Prayer Plant Propagation In Water

Welcome to our guide to prayer plant propagation in water. You can easily propagate a prayer plant in a jar of water, and they can grow there indefinitely if you keep the water topped up. They propagate very easily and have abundant white roots in water that look great on display in a glass container.

See also: Prayer Plant Care for a full guide to caring for this plant and or Prayer Plant Propagation guide.

How To Propagate A Prayer Plant In Water

Take a cutting

With a prayer plant you want to get the node in and two leaves if possible. One leaf is ok, but you need the node. This is the wider knuckle where branches grow from. It is also where the cutting will root from. You can take multiple cuttings if you like.

Two of my maranta cuttings — Some of my prayer plant cuttings

Let the cuttings heal for a few hours

You want the open cuts to completely heal over first or they can go mushy in water.

Maranta lemon lime cuttings from above — My maranta lemon lime, chopped up into lots of cuttings

Fill a Jar with filtered tap water

I use filtered water as they can be sensitive to ‘hard’ water. A fairly thin jar is ideal as they hold the leaves out of the water but allow the nodes to be fully submerged. Leaves can rot if they fall in the water.

Maranta prayer plant cuttings in a glass jar

Keep the jar topped up and somewhere with indirect light while it roots

If any cuttings start to rot, take them out. Keep the water topped up to above the nodes.

They should start to root quickly

They start to root in days, and in a month or two they should be well rooted, then you can…

Prayer plant water propagations starting to root — Here’s one of my propagations after a week or so with roots already showing.

Pot them up into soil

When they have developed roots that touch the sides of the jar you can move them to soil. It is also possible to keep them in water if you like, they look great with their roots on display.