Today was my first meeting with a money tree. It arrived as a gift, exotic and strange with its braided trunk and five-fingered leaves.

Fascinated with our new housemate I’ve been doing a little research.

According to the Royal Horticultural Society the official name of the plant is Pachira Aquatica – other names include French Peanut, Guiana chestnut and Malabar Chestnut. It’s a tropical plant and if grown outdoors in the right conditions, it can reach up to 20m high. The RHS also reports that when wild and happy and fully grown it sometimes produces “spectacular flowers with five 30cm-long, cream petals and 200 or more gold and crimson stamens”.

The thought of that height and those flowers makes me look at our friend with new respect, and a touch of guilty sadness. I know that with us it won’t have a hope of reaching its full height or flowery potential. Instead (unless climate change happens far faster than we can imagine) it will be doomed to an indoor, potted future, and at best, is likely to reach a height of no more than 1.5m. I wonder if plants mind that kind of thing. I hope it won’t, because I’m looking forward to its company.

The other information I’ve found out about the plant, although not on the RHS website, is that a money tree is often seen as a gift of encouragement, especially for those involved in business endeavours. If writing qualifies as the right kind of endeavour then I look forward to working closely with this young Pachira Aquatica.

I’ll start by giving it a drink, and hope we can build our relationship from there.

Copyright Georgie Knaggs & The Phraser 2023

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