hi all

i propogated a friends pothos - 1 long vine in water and it was doing quite well

then i moved it to a pot with the help of my local plant store and she chopped off a lot of its roots (some of them were too long and black) and potted it in a small container

she said that it was going to have a rough adjustment and i prepared for that... but it's really not growing at all. its been a few weeks and the last leaf of the new vine looked really weak - the smaller leaf that was starting to grow off of the last one shriveled up black. and the bigger leaves near the root are turning yellow

so my question is - is he doomed? and then generally - if the end of a pothos plant's new growing dies, then where else would it sprout new leaves? been trying to figure this out for ages... not sure if there's any type of cutting i can do to move it along? thanks

Sounds like it is having trouble adjusting from roots in water to roots in soil. Is there a piece thats still good that you can root in water again? This time when the roots grow to about 1", change it over to soil and it won't have as big of a change to overcome.

If you don't have a good piece to root again, maybe your friend will give you another cutting. Established pothos can easily take trimmings.

Pothos cutting stems have only a single growing tip at the end and when that dies, then that is generally the end of it. I agree with what Alyssa has said about the difficulty in making the transition from water to soil.

I would add that a single stem cutting will never make for much of a plant because at best it will always be just a single stem that just grows longer and never branches or pushes out new stems from the soil. Therefore, it is best to propagate a half dozen or more stem cuttings and pot them together.

1 ) Why not stick it in a place where it gets lots of light but no direct sunlight? So that it starts making new smaller leaves.

2 ) Maybe put another plant in the container with it? So that they help each other grow?


Just my two cents,

When the growing tip is removed, a new stem will sprout from one (and sometimes more) of the nodes, usually the one closest to the cut point. Some small cuttings for example, the one on the left is making 2 new stems:


That pic was taken just before putting those stems (and about 15 more) in a pot.

Ideally, while growing across the ground, each node will find a place to take root, which leads to each node being able to grow a new vine. When my vines are outside over summer, it takes constant vigilance to trim them often enough so that they don't take off in this way. This predictable behavior can be exploited with a long cutting, which can be coiled around the soil surface when potted, so each node is in contact with the soil, allowing roots to form at each.

I've not seen any difficult transitions, when moving water-rooted Pothos cuttings from water to pots, but usually put so many cuttings together that it might not be noticed if one did not do well, after being so soon covered with tons of new leaves from the other stems. A healthy, vigorously growing piece of Pothos should put up with about anything except being frozen or deprived of water for too long.

A current pic, just short of 4 months after the pic of the cuttings in last post.