Trailing gold-flecked leaves on the plant that forgives everything, hand delivered same day in Brisbane
Epipremnum aureum Green Gold (Pothos)
Heart-shaped leaves streaked yellow on a fast trailing vine
Vines run over the rim of the pot and keep going, every heart-shaped leaf marbled differently in green and yellow. Drape it off a shelf or train it up a pole, and it reads as an established plant either way.
One pothos in the range at the moment, and it's the classic golden form of Epipremnum aureum. Heart-shaped mid-green leaves carry gold flecking and streaking that varies leaf to leaf, and the plant runs out sideways rather than up, so it starts trailing over the rim of the pot early.
Send a pothos to the person who tells you they kill plants. It's the genus that survives a first apartment with one decent window, a shared office nobody waters over the break, and a student place where the plant is somebody's fourth priority. Nothing about it needs explaining when it arrives.
That makes it a straightforward housewarming plant gift for someone unpacking a new place, because it fills a shelf immediately and asks for nothing while the boxes are still stacked. It's also an easy thank you plant for a colleague or a neighbour, where you can't see the room it's going into and don't want to hand over a plant that needs managing.
Yes. Pothos sits in the Araceae family and the sap carries calcium oxalate crystals, so a cat or a dog that chews a leaf can end up drooling, pawing at its mouth and off its food for a day or so. It stings rather than poisons, but a trailing plant is the one to think twice about, because a vine hanging off a shelf puts the leaves at exactly the height a cat will bat at them.
Three swaps, all non-toxic to cats and dogs. Peperomia obtusifolia is the closest match for neglect, thick-leaved and happy on a desk with no window nearby. Calathea brings patterned leaves with purple undersides and copes with a dimmer room. Fittonia plants stay small and low, netted all over in pink, red or white veins. If you don't know the household well, ask before you order.
This is the reason to choose a pothos over anything else on the site. It holds on in low light, it shrugs off a fortnight with nobody home, and it doesn't care that a Brisbane flat runs dry under the air-con all summer. When it does get thirsty it tells you, drooping the whole plant at once, and it firms back up within a day of a proper water. Very few plants give you that much warning.
You also get to choose the shape. Left on a shelf it trails, and the vines keep running as long as there's somewhere to go. Given a moss pole or a few hooks along a wall it climbs instead, and the leaves get larger as it goes up. Either way, a vine that's got leggy can be cut back hard and the plant comes back thicker, so it's difficult to ruin.
Low to bright indirect light, and it keeps its gold best towards the brighter end. Let the soil dry out between watering rather than keeping it damp, then water thoroughly and tip out the saucer. Trim any vine that's gone bare at the base to keep the plant full, and stand the cuttings in a glass of water rather than binning them, because they root in a week or two and can go straight back into the pot.
Overwatering, nearly every time. A yellow leaf that goes soft rather than crisp, usually low down or at the base of a vine, means the roots have been sitting wet for too long. Let the top few centimetres of mix dry before the next water and check the pot is draining. A single yellow leaf on a plant that's otherwise pushing new growth is just an old one going over.
Yes, indefinitely. A cutting with a node on it roots in a glass of water and will keep going in water alone, which is why the genus turns up in jars on kitchen windowsills. Growth is slower than it is in soil and the leaves stay smaller, so change the water every week or two and the plant holds. Moving a water-grown plant into soil later works, it just sulks for a few weeks while it grows a different kind of root.
Here's the short version of what the plant wants and where it comes from.
Choose a pot on the product page before you check out, along with any giftware or a greeting card. A pothos arrives at 125mm, so it's the smaller sizes in our indoor plant pots range that fit, and a plain glazed one keeps the attention on the gold in the leaves. The card message is one you write yourself at checkout.
Order before 12pm on a weekday, or before 10am on Saturday, and your pothos goes out the same day. Our own couriers start their run in the early afternoon, and we aim to have business addresses delivered by 5pm and homes by 6pm, Monday to Saturday. Delivery is a flat $19.95 and there's no Sunday run. Check the address against the suburbs on our Brisbane delivery areas page before you order. We run the inner east through to the bayside and the Redlands, so a pothos can land in Woolloongabba, Tingalpa or Manly West on the same day you order it.
Delivered by our own couriers
Flat $19.95 delivery
Gift wrapped as standard
Same day before 12pm
