Repotting Money Plant: Comparative Study Begins!

This plant is popularly known as Money Plant in this region. There are a lot more names for this plant like golden pothos, Ceylon creeper, hunter’s robe, ivy arum, silver vine, Solomon Islands ivy and taro vine. So you can choose whichever name suits your region! I have been fond of this plant ever since my childhood. When grown below tall trees, these plants can climb up the trees and in the long run have gigantic leaves and thick stems.

We used to grow them in incandescent bulb shells as well, as indoor plants, with just water as the medium of growth and nothing else. We would carefully scrape out the parts of the incandescent bulbs other than the metallic base and the glass part and fill it half with water and plant these money plants and hang them where at least some sunlight is available. I have seen such nice potted plants being given as mementos for speakers at conferences as well, probably as a green initiative.

If you have a close look at these two plants, you can see that leaves of one them is having a ‘moth eaten’ appearance. Obviously pests have started attacking them from the nursery itself. I thought of doing a comparative study by repotting one to a larger garden pot and keeping it in a place where more sunlight will be available, while the other one will continue to be in the verandah. I chose the ‘moth eaten’ plant for repotting as repotting always has a small risk of damaging the plant and ending up with no plant, though quite rare with a money plant which is quite sturdy and survives even with limited resources.

I chose this garden pot in which I had sown marigold seeds bought from a mall earlier, but did not germinate. The pot contains mud and coco peat and seems to be a good medium for successful growth of plants. Made a pit in the mud with a soil scoop and carefully scooped out the money plant along with surrounding soil and placed it in the pit and filled the sides so that the plant has been repotted nicely. For a few days I will keep this pot in a partially shaded area, till the roots have started growing well in the new pot. After that I might transfer it to a more brightly sunlit region in the garden, depending on the response of the plant.

Most of the money plants which I have seen have variegated leaves like this one. I have seen variation in the amount of variegation over time in some plants, with nearly fully green leaves at times. Shall post updates on the comparison of the growth of these two plants growing in different types of garden pots and illumination. Otherwise I will give equal care to both plants as I am very fond of them. Wikipedia gives the picture of one plant with almost fully green leaves known as ‘Neon’ cultivar and another with plenty of variegation like my plants, as a ‘Marble Queen’ cultivar. For those not familiar with the term, cultivars are plant varieties produced by selective breeding for the desired traits.

They say that money plant can remove indoor pollutants like formaldehyde, trichloroethylene, toluene, xylene and benzene.

Others have used them in aquariums in such a way that the plants grow above water with roots in the water so that they remove nitrates from water and use it for growth, a symbiotic existence. I think I should try it out soon!