The Money Tree Doesn’t Age Gracefully

You’ve certainly seen the money tree around. With its scheffleralike leaves and its usually braided-stems, this houseplant really stands out from the crowd.

The money tree got its name from its five leaflets. Five is an auspicious number in Chinese tradition, associated with wealth. According to feng shui superstitions, bringing a five-leaved plant into the home will ensure financial prosperity (who knew it could be so easy!). Of course, it sometimes produces six or seven leaflets, sometimes even nine, but that’s all right too: they’re also lucky numbers.

To enhance the money tree’s luckiness, it is most often sold braided with five interlaced stems. Never four (four means death). If one stem of a five-stemmed plant dies, superstitious owners will quickly make the plant disappear.

Millions of braided money trees have been exported from Taiwan since the 1980s, where growing and producing them remains a major industry.

What Is It?

There are actually two different species sold as money tree, both from the Malvaceae family and native to Central and South America. Pachira aquatica usually gets the credit, but it’s not nearly as widely grown as P. glabra. Both are very similar and hard to tell apart when young, but P. glabra has a more distinctly bulbous base. The feather-duster like white flowers of P. aquatica have red-tipped stamens and its large swollen fruits are a velvety mahogany brown while the otherwise similar flowers of P. glabra are entirely white while the fruits are green and smooth. Both contain edible nuts, leading to a second common name, Malabar chestnut.

Neither is likely to ever bloom indoors, but they flower readily enough when planted outdoors in tropical climates. When they do, you’ll discover the large and very attractive flowers open at night and drop off the following morning.

Both are tall forest trees in nature. This shows in their growth habit: they are very reluctant to branch when young. Even if you chop the head off a money tree, it usually produces only one replacement stem, only rarely two. As a result, potted money trees take on a distinctly ungainly look as they age. At least braided trees, each with their own set of leaves, will look fuller for a longer time.

For appearance’s sake, it’s probably best to cut them back annually in late winter. Yep, off with their heads! Don’t worry, they’ll regrow quickly. Close-up, this will lead to a lot of pruning scars and frankly, the money tree is not a plant that ages gracefully. Still, with a little luck new foliage will partly hide the scars, so they won’t be too noticeable from a distance,

Care

The money tree is a surprisingly tough houseplant.

Although in nature adult trees grow with their upper branches exposed to full tropical sun, young trees germinate in deep shade and retain that tolerance when grown indoors. They thrive along rivers and lakes with their roots practically soaking in water, as the name P. aquatica suggests, yet are very drought tolerant. Nor do they seem to mind if their roots are horrendously crowded in a small pot. (You’ll often see money trees grown as bonsais.)

As a result, you can put money trees in full sun or well back from the window, water them regularly or let their soil dry out completely, and either neglect them or baby them and they’ll probably survive. Normal indoors temperatures are fine. They tolerate dry air, but will look lusher under humid conditions. They don’t seem to react at all to fertilizer, but logically you’d still apply a bit in the spring and summer.

Put them outside for the summer in full sun if possible (that will be the only way you could ever expect them to bloom, for example), but do acclimatize them gradually, as the leaves will burn if suddenly exposed to intense sun. Bring them in when night temperatures start to drop below 50? F (10? C).

Don’t panic when some of the old leaves turn yellow and start to drop off, usually in late winter or early spring. This is part of their growth cycle and new leaves will appear shortly, if not at the same time. Don’t expect much growth at other seasons, at least, not unless you cut it back: whatever this plant does, it will normally do it in spring.

Carry out any repotting in early spring as well. If you want their stems to swell to the bulbous shape they are capable of, they’ll need much more space than in the crowded pot in which they are usually sold.

If you want to continue to braid the stems, do so while they are young and pliable, using twist ties to hold the braids together until they solidify. The Taiwanese use yellow-, gold- or red-colored twist ties, apparently luckier than green ones.

Your plant grew from seed, but seeds are rarely available from mail order sources simply because they are so short-lived, but you can multiply your money tree from cuttings if you want.

Ugly But Alive

I have a 7-foot (2-meter) P. glabra with a single trunk, swollen at the base like a cantaloupe, that I’ve grown indoors for nearly 20 years. It’s not very pretty (all those pruning scars!), but I have managed to get it to branch, a bit, by cutting off every stem that tries to grow taller. It would certainly never win a beauty contest and I think I only keep because it clings so stubbornly to life. That is something, in my book, that ought to be rewarded.