else.

  see it on the strip ↑

Quiet stretch — winter slowdown · water far less, feed nothing.

Care milestones

• repotMAR – APR

  Repot into free-draining mix

  Every two or three years, at the start of the push. Open, gritty, free-draining compost and a pot with holes — the swamp tree of the wild drowns in a still pot. Handle the roots gently: the stem rot recorded on this species only took hold on plants that had been wounded.

  see it on the strip ↑
• feedMAR – SEP

  Feed at half strength

  Balanced feed, half strength, roughly every two weeks — and only while it is actually growing. Nothing from October to February; an unfed winter plant is fine, a fed one just accumulates salt.

  see it on the strip ↑
• pruneAPR – MAY

  Cut it back if you want to

  It takes hard pruning well and branches from where you cut, so this is how you keep a crown in proportion to its braid. Prune at the start of the growing season and it recovers within the same year.

  see it on the strip ↑
• watchMAY – JUN

  Check the braid isn't strangling

  The plaited stems thicken every year and any tie or wire left on will girdle them. Loosen or remove it. Where stems press hard together they eventually graft into one another — which is fine, and is how a braid becomes a trunk.

  see it on the strip ↑
• waterJUN

  Flush the pot through

  Twice a year, water heavily enough that it runs freely from the bottom, and throw that water away. Indoor watering is deliberately stingy, which means fertiliser salts build up in the mix with nothing to wash them out.

  see it on the strip ↑
• waterNOV – FEB

  Let it dry further between drinks

  The single most useful habit for this plant. Its thirst tracks the light, and indoor light in January is a fraction of July's — so wait until the pot is nearly dry, water thoroughly, then empty the saucer within a quarter of an hour. Never let it stand in water.

  see it on the strip ↑
• watchDEC – FEB

  Move it off the cold draught

  It sulks below about 10 °C and drops leaves after a cold snap or a sudden move. The damage shows up days after the event, so a plant beside a front door in January looks fine right up until it doesn't.

  see it on the strip ↑

Year by year

• years 1–2

  Settling in — hold the shape

  A young braid is still soft. This is when the plait sets, when leaf drop after a move is most likely, and when it is worth being boring: steady light, steady warmth, no repotting unless it is truly potbound.

  see it on the strip ↑
• year 3+

  The braid becomes a trunk

  The plaited stems thicken, press together and slowly graft into a single woody column — the braid stops being a hairstyle and becomes anatomy. Growth settles into the same repeating year, and the plant will outlive most of the furniture around it.

  see it on the strip ↑

Botanical drawing

Flore médicale des Antilles pl. 232 (J.T. Descourtilz, 1827)