Monstera, pothos and the Pink Princess philodendron are three of the most bought houseplants in Europe, and they are close relatives. All three are aroids, which means they fail in similar ways for similar reasons. Learn the pattern on one and you can read the other two.
What the three have in common
In the wild these plants climb. Their roots evolved to sit in leaf litter and bark on the side of a tree, wrapped in air, wet for an hour after rain and dry again by evening.
Two consequences follow, and they explain most of what goes wrong indoors.
They will not tolerate roots that stay wet. A dense peat-heavy mix in a pot without drainage recreates the one condition their roots never evolved for, and rot follows within weeks. A chunky mix with bark or perlite is closer to what they want.
And they respond to light by changing shape rather than by dying. This is the useful part. A monstera that is short of light does not wilt; it makes plain leaves. A pothos does not collapse; it stretches. The plant tells you what it is missing if you know which signal belongs to which cause.
Monstera: the leaves come out plain
The single most common question about a monstera is why the new leaves have no holes.
Fenestration is a maturity and light response. A young plant makes solid heart-shaped leaves and starts splitting them as it grows, but only if it is getting enough light to afford them. In a corner two metres from a north window, a monstera will keep producing small plain leaves indefinitely while looking otherwise healthy.
The fix is brighter indirect light, not more water and not more fertiliser. Move it within a metre or so of a bright window, out of direct midday sun, and judge the result on the next two leaves rather than the next two weeks.
The second thing people ask about is a support. A monstera given something to climb, a moss pole or even a plank, produces noticeably larger and more divided leaves than the same plant sprawling sideways, because the plant reads upward attachment as permission to mature.
Yellow leaves on a monstera are a different signal. An older lower leaf yellowing slowly is normal ageing. Several leaves yellowing at once, along with soft brown patches or a sour smell from the pot, is water sitting around the roots. Our guide to why plant leaves turn yellow works through the nine causes and how to separate them.
Pothos: it stretches and pales
Pothos is the most forgiving of the three, which is exactly why its problems get ignored for months.
The classic failure is a vine with long bare stretches of stem and a small leaf every fifteen centimetres. That is not a watering issue or a feeding issue. It is light. A pothos in low light keeps growing because it is stubborn, and it spends what it has on length rather than leaves, reaching for a window it cannot find.
Move it brighter and cut the leggy sections back. Cutting is not optional here: the bare stem will not refill, and pruning is what triggers branching from the nodes behind the cut. The cuttings root in water in a fortnight, so nothing is wasted.
Variegated pothos has a second version of this. A Marble Queen or Golden pothos in dim light produces progressively greener leaves, because the white parts contain no chlorophyll and the plant cannot afford them. It is not reverting permanently. Give it more light and new growth comes back patterned.
The opposite also happens: pale, washed-out, slightly crisped leaves on a plant in a south window are too much direct sun.
Mushy yellow stems at soil level are the one urgent pothos problem. That is rot, and it moves. Take healthy cuttings from the far end of the vine immediately rather than trying to save the base.
Pink Princess: the pink is the problem and the point
The Pink Princess philodendron is bought for the pink variegation, and nearly every complaint about it comes down to the same biological fact: the pink sections contain no chlorophyll. They cannot photosynthesise. They are carried by the green parts of the plant.
Three things follow.
New leaves coming out all green. The plant is short of light and cannot support pink tissue. Increase light gradually. Cutting back to a node that had good variegation and letting it regrow from there often helps, because the plant produces from the most recent pattern.
New leaves coming out almost entirely pink. This looks like a win and is a problem. A leaf with no green cannot feed itself, browns off, and a plant pushed too far this way starves. Prune back to a balanced leaf.
Brown crispy patches in the pink. The pink burns far more readily than the green. Direct sun that a monstera shrugs off will scorch a Pink Princess, and the damage does not heal. Bright indirect light only. Our notes on brown leaf tips cover the difference between scorch, dry air and salt build-up.
A warning worth knowing before you buy
Pink Princess is expensive, and it is regularly confused with the Pink Congo, which is a different plant sold with chemically induced pink leaves. The Pink Congo's colour is temporary. Within six to twelve months every pink leaf turns green and never comes back.
The distinguishing sign is the pattern. A true Pink Princess has irregular pink sections, splashes and half-leaves, varying from leaf to leaf, and dark stems with pink or maroon markings. A Pink Congo has uniform, even pink across whole leaves, all appearing at once. If every leaf is identically pink, be suspicious.
This is a case where identifying what you own before you spend anything is worth the two minutes. A photo in Gardenix returns the species with a confidence level, and tells you when it is not sure rather than confidently naming something wrong.
Telling a light problem from a water problem
Across all three plants, most confusion comes down to separating these two. A rough guide:
- Shape changes mean light. Small leaves, no fenestration, long bare stems, colour draining from variegation. The plant is growing, but growing wrong.
- Texture and colour changes mean water. Yellowing in groups, soft or mushy tissue, brown patches with a soft edge, a sour smell. Something is happening to existing tissue.
- Crisp brown edges with dry tissue sit between the two: usually air that is too dry, sun that is too direct, or a pot that dried out completely.
If you are unsure which one you are looking at, the five signs of overwatering and how often to water houseplants cover the watering side in detail.
Watching a recovery you cannot see day to day
The frustrating thing about all three of these plants is that the answer arrives slowly. A monstera moved into better light tells you nothing for a month, until the next leaf unfurls. A Pink Princess cut back to a good node takes longer still.
Photographing the plant in Gardenix every week or two makes that visible. Each scan gives a health score from 0 to 100 and the scores form a timeline, so you can see whether the line is climbing before the next leaf has even opened. The chat also keeps the plant's history, which means you can ask why a specific monstera keeps producing plain leaves and get an answer that takes its own scan record into account rather than starting from nothing.
Gardenix is free to download on Apple iOS and Android, and the first 3 scans are free for life.