Gadenin日本語Get the appThree methods, and when each is right
Chinese evergreen propagates easily by division and by stem cuttings, and both work on the same principle: you need a piece with at least one node, the point on the stem where a leaf was attached and from which roots and new shoots emerge. A leaf pulled off on its own will never root, no matter how long you leave it in water.
Which method you use depends on what the plant is doing. A full clump that is crowding its pot wants dividing. A tall plant with a bare lower stem wants cutting back, which solves the legginess and produces cuttings at the same time. Seed is possible after the plant flowers and sets a red berry, but it is slow and the seedlings vary, so almost nobody bothers.
| Situation | Method | Time to root | Difficulty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Several crowns filling the pot | Division | Establishes in two to three weeks | Easy, most reliable |
| Tall with a bare lower stem | Cut back and reroot the top | Four to eight weeks | Easy in warmth |
| A long stem you want several plants from | Sections of stem laid on compost | Six to ten weeks | Slower, needs warmth |
| A ripe red berry on the plant | Seed | Months, and variable | Rarely worth it |
Everything here needs a room above 70F (21C). Below about 64F (18C) cuttings sit and rot rather than root, so the window is late spring through summer, not the whole year.
Dividing a crowded clump
A mature Chinese evergreen produces new crowns from the base, and after a few years the pot holds several separate plants pressed together. Splitting them is the safest propagation there is, because each division already has its own roots and carries on growing with barely a check.
- Do it as you repot Wait until the plant needs repotting anyway, in late spring or summer, so you disturb the roots once rather than twice. Water it the day before so the rootball holds together.
- Wash the roots to see the crowns Rinse enough compost off to see where one crown ends and the next begins. Guessing in the dark leads to tearing through the middle of a crown, which is the one thing that sets a division back.
- Pull, then cut Ease the crowns apart with your fingers first. Where they will not separate, cut through the connecting tissue with a clean sharp knife. Keep at least three or four leaves and a decent share of roots on each piece.
- Pot each piece small Into the smallest pot that holds its roots, in the same free-draining mix, at the same depth it was growing. Water once and then let the surface dry before watering again.
- Give it two weeks of shade Out of strong light, warm, no feed. Some lower leaves may yellow and drop in the first fortnight, which is normal after division and does not mean it has failed.
Cutting back a leggy plant
Legginess is what happens over time to almost every Chinese evergreen kept indoors, and it is worse in low light. The plant sheds its oldest leaves from the bottom as it makes new ones at the top, so year by year the bare stem lengthens until you have a tuft of leaves on a bare stalk leaning out of the pot.
You cannot reverse this by feeding or repotting. The fix is to cut the plant down, which sounds drastic and is not: the stump reshoots from dormant buds at the nodes below the cut, usually with two or three shoots rather than one, so the plant comes back fuller than it was. Meanwhile the top you removed roots and becomes a second plant.
- Cut in late spring or early summer Both halves need warmth and a full growing season to recover. A plant cut back in autumn sits as a bare stump all winter and often rots at the cut.
- Take off the top with four or five leaves Cut cleanly with a sharp knife or pruners, half an inch (1 cm) below a node. That leaves a stump with at least two or three nodes still on it, which is what it will reshoot from.
- Let both cut surfaces dry Stand the cutting and leave the stump for two to four hours before doing anything else. A callused cut resists rot far better than a fresh wet one.
- Keep the stump warm and barely moist Do not water it as though it were a full plant, because with no leaves it uses almost nothing. New shoots appear at the nodes in three to six weeks.
- Root the top In water or straight into compost, as below. The top usually roots faster than the stump reshoots.
The sap irritates skin and mouths. Wear gloves for any cutting work, keep the sap out of your eyes, and put the offcuts somewhere pets cannot reach them.
Rooting the cutting: water or compost
Both work. Water is easier to watch and reassuring for a first attempt, but water roots are brittle and have to adapt when they go into compost, so the plant checks for a week or two after potting. Rooting straight into compost is slower to reassure you and produces a stronger plant.
| Method | How to set it up | Roots in | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| In water | One or two nodes submerged, no leaves in the water | Two to four weeks | Change the water every three days |
| In compost | Node buried an inch (2.5 cm) deep, mix kept just damp | Four to eight weeks | Do not let it sit wet or dry right out |
| In damp sphagnum or perlite | Node in the medium, bag over the top | Three to six weeks | Air it daily so it does not go moldy |
Pot up a water-rooted cutting once the roots are one to two inches (3 to 5 cm) long. Leaving it in water until the roots are long makes the transfer harder, not easier.
Why cuttings fail, and what to record
Almost every failure comes down to one of four things: the room was too cold, the piece had no node, the cut end was buried wet without drying first, or the cutting was left in strong light and dried out before it had roots to supply itself. Fix those and the success rate is high.
Note the date you took each cutting, which method you used, and the date you first saw roots or a new shoot. After one season you will know how long it takes in your own house, which is the only figure that actually helps, and you will stop lifting cuttings out of the compost to check on them.