If you’ve never propagated before, I recommend you starting off with a very simple plant, like the jade pothos, aka epipremnum aurea. Pothos is practically a weed, so learning how to propagate with this plant will allow you to learn any mistakes you might make with other plants.
However, propogating syngonium albo podophyllum is incredibly easy. These aroids tend to already grow great aerial roots, whether it’s in a humid environment or not. My main syngonium albo is kept indoors without a humidifier in souther California and does incredibly well in medium light. It’s aerial roots are pretty abundant, so when I propagate it, it easily roots from the multiple aerial roots.
Water Propagating
Propagating syngonium albos in water is very easy. Once you cut the nodes, just put them directly into filtered water. Keep the water at room temperature or slightly cool, you don’t want it cooking or being harmed by the chemicals in tap water.
To ensure successful propagation, make sure to place the cutting that will get medium light. Also, the plant shouldn’t be damaged. If you are already noticing disease or a decline in the plant, you may want to treat it for infection or pests.
Group propagating seems to help encourage root growth. So put a few cuttings together, and you’ll notice that they’ll root faster. Although, don’t bunch so many together that they aren’t able to move. Plants need their space and the leaves need to be able to make food for itself to grow roots.
Air Layering
Syngonium albos grow long internodes, or space between their nodes. This makes it easy to air layer propagate this plant. In order to do this, all you need is to get some sphagnum moss, wet it and wring it out, make a ball, place it around the node and wrap with plastic wrap. Give it a few weeks and you should find roots growing into the sphagnum moss. This is the safest way to propagate. Once roots have grown to 2″-3″, plant it directly into soil.
There are several other ways you can propagate this plant, but it will involve a bit more experience. Here are some ways:
- Propagate directly into soil
- Propagate in perlite
- Propagate in sphagnum moss, in an enclosed environment (i.e. jar, clear plastic bin, terrarium, etc)
I find that these methods are much better, but the requirement of high humidity is necessary.
What to do if propagation isn’t successful?
If you start noticing your leaf is dying, then it’s having issues with maintaining moisture. In this case, put it in sphagnum moss and put it in an enclosed environment. If that isn’t an option, keep it in water, and put a zip loc bag over it.
As long as your node isn’t rotting, you still have a chance. Even if the leaf/leaves fall off, as long as the node is viable, a brand new plant will spring up.
