Most people meet the money tree the same way. It turns up in a pot with its trunk plaited like a rope, somebody says it is good luck, and that is the whole explanation.
The real story is better than that, and stranger.
prosperity and good energy
The Money Tree
Braided by hand, shipped potted from the nursery, with a meaning card you write at checkout.
From $36, free shipping over $90
Send a money treeWhat a money tree actually is
The money tree is Pachira aquatica, and it is not a small plant. In the freshwater swamps and estuaries it comes from, running from Mexico down through Brazil, it grows into a tree of up to sixty feet with buttress roots that hold it steady in the mud. It produces a large edible nut. It is a wetland tree that happens to tolerate a living room.
That is the first surprise. The second is bigger.
Nobody in its homeland thought it meant money
In Central and South America, where the plant is actually from, Pachira aquatica carries no traditional association with wealth, luck or fortune. None. The meaning did not travel with the plant.
It was made, and fairly recently. The story that gets told is that in 1986 a truck driver in Taiwan named Lin Chin-Tien braided five saplings together in a single pot. The form spread through feng shui shops across East Asia and reached global retail by the nineties. The braid is not how the tree grows. It is how somebody decided it should look, forty years ago, and the world agreed.
Why that does not make it mean less
You could read the last paragraph as debunking, and plenty of people would. We read it the other way.
Every meaning was invented by somebody. The olive branch meant peace because a culture decided it did, and then kept deciding it for three thousand years. The white lily meant sympathy because enough funerals used it. None of these are facts about botany. They are agreements between people, and they hold as long as we keep holding them.
A meaning is not weaker for being young. It is only younger. The money tree has been carrying prosperity for forty years now, in millions of homes and shops and new offices, and that is a real thing to hand somebody, whatever its paperwork says.
We sell plants by meaning. It would be strange to pretend those meanings fell out of the sky.
What the five leaves are said to mean
Each stem carries leaves in a fan of five, and in feng shui that count is read as the five elements: wood, water, earth, fire and metal, balanced on one stalk. Finding a stem with seven is treated as especially lucky, which is the kind of detail that makes a plant fun to own.
The braid gets its own reading. The plaited trunks are said to hold fortune in their folds so it cannot slip away. Whether or not you believe that, it is a good line to put on a card, and it is printed on the one that comes with every money tree we send.
Where to put it
By tradition, the money tree goes in the wealth area of a home, the southeast corner in most feng shui schools, or near the entrance so good fortune meets you at the door. Offices, shop counters and new businesses are the classic placements. It is not meant for a bedroom in most readings, being considered too active for a room meant for rest.
By botany, it wants bright indirect light, away from a scorching south window that will bleach the leaves. Somewhere it can be seen and watered without ceremony.
The overlap is a bright entrance hall or a well lit living room. Tradition and horticulture landing in the same place is not always how this goes, so take it.
If you have that corner in mind already, send a money tree to it. Ours ship potted and braided, free over $90.
How to keep it alive
Easier than its reputation suggests, with one rule that matters more than the rest.
- Water when the top inch of soil is dry, then let it drain properly. It is a swamp tree that has learned to hate wet feet in a pot. More money trees die of kindness than of neglect.
- Light, bright and indirect. Turn the pot now and then so the braid grows evenly.
- Leaf drop after it arrives is normal. It is adjusting to your light, not dying.
- Do not unbraid it. The plait is trained while the stems are green and pliable. Undoing it on a mature plant snaps them.
All of that goes on the card in plain language, so whoever receives it is not left guessing.
When to give one
A new address, a new job, a new business, a shop opening. The money tree is the traditional gift for beginnings that need a bit of luck attached, which is why it sits in both our Fresh Starts and Good Energies collections.
It is also the safest thing to send when you do not know someone well. Nobody has ever been offended by being wished prosperity.
Not sure the money tree is the right one? Every plant we grow, sorted by what it means.
for a new address, a new job, a new venture
The Money Tree
The safest thing to send when you do not know someone well. Nobody has ever been offended by being wished prosperity.
From $36, free shipping over $90
Send a money treeWe write one of these a week.
One plant, what it means, and who to send it to. No offers, no noise.