Lucky bamboo

Lucky bamboo is not bamboo. It is Dracaena sanderiana, a shrubby plant from the rainforests of western Africa, and it is sold as short lengths of green stem standing in a vase of pebbles because that is a cheap and striking way to sell a cutting. Real bamboo is a grass and will not live in a vase at all. Once you know that, the plant makes far more sense, because everything it wants is what a dracaena wants: shade, warmth, no fluoride, and roots that are wet but not stale.

Light

Medium indirect light suits it, and it genuinely tolerates low light, which is why it turns up on desks and reception counters. What it will not take is direct sun. Sun scorches the leaves and, worse, warms the water and turns it green with algae within days, which is the fastest way to lose one.

If the stems have been trained into spirals, they were grown that way by turning them slowly beside a single light source. New growth comes out straight, and there is no way to continue the pattern at home.

Water

Grown in water, which is how most are sold, change it completely once a week rather than topping it up. Keep the roots covered by about five centimetres and no more, and rinse the pebbles and the vessel when you change it. Stale water is behind almost every complaint about this plant: yellow leaves, a soft base, a sour smell.

Use rainwater or filtered water if you possibly can. Dracaenas are unusually sensitive to fluoride and chlorine, and brown leaf tips follow tap water within a couple of months. Water left standing overnight in an open jug loses much of its chlorine and is a reasonable substitute.

Grown in compost it is easier, not harder. Use a free draining house plant mix, keep it lightly moist, and the plant grows larger, lives longer and browns less. It will stop looking like the arrangement you bought and start looking like a small dracaena, which is what it is.

Feeding

Almost none. A drop of liquid feed at about a tenth of the recommended strength every second month is enough for a plant in water, and even that is optional. Feed in a vase has nowhere to drain to, so it concentrates, and burnt roots and yellow leaves follow quickly. In compost, two half strength feeds across the summer is plenty.

Pruning and propagation

Cut a stem back with clean secateurs whenever it grows taller than you want. New shoots break from just below the cut, and the piece you removed is a cutting: strip the lowest leaves, stand it in water, and roots appear in a few weeks. A stem cut and left in water will not seal the way a woody cutting does, so keep the water fresh while it roots.

Many arrangements have their cut tops sealed with wax. That is cosmetic, and it does no harm, but a stem that is going soft under the wax needs cutting back into firm green tissue at once, because rot travels upwards and cannot be reversed.

Moving it into compost

If you want the plant rather than the ornament, pot it up. Take it out of the vase in spring, rinse the pebbles off the roots, and plant it in a free draining house plant compost at the depth it was standing in the water. Water it in, then keep the compost lightly moist for the first month while the water roots, which are thin and brittle, are replaced by tougher soil roots. The plant usually stands still for a few weeks and then grows away noticeably faster than it ever did in the vase.

Ailments

Brown tips are the tap water. Yellow leaves are stale water, too much feed or direct sun, in that order. A soft base is stem rot and the only cure is to cut back into healthy tissue and start again. Green water and slimy pebbles mean the vessel is getting too much light. The ledger below has the rest.