Golden Pothos

$16

4″ pot · Tax included · No account

Happy in any room with a window, as long as it isn’t sitting in the sun. Water every ten days or so — and it’s fine to wait until it droops. It perks back up in an afternoon.

Any room with a window. Not in the sun.
Every 10 days. Droopy is fine.
Two weeks alone is fine. Water it the day you leave and move it a little further from the window.
Not for chewing. Keep it up high if something at home chews plants.

Where Gene came from

Cut September 12 from the same golden pothos as half the plants in this apartment. Rooting in a jar beside Dolores. Due in December.

The Wicker Park shelf — where everything starts. Everyone on this shelf.

The most common way people kill this one

Kindness. Watering on a schedule instead of when it’s actually dry is what rots the roots, and root rot is quiet until it isn’t. When in doubt, wait a few more days. A thirsty pothos looks dramatic and recovers completely; a drowned one gives no warning at all.

How big it gets

Vines to six feet in a couple of years, or stays short if you trim it. The trimmings root in a glass of water in about three weeks, which is how this one was made.

What it doesn’t get along with

Cats and dogs: no. Chewing it means drooling, a sore mouth and a bad afternoon. Not dangerous, not fun. Keep it up high if something at home chews plants.

Direct sun. It’ll scorch in a window that gets the afternoon beam. Radiators and heating vents dry the air and the soil faster than you’d think — a foot or two away is enough.

A pot with no drainage hole. Water needs somewhere to go; if the pot you like has no hole, keep the plant in its nursery pot and set it inside.

What it’s trying to tell you

One yellow leaf near the bottomAn old leaf retiring. One at a time is normal. Several at once is too much water.

New leaves pale and washed outToo much sun. Move it a few feet back.

Long bare stretches between leavesIt wants more light. Nearer the window, still out of the sun.

Whole plant droopingThirsty. Water it and give it an hour.

Every symptom, every plant, on one page.

Where it came from

Cut from a golden pothos that has lived in a Wicker Park kitchen for years, rooted in a jar, potted, and grown under the same ordinary light it’ll get at your place.

Grown in Wicker Park, Chicago. Most shelves are a few blocks from where it was potted.

If you’ve killed a C, start here

A C wants a rhythm — a fern, a calathea, a fiddle leaf fig. Losing one says nothing about you. This one is a Grade A: it forgives a month of nothing.

The list for people who’ve killed a C. · How the grades work.

Something else? hello@pilf.me. Replies come from a person, usually the same day.