Elephant foot – planting & care

The elephant’s foot – easier to look after than most people think.

The fact that the elephant foot has already been given four different names in our country, namely bottle tree and elephant foot, water palm and monkey tree, says a lot about the plant, which is not exactly native to Germany. Above all, the fact that the plant with the scientific name Beaucarnea is quite popular. And that usually indicates that this plant can be kept in home culture without major care efforts and is of course an indication that the look has to be pretty “hip”.

All of this really applies to the elephant foot: As a water-storing succulent, it is unproblematic and easy to care for, with its height of between one and one and a half meters it fits perfectly into the living room, and with its funny hippie head it is really an eye-catcher.

The best location for the bottle tree

The elephant’s foot comes from South America, so we need all the light it can get. He likes to be in the sun, just not roasting in the sun during the midday heat. It can withstand normal room temperatures and, in summer, a little more warmth in heated rooms. In winter, the bottle tree should be placed in the coolest possible location outside of the time in the actual winter quarters.

In summer, the bottle tree can be put outside, which is even highly recommended. For the first two to three weeks, however, it needs a place that is not directly in the sun, otherwise its leaves would probably get sunburned after the long winter with little light. When the water palm has acclimatized outdoors, it can be placed more in the sun.

The elephant foot needs loose growing medium.

The elephant’s foot needs a very loose soil that is permanently permeable to water. So, you should always mix a good soil with loosening substances.

• Garden owners take some leaf earth, wet clay or clay powder from the hardware store, and sharp sand.
• Sharp sand is sand that does not contain any fine powdery components; it is also available in hardware stores.
• The mixture should result in a pH value that is more alkaline, clay from the garden usually guarantees that, with clay powder maybe a little lime must be added.
• Elephant foot lovers without a garden take a good standard compost-based soil and mix this with sharp sand or another loosening material.
• Loosening up z. B. Perlite or coconut and actually almost all substances that are sold as peat substitutes.

Grow a water palm from seeds.

You can grow your elephant’s foot from seeds, which can be ordered on the Internet. If you have the patience, it can be worthwhile – stately specimens of a bottle tree are also traded at stately prices. Thats how it works:

• You can buy or order the seeds at any time, sowing can be done all year round.
• The seeds are quite small and spherical, so you should be really careful when opening the bag so that you don’t have to spend the next few hours looking for seeds on the ground.
• The seeds should first be soaked in a bowl of warm (not hot!) Water for a few hours.
• Then you can prepare pots with poor seed compost (soil without a lot of nutrients), this soil should also have a high proportion of sand.
• The seeds get into the earth just in such a way that they are covered (really a maximum of 5 millimeters deep).
• The pots are placed in a bright and warm place, which can have a temperature of up to 25 degrees.
• The soil needs to be kept slightly moist throughout, you can put a plastic cover over it to reduce evaporation.
• The seeds should then germinate in a few weeks, but please do not lose your patience if that is not the case, plants also have late starters.
• The first leaves are the sign that the elephant foot has developed enough roots, now it can be transferred to its final planter.

The right bucket for the water palm

Ideally, this planter should have a somewhat special shape: as flat as possible, i.e. more wide than deep. When you buy an elephant’s foot, it is often sold in a pot in which its caudex (the thick foot, whose “swollen” shape is desired as a typical feature of the plant) fills almost the entire plant pot. Such a pot can be 30 cm in diameter and only 10 cm high, for an elephant’s foot that is over a meter high, earth is then only about one centimeter to be seen all around. This plant pot is just right for the bottle tree, which gets along well with little soil in the pot as a shallow root, and the soil in such a planter also dries off quickly so that there is no waterlogging to fear.

You therefore only need to repot your elephant’s foot very seldom; it normally only needs a larger pot about every four or five years. This should then also be as wide as possible, but flat, just slightly larger than the old pot. When you notice that the root ball is completely rooted, it’s time to report:

• The best thing to do is to repot for spring when the growing season starts, and the plant is well resistant to stress.
• You take the elephant’s foot out of the old pot with a little careful shaking, hold it over a bowl and carefully remove as much old earth as possible from the roots with your hands.
• It is then placed in the new planter, which should be just a little larger so that the plant grows higher up and does not just shift to the root formation.
• Soil is now filled all around, you should always shake the pot a little, so the earth trickles between the roots.
• When the soil is in, you should water the new plant pot carefully with water, maybe a little more soil has to be added.
• Up to two months after repotting, the water palm can draw its nutrients from the newly introduced soil, only then is fertilizing again.

Water the elephant foot properly

Your elephant’s foot did not develop the caudex, the thickly swollen foot at the bottom, just for fun. It uses this thickening at the bottom of the trunk to store water, which is why it is counted among the succulents.

Therefore, you just have to make sure that it is well adjusted after buying it, if the foot has soaked up, the water palm will forgive you if you forget to give it water.

Overall, however, the bottle tree needs quite a bit of water in summer, so much that the earth is constantly slightly damp. Even in the heat you should be careful not to water too much, the water palm would react with brown leaf tips. It is always advisable to give water when the surface of the earth is already quite dry, the elephant’s foot does not like waterlogging at all. In summer, the elephant’s foot will also be delighted if you occasionally spray or wash off the leaves. For watering in winter see below.

Fertilize an elephant’s foot.

The elephant foot only needs a little weakly concentrated liquid fertilizer about once a month during its main growth phase. You can use cactus fertilizer or normal green plant fertilizer, there is no fertilizer during the break.

Can you cut an elephant’s foot?

It depends on where: A well-growing elephant’s foot may get quite long “hairs”, which then may reach the ground. There are certainly reports on the Internet of bottle tree owners who simply gave this long mane a “sensible haircut”. But it is also reported that the remaining leaves then have brown tips, which would then have to be cut away again, at some point the elephant’s foot will have a men’s short haircut. If the long leaves are disturbing, it is therefore probably better to put the elephant’s foot a little higher on a table, then hopefully they are no longer in the way.

It looks different if you have had your water palm for a few decades and the beautiful plant is simply too tall for you, despite its slow growth. Then you can actually simply “cut through the middle” of the elephant’s foot, i.e. simply cut it off at a height between 10 and 30 centimeters above the foot. This is best done at the beginning of the growing season, depending on the trunk thickness with a sharp pair of scissors or a saw, so that the cut surface is smooth. This cut surface should be disinfected a little with a horticultural product or some pulverized charcoal, a wound closure is not needed and could even prevent budding. The elephant’s foot exposed to the light will almost certainly sprout again in several places, but it can take months.

Beware of pests

The elephant’s foot can be attacked by the red spider, mealybugs or mealybugs. You should therefore observe the plant carefully, if you notice web-like webs, tiny light spots, something reminiscent of cotton balls, or incorrect colors or malformations of the leaves, you should inform yourself immediately in a specialist shop about the type of pest and how to combat it correctly.

There are two types of Beaucarnea

The best-known variety bears the botanical name “Beaucarnea recurvata”, it comes from dry, tropical forests in Mexico. This elephant foot is the one with the hanging leaves that looks a bit like a hippie head.

A relative of this variety is traded in the plant shops, the “Beaucarnea stricta”, which does not have hanging leaves, but rather upright, stiff leaves. He also looks like a hippie head, but from a hippie who has a full closet of styling products.

This is how the bottle tree is overwintered.

In winter the elephant’s foot goes into a resting phase, it is now given no fertilizer, and watering can almost be stopped between October and March. You just have to make sure that the root ball doesn’t get completely dry. The point behind this is that the elephant’s foot makes use of the water reserves that it has stored in the trunk, which must also be renewed once. If you give water, it should be done at longer intervals.

During this winter break, the elephant’s foot should be placed in a cool place with temperatures of around 10 degrees for at least one month, where it gets light.

You can multiply the elephant foot yourself.

An elephant’s foot can be propagated fairly easily by cuttings that you get from a cut off secondary shoot. The cuttings are grown under a hood like normal head cuttings, but after rooting and repotting they have to be accustomed to the open air very carefully.

The water palms can also be grown quite well from seeds, which is even recommended if you attach great importance to the typical shape of the trunk, which develops better with sown plants.

Conclusion
An elephant’s foot is one of the most interesting plants that, because of its slow growth, can be kept indoors for a long time, an elephant’s foot can get really old. When you have your bottle tree for about a decade, with a bit of luck you may even be amazed at huge panicles with small white flowers that suddenly peek out of the top of your head!