Money Tree
Pachira aquatica
also called pachira
Broad hands of glossy leaflets that take a dim corner without complaint; the quickest way to lose one is a pot that never dries.
- Type
- Houseplant · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Sunlight
- Bright indirect light, though it holds up in a dim corner.
- Watering
- Soak it through, then wait until the top 2-3 cm are dry again.
- Feeding
- A half-strength feed once a month through spring and summer.
- Frost tolerant
- No
- Pruning
- A light trim now and then is all the shaping it needs.
- Mar–Dec Spring Growth
- Jan–Mar Spring Growth
- Plant spacing
- 2 ft 7 in
- In-row spacing
- 2 ft 7 in
- Between rows
- 3 ft 3 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Fibrous, and content in a pot
- Working depth
- 6–14 in
- Can reach
- 24 in down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 16 in–2.5 ft across, about 0.5–1× the width of the plant
- Shallowest pot
- 8 in of soil
It spends its life in a pot, so the pot is the whole root run. Move it up one size when roots show at the drainage holes, and remember that it can never go looking for water it has not been given.
The habit is Money Tree’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- Cats and dogs
- Confirmed safe
We say a plant is safe only where a named poison-control reference names that exact species and records it as non-toxic to both cats and dogs. Most plants are on nobody’s list, and their absence here is not a judgement about them. This is a record of what those references say, not veterinary advice, and it cannot account for your own animal, the quantity eaten, or a plant treated with anything.
Not the Crassula also sold as money tree, which is a different plant and is toxic.
- Spider mites Spider mites when indoor air turns dry
- Root & crown rot Root rot where overwatering or poor drainage leaves the roots sitting wet
- Yellowing leaves after too many hours of direct sun
Beneficial predators that hunt this plant's pests — grow their favourite flowers nearby to recruit them. companion plant
- Big-eyed bug Geocoris spp.Hunts Spider mites
A stubby 3 mm bug with enormous wrap-around eyes, working the soil surface and the low foliage for aphids, mites, thrips and insect eggs. It is the main natural check on chinch bugs in a lawn and it is killed outright by insecticide.
- Green lacewing Chrysoperla carneaHunts Spider mites
Its bristly larvae — "aphid lions" — impale aphids, mealybugs, thrips, and mite colonies, eating hundreds a week. Adults feed on nectar and pollen from small open flowers and overwinter in hollow stems left standing.
- Ladybird (lady beetle) CoccinellidaeHunts Spider mites
The gardener’s favorite ally: adults and their alligator-shaped larvae each eat thousands of aphids, plus scale, mealybugs, and other soft-bodied sap-suckers. Grow flat, open flowers for the adults and never spray a colony that ladybird larvae are already working.
- Minute pirate bug Orius spp.Hunts Spider mites
A pinhead-sized true bug that is the best natural check on thrips, and happily spears aphids, mites, and insect eggs too. It needs pollen when prey is scarce, so keep something flowering nearby.
- Predatory mites Phytoseiulus & AmblyseiusHunts Spider mites
Fast orange mites that hunt spider mites egg-by-egg, and cousins that clear thrips and fungus-gnat larvae. Sold as a biological control for greenhouses; outdoors they follow humidity — mist and mulch, don’t dust with sulfur.
- Rove beetle StaphylinidaeHunts Spider mites
Slim, quick beetles with short wing cases that hunt in soil and litter, taking root-fly eggs and larvae, fungus-gnat larvae, and mites. Mulch and undisturbed ground keep them resident year-round.
Green-leaved houseplants, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com