Rubber plant

The rubber plant grows wild from north east India through to Indonesia, where it begins as a seedling perched in the fork of another tree and lets its roots down to the ground, in time becoming a substantial tree in its own right. It was farmed for the latex in its sap long before anyone grew it on a windowsill, which is where the name comes from. Indoors it keeps the useful half of that inheritance: thick, waxy, water holding leaves and a tolerance of quite a lot of neglect. It is the easy relative of the fiddle-leaf fig, and it will forgive most of what that plant will not.

Light

Bright indirect light suits it, near a window but out of the harshest midday sun. The dark leaved forms, including the near black ones, will hold on in a noticeably dimmer spot than most large houseplants tolerate. Variegated forms are a different matter and need real light to keep their cream and pink edges; in a dark room they revert to plain green and the pattern does not come back.

Turn the pot a quarter turn each week so it grows evenly rather than leaning at the glass, and wipe the leaves with a damp cloth every month or two. Dust settles thickly on a leaf that size and dulls the shine.

Water

Water when the top 3 to 4 cm of compost is dry, then soak until it drains from the base, and empty the saucer. That is roughly every nine days in a warm room in summer and every two to three weeks in winter. Those thick leaves are a reserve, so a forgotten week does almost nothing, while a pot that stays wet turns the lower leaves yellow and then drops them.

The commonest confusion with this plant is that overwatering and cold both make leaves fall, and the two are easy to mix up in winter. Feel the compost before deciding. Damp compost and falling leaves means water less; dry compost, a chilly room and falling leaves means move it somewhere warmer.

Feeding and repotting

Feed monthly at half strength from spring to early autumn and stop over winter. If the leaf edges start going brown and crisp on a plant you water properly, flush the pot through with plain water a few times to wash out accumulated feed salts.

Repot in spring, up one pot size, every second year while it is growing quickly, and every third year once it is large. A wide shallow pot suits it better than a deep narrow one, because the roots run outwards rather than down. Fresh compost with a quarter perlite or fine bark gives the roots the air they want.

Pruning and propagation

Prune in spring. Cutting the growing tip out above a leaf node is how you stop a rubber plant becoming a single bare pole with a tuft on top, and side shoots usually break within a couple of months. Wear gloves and keep the sap off furniture; it is a skin irritant and it stains.

Cuttings are straightforward. Take a stem with two or three leaves in late spring, blot the cut until the sap stops flowing, and push it into damp compost under a clear cover or a plastic bag, somewhere warm and bright. Roots form in four to six weeks. For a tall plant that has gone bare at the bottom, air layering is better: it gives you a full sized plant from the top and lets you cut the parent back hard at the same time, after which it usually breaks two or three new shoots.

Ailments

Yellow lower leaves and leaf drop are the two things people ask about, and both have the same first question, which is whether the compost is wet. Brown crisp edges point to dry air or feed salts. A variegated plant going green is a light problem. Scale insects are the one pest worth watching for, because a large glossy leaf shows the sticky residue long before you notice the insects themselves. The ledger below has the details.