Despite being a garden designer and certified plant enthusiast (read: borderline obsessed), I don’t grow many indoor plants. Most people think my interior space would match my exterior space: verdant, jungly, crammed with cascading and climbing greenery and spotted with stately potted centerpieces.
But most indoor plants I have tried to grow simply demand too much attention and too much fussing. That being said, of the three houseplants I grow, pothos is one.
Pothos is arguably the easiest of all houseplants to grow, even if you are a person who forgets to water your plants. This trailing vine has pointed, heart-shaped green leaves, sometimes variegated with white, yellow, or pale green. While pothos likes bright, indirect light it can thrive in areas that don’t get a lot of sunlight or have only fluorescent lighting.
It’s an excellent plant for locations such as offices and dorm rooms. One advantage of growing pothos is that they are high on the list of plants that can help purify indoor air of chemicals such as formaldehyde, trichloroethene, toluene, xylene, and benzene.
Pothos gets its other common name—Devil’s Ivy—thanks to its vigorous growth and its penchant for bouncing back to life even in the worst conditions!
In the wild, pothos can achieve surprisingly huge sizes, with leaves reaching lengths of more than a foot. In the home, however, it tends to stay quite a bit smaller: mature leaves typically range in length from 4-8 inches, and the vine itself rarely reaches more than a couple dozen feet in ideal conditions.
Note: Pothos is considered an invasive species in some parts of the United States. Never plant them outdoors, especially in areas with mild winters.
How to Grow Pothos
While normally grown as a houseplant, pothos can serve as a perennial outdoor plant in USDA hardiness zones 10 and 11. In other zones, they can be used in containers and borders in the summer. They will die back with the first frost, but you can always bring them back indoors or simply take cuttings.
Outdoors, pothos can be grown in shade to partial shade. Indoors, pothos prefers bright but indirect light. Variegated plants sometimes lose their leaf pattern and revert to all-green plants if they don’t get enough light; moving them to brighter conditions usually restores the variegation. Suddenly paler-looking leaves mean the plant is getting too much sun.
Pothos plants thrive in ordinary, well-draining potting soil, preferably with a slightly acidic pH.
Pothos should be kept above 50 F, and these plants like the common room temperature of 65 to 75 F. This plant likes high humidity but it is very tolerant and can thrive even where there is low humidity.
How to Plant Poths
- Choose a pot with a drainage hole in the bottom. Pothos plants do not like to sit in wet soil; they will rot easily.
- Plant pothos in a general well-draining potting mix (or a soilless mix). If you have it on hand, feel free to mix in a few handfuls of perlite or coco coir to increase the drainage capacity of your potting mix.
- Pothos does well in a hanging basket to show off the vines, or in a regular pot placed on a plant stand. They can be allowed to grow up walls, though their aerial roots—which they use to attach themselves to surfaces like trees or other vertical structures—can strip paint.
How to Care For Pothos
- Keep pothos plants in a warm location; room temperature is ideal. If exposed to regular drafts or colder temperatures, the plant’s growth can be affected.
- Place pothos in bright, indirect light. They will tolerate low light, but will not grow as vigorously and may lose some or all of the variegation in their leaves.
- Only water when the soil feels dry. Pothos does not like wet soil; leaves will begin to yellow.
- Apply a diluted liquid houseplant fertilizer about once a month during the spring and summer.
- Cut back vines just above a leaf to make the plant bushier.
- The large, waxy leaves can gather dust; gently wipe them periodically.
- Remove any rotted or dead stems and any spotted leaves.
How to Propagating Pothos
This plant is easily propagated simply by taking stem cuttings and rooting them in water or in potting soil. Move cuttings rooted in water into the soil as soon as possible so they can begin getting nutrients.