Help with leggy sad nerve plant
This is my nerve plant, Mr. Legs 😂 he used to be beautiful and bushy, but has been put through multiple moves and changing of environments, one including being put near a heater 🙃 I was honestly just waiting for him to die out completely but since being in my newer place, he’s decided to keep hanging on. He seems to like where he is, and gets a brief amount of sun from a southern window. But he’s so leggy I have to support him with a stick. Can they be propagated? Would more stems grow from the roots at all? I guess I don’t know much about how these fellas grow. #Fittonia #NervePlant
6ft to light, indirect
6” pot with drainage
Last watered 5 months ago
4
Best Answer
@srdesigns @Stephazar @SuperblyLilac @LeafSprite I remember learning about plant hormones in AP bio has I only paid more attention. Alas. If it’s leggy it’s called etiolation and it means there is insufficient light. Until this underlying issue is corrected, it will be more of the same. With sufficient light, when you trim the top of the plant, the growth hormone is redistributed and will cause the plant to grow our more laterally. Notching, a technique where a small cut or notch is made in a plant's stem to encourage growth or branching, is typically used for plants that can develop aerial roots, like rubber plants (Ficus elastica). Nerve plants (Fittonia spp.) usually don't benefit from notching as they don't produce aerial roots in the same way. Pruning nerve plants usually involves simply cutting back stems or pinching off the tips to encourage bushier growth. Literally pinch off the new buds of leaves at the extremities to encourage bushier growth.
I know you can propagate it with cuttings, so you should be able to cut it down and make it a bushier arrangement. The person who sold me the one I have said it’d like to grow and creep horizontally. (Mine hasn’t grown much since I got it recently so that’s not proven yet). If no one here has the experience of propagating it there’s a lot of googled info on it (most common I found was to take 10cm cuttings, remove the lower leaves, and plant in moist soil in a humid spot in bright, indirect lighting. Or take cuttings the same way, and plant them back in the original pot)
Thanks!! I did know that about legginess for the most part - but it’s frustrating, because I was always told this was an ‘understory’ plant so it needed only low, filtered light. It’s hard to really replicate what that might be exactly, and I either seem to do too much so it burns, or too little. 🥲 but I will try relocating it to under my smaller grow lights and pinch off the top and see what happens…??
