Caring for Beaucarnea recurvata properly

Sustainable living is the current trend, less consumption and less rubbish - if you try it, you will quickly notice how stupid and time-consuming "buying to throw away" is, even with indoor plants. Beaucarnea recurvata is the ideal alternative, it can even be bought sustainably and has a very long lifespan Life expectancy, and even the absolute beginners among carpenters will have no problem with the elephant's foot to maintain properly:

Elephant foot, bottle tree, water palm, monkey tree?

The Beaucarnea recurvata bears all these names, and the succulent plant native to Guatemala and Mexico is also known as the Maya palm, all an indication of the popularity of the chic plant. The elephant foot is popular not only because of its exotic appearance, but also because it is in Germany effortlessly fits in and even beginners kept it in the housing culture without any major effort in maintaining it can be. It can be kept in hydroponics and in a bucket with normal soil, and in its early years it develops the perfect height for normal ones Living room and can grow into an eye-catcher for large halls, the dense green head always looks good - the elephant's foot already has What. And then it is also unbeatably unproblematic and easy to care for because it is really dry Mountain regions and the characteristic tuber at the bottom of the trunk had to develop in order to survive. This is where the Beaucarnea stores water and nutrients, so if you go away suddenly and forget it, it usually doesn't do much for it.

By the way, you have the choice between two types of Beaucarnea, with different "hairstyles":

"Beaucarnea recurvata" lets the leaves hang a little, that's the relaxed hippie head
"Beaucarnea stricta" carries its head straight upright (as if the hippie has just reached into the socket)

Beaucarnea recurvata for sale

The Beaucarnea recurvata certainly looks good with its funny, palm-like head, but only the "elephant's foot" - the one characteristic storage lump, which in fully grown, very old specimens can be up to 4 meters thick - makes it a real one Eye catcher. When you buy a young Beaucarnea recurvata, there is at best a hint of that thick foot, which takes a number of years to develop. You can also buy an older monkey tree with a moderately thick base and a trunk of around 75 cm for € 150, with a really thick base and 4 trunks of approx. 1 m high for just under € 900.

But Beaucarnea also stands for sustainability when it comes to shopping: the monkey trees have been grown with pleasure and by many people, and have been for quite a long time. But at some point they often become too big for the apartment, or several specimens have been raised, all of which are developing splendidly. A look at the next classifieds market usually brings out dozens of Beaucarneas, 20, 30 years old and 2.3 meters high, for 30 to 300 euros.

Propagate the elephant foot yourself

If you want to cultivate the Beaucarnea in your rooms precisely because you want the charisma of the To appreciate plants with the typical elephant foot, the alternative would be to grow one yourself Bottle tree:

From seeds

You can order the seeds on the Internet
That anytime, the sowing can be done all year round
Open the package very carefully, the seeds are tiny and spherical, in case of doubt a hidden object game for hours
The seeds are soaked in a bowl of warm water for a couple of hours
Meanwhile, prepare pots: Fill with unfertilized potting soil without many nutrients and with a high proportion of sand
The light germs get into the soil a maximum of 5 mm deep, lightly dust them with soil
Set up in a bright and warm place with temperatures around 25 ° C
The soil should be kept slightly moist at all times
Covering the pot with a transparent hood will reduce evaporation
The seeds should germinate in a few weeks - but don't lose patience, there should also be Beaucarnea seeds that start late
By the time the first leaves appear, the elephant's foot has developed enough roots to move into its final planter

Propagate by cuttings

Do friends of yours have a water palm? Ask for a (cut off) secondary shoot
This cutting is put into potting soil like a normal head cutting
The pot comes under a hood made of glass or transparent plastic
When the cutting has taken root, it is repotted in good, loose soil
He can go outside as early as next spring, but should be accustomed to the fresh air very carefully

The better you make sure that the Beaucarnea's elephant foot is allowed to soak up once and that you only water again when the If memory is largely depleted, the slower it will grow, but the thicker the foot will become over time will. Water well once, then the water reservoir is for around

Filled for 4 weeks, a really comfortable plant in this kind of posture.

The best location for the bottle tree

The Beaucarnea comes from South America, so it is used to the amount and intensity of the sun that hits the earth near the equator. Much more and more intense than here, lack of light is the biggest problem of an elephant's foot in German living space. So give it the brightest location you have to offer. Gladly at the south window in the sun, only full midday sun through the window pane does not necessarily have to be, it quickly acts like a kind of magnifying glass on the leaves. A plant lamp can also be installed, the window absorbs about half of the light spectrum that plants need. Our normal room temperatures are just right for the water palm, in summer it also likes to stand in a room that heats up a bit. When it is nice and warm outside, the bottle tree should be placed outdoors to soak up the light. The first few weeks in a semi-shady place so that the leaves, which are sensitive after the low-light winter, do not get sunburn, then it can be placed directly in the sun.

The bucket and the earth (the substrate)

The bucket must adapt to the elephant foot water reservoir (botanical caudex), i.e. be as flat as possible and rather wide than deep. A bucket of 30 cm diameter z. B. only needs to be 10 cm high. That is enough for an elephant's foot about one meter high, a well-formed caudex then fills almost the entire plant pot. The bucket should not be much deeper either, water palms are shallow-rooted, which get along well with little soil in the pot. Little soil also means that there is little risk of too much moisture collecting, which the bottle tree doesn't like at all. The soil in the bucket should be set loosely, it does not have to be a bought substrate, real soil makes much more ecological sense:

If you have a garden, you can mix leaf earth with wet clay (clay powder from the hardware store) and sharp sand
You can also get sharp sand in the hardware store, this is a sand in which the powdery fine particles were washed out
Overall, the soil should have a slightly alkaline pH value, clay from the garden is sufficient for this
If you've mixed in clay powder, maybe a little lime should be added
The alternative to garden soil is good standard compost-based soil mixed with sharp sand or other loosening materials
Loosening substances are z. B. Perlite or coconut and almost anything that is sold as a peat substitute

Watering and fertilizing

As I said, the Beaucarnea do not develop an elephant's foot for fun, but to store water. But you as a carpenter enjoy the elephant's foot because you simply cannot water the bottle trees incorrectly because of this thickening at the bottom of the trunk. At least not being able to water incorrectly, as long as the bucket has a working drain hole, you could even drown bottle trees pretty quickly. But otherwise: If you only water every few weeks, the elephant foot will grow slowly and always fill its elephant foot well, if you water it more often, it will shoot up more. And if you forget your watering rhythm and the water palm completely, it usually still has so much water stored that it doesn't care at all. The "medium growth, medium development of the caudex" variant is the easiest to care for by always watering when the surface of the soil in the pot has dried. During the growth phase, the elephant's foot can be sprayed or washed off occasionally when it is hot in summer. This also adds a little moisture and also removes dust from the leaves. The elephant's foot only needs fertilizer during the

Growth phase from April to September. It is usually enough to add a little weakly concentrated cactus fertilizer or simple foliage fertilizer once a month.

Cutting and propagating

The elephant foot can be trimmed, above and below:

When a Beaucarnea recurvata grows well, it will sometimes develop a magnificent cluster of leaves
This mane becomes too gorgeous when it hits the ground
The idea of giving the bottle tree a "sensible haircut" carries some risk
The trimmed leaves should often have brown tips
Again, this can only be remedied by trimming, but with this method your elephant foot will have a brush haircut at some point
The long leaves are actually a sign that the elephant's foot is developing particularly well
You'd better just put the bottle tree on a table when its leaves touch the ground
If the water palm gets too tall overall (after a few decades), it can be passed on to Beaucarnea lovers with higher living spaces
You could also just cut them off "at a height of around 30 cm, depending on the trunk thickness with scissors or a saw. The cut surface should be as smooth as possible
It is best to divide at the beginning of the growing season and disinfect the cut surface, e.g. B. with charcoal
It is discussed whether a wound closure is necessary, according to the prevailing opinion, it should even be able to prevent the bud
The trimmed bottle tree is put back into the light and should sprout again safely, even if that can take months
The sections can be used for propagation; there are reports from reports that the cuttings root very quickly in water
Then they should be planted in normal substrate and continue to grow there

Repot

Because the elephant foot gets by with little soil, it rarely needs to be repotted:

It is time to repot when the root ball has completely rooted the pot
Typically, a larger pot is due every four or five years
Again in the broadest, flat shape possible and only slightly larger than the old pot
Because the elephant's foot should continue to grow above the earth and not just concentrate on the formation of roots
The best time to repot is in spring, at the beginning of the growing season
Then the bottle tree can best withstand the stress of repotting
Carefully free it from the old pot and remove as much of the old soil as possible from the roots by hand
Put the elephant's foot in the new planter and fill it with soil all around, shaking the pot often once so that the soil is distributed between the roots
Then carefully pour on, let it sink, possibly. Give in to earth

Hibernate Beaucarnea

In winter, the elephant's foot cannot cope with the light we offer, so it should be sent to the rest phase. Best for at least a month in a bright, cool place with temperatures around 10 degrees, if this is the case If winter quarters are not available, the bottle tree simply becomes as cool as possible from October and March posed. With limited watering (the root ball just must not dry out completely), without fertilizer.
Conclusion
Properly caring for an elephant's foot really requires minimal effort. Waterlogging is the only thing that a Beaucarnea recurvata cannot tolerate, otherwise you would have to work hard to get it down. Any effort to treat the bottle tree well is rewarded by the fact that the interesting plant "remains loyal to you for a very long time".