Fat Woman, Or Money Tree

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

How to grow and maintain this popular plant

At a gardening exhibition, I accidentally overheard two women talking. One of them said: “Something with money in the house has become tense lately. It will be necessary to start the "money" tree again, the old one has died ". I wondered: what kind of tree is this that helps to solve financial problems? I went into the flower salon, and there they showed me a pot with a not very tall plant, whose leaves really looked like coins. The sellers explained that this is a fat woman, or crassula, which is popularly called a money tree.

It turns out that there is a belief that the fat woman brings income and good luck to the house. Some advise for this to bury a coin in a pot with a plant, and tie a red ribbon to one of the branches, then, they say, everything will be fine with finances in this house. Moreover, sometimes the fat woman is also called the tree of love and happiness.

Actually Crassula or Crassula (Crassula) is Ornamental foliage plants and belongs to the genus succulents from the family of Crassulaceae. Although this plant has more than three hundred species in nature, most often in our apartments and offices you can find the most common species - the tree jellyfish. It really looks quite original: a bush or tree, the branches of which are decorated with many round thick, juicy leaves.

In its homeland in South Africa, it blooms, sometimes it happens, it blooms on the windowsill. The flowers of this and other types of bastard are mostly small - white, yellowish, rarely pink.

In addition to this species, the silver bastard and the oval bastard are often grown. They are also called the money tree.

Care Tips

Lighting. Fat women, like African women, are very demanding on lighting. It should be bright, intense, direct sunlight is desirable. These plants love a lot of light, sun both in winter and summer. But in summer, in the bright sun, the leaves can turn red or acquire an almost brick hue. This is not dangerous, but burns are possible in green-leaved varieties; in variegated varieties, especially with red spots - such consequences do not happen.

If the plant has been deprived of good sunlight all winter, then in the spring it is necessary to accustom it to the bright sun gradually, first slightly shading, and then removing the shading for a while. It should be borne in mind that the following windows are suitable for a fat woman: east, not shaded from the street, south-west and even north-west. Plants located on windows facing south and west should be shaded if necessary, for example with a mosquito net. Northern windows are not suitable for almost all types of fat women.

Temperature. It is desirable moderate, and in summer, on hot days, it is better to place the plants on the floor, where it is slightly cooler. In winter, fat women have a rest period at a temperature of + 8 … + 12 ° C, with a dry content, i.e. without watering. Permissible winter temperature minimum + 7 ° С. In summer, it is best to keep plants outdoors on the balcony or garden. When wintering in too warm conditions, the bastard loses its leaves and decorative attractiveness (the shoots are stretched out, the leaves become smaller).

Watering. Moderate in spring and summer is needed, since autumn watering is reduced, and in winter fat women practically do not water. The frequency of watering depends on the temperature, but in any case, the soil should dry out fairly quickly. If it is constantly damp, it means that the soil is incorrectly selected (too dense, caked, not loose) or the pot volume is too large. In addition, water should never remain in the pan.

Fertilizer. From late spring to mid-summer, plants are fed with a special fertilizer for cacti and succulents once a month.

Air humidity. Fat women are resistant to dry air, but periodic spraying will not harm them. In addition, it will be useful for hygienic purposes, helping to wash away dust. For the same purpose, from time to time it is necessary to wipe the leaves of the bastard from dust in order to facilitate the access of sunlight.

Planting and transplanting a money tree

Most often, flower growers buy a fat woman in flower shops. It is already growing in a pot, and the plant will need to be transplanted into a large container in a year, when it is still growing.

Reproduction. But it is quite possible to grow a money tree on your own, if you take a stem cutting or even a leaf from an adult plant from friends or acquaintances. Both the leaves and the cuttings are dried for two to three hours, and then planted in the prepared soil. You can also use one more method - place the stalk or leaf in a glass of water until the roots appear. Usually this plant takes root quickly.

For planting, you can use purchased soil for cacti, it is also well suited for succulents. Or you can cook it yourself. This requires a mixture of 1 part of sod land, 3 parts of leaf, 1 part of peat land, 1 part of coarse, sifted sand. At the bottom of the pot, good drainage is required, for example, from expanded clay or cork, to prevent excessive waterlogging.

Transfer. For transplanting adult and old very large plants, the soil mixture is needed the same, but there should be 2 parts of sod soil there. It must be remembered that the leaves of fat women are very fragile and easily break off when transplanting plants, therefore, they must be handled with care.

Young plants are transplanted annually, old ones - in a year. After transplanting, watering is very careful - little by little, so as not to cause rotting of the roots. It is useful to add brick chips and pieces of birch charcoal to the soil, as well as baking powder - vermiculite.

The root system of fat women is rather weak, superficial, the roots are thin, so plants do not need large pots for planting. But some specimens have a thick, heavy trunk, and if they are planted in a small pot, then such plants can fall and break. They just need to be planted in large pots, and on their bottom, for stability, it is necessary to lay a drainage of stones or one heavy stone, and then fill up a light drainage - a wine cork, expanded clay or polystyrene up to the middle of the pot. After that, the plant itself is placed in it and the earthen mixture prepared for the fat woman is poured.

Types of fat women

As noted above, in nature there are several hundred species of this plant, but most often in living quarters and in offices you can find several types of jerky:

Crassula arborescens - money tree or tree cotyledon (Crassula arborescens) - originally from Southwest and South Africa. It is a succulent plant with a thick, round trunk lignified from below and many densely leafy branches. Its rounded, like shiny coins, sessile leaves are thick, fleshy, dark green with a grayish tint (sometimes with reddish edges) with a dotted surface. With good care, this fat woman grows in the house for many years, reaching a height of one and a half meters. Only after ten years of cultivation, white or pink flowers can appear at the ends of the stems.

Oval Jade (Crassula ovata) - a small tree-like succulent plant that is very easy to grow. Its short branches carry fleshy, oval-shaped, shiny green leaves, sometimes with a red edge. In well-lit places, this plant forms racemose inflorescences of small, star-like white flowers. In large pots, it reaches a height of 60 cm or more. In summer it needs good watering.

The silver fat woman (Crassula argentea) is a small succulent tree, reaching in nature 1-2 m in height, and the trunk up to 30 cm thick. Has a profusely branching crown. Its leaves are elliptical or obverse-lanceolate, 2-6 cm long and 1-2.5 cm wide. They are bright green, shiny, sometimes reddening along the edges, with silvery dots on the upper side. Flowers about 1 cm long, white with a pinkish bloom.

This species is one of the most common in indoor culture, it is also known as the purslane bastard.

The healing properties of the fat woman

Despite the popularity of the money tree, most people do not know that it also has medicinal properties. In folk medicine, the fat woman is used in the treatment of wounds, cuts, abscesses, since it has good bactericidal, antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties that are not inferior in strength to aloe.

It is also used in the treatment of herpes, tonsillitis, arthritis.

However, it must be remembered that arsenic is contained in a high concentration in the bastard, therefore it is not recommended to abuse the internal intake of medicinal preparations based on this plant. In case of an overdose, vomiting, diarrhea, and impaired consciousness are observed.

The use of fatty juice juice for wounds, cuts, abscesses. To do this, you need to take a few leaves of the bastard, grind them into gruel, trying not to lose juice. Then this gruel must be evenly distributed over the surface of the gauze, covered with another piece of gauze and applied to the affected area. The dressing should be changed every 4 hours.

Naira Harutyunyan, student of the Institute of Television, Business and Design

Photo by the author