How to Train a Pothos Plant to Climb or Trail

Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) is a natural climber that will happily grow in either direction depending on how you guide it. Training a pothos to climb a support produces larger leaves and thicker stems over time, while letting it trail from a shelf or hanging basket keeps growth compact and cascading. The plant does not need special equipment or expert technique for either approach, but understanding a few biological tendencies makes the process faster and more rewarding.

Why Direction Matters More Than You’d Expect

In the wild, pothos is a hemiepiphyte. It starts life on the forest floor and climbs tree trunks toward light, sometimes reaching canopy heights where its leaves can grow enormous. When you train a pothos upward on a support, you mimic that natural growth habit. The plant responds by producing progressively larger leaves, thicker stems, and more pronounced fenestrations (the splits and holes you see in mature Epipremnum foliage). A trailing pothos, by contrast, interprets its downward or horizontal orientation as a signal that it has not yet found a host to climb. It stays in a kind of juvenile growth mode with smaller, heart-shaped leaves and thinner vines.

This difference is not cosmetic trivia. It reflects a real shift in how the plant allocates energy. Climbing triggers the development of aerial roots along the nodes, which anchor the vine and absorb moisture and nutrients from the surface they cling to. Research on Epipremnum aureum has found that contact with a surface (a process called thigmomorphogenesis) is the key stimulus that tells the plant it has found something worth climbing, prompting aerial root development and fixation to the support.¹ The plant essentially needs to feel a surface before it commits to climbing mode. That’s why simply placing a pothos near a wall won’t do much. You have to physically attach the vine to something.

How to Train a Pothos to Climb

The core idea is simple: give the vine a vertical surface it can grip, and secure it there until aerial roots take hold on their own. Several types of support work well, and each has trade-offs worth knowing about.

Moss Poles and Coir Poles

A moss pole is a cylinder of sphagnum moss wrapped around a central stake, and a coir pole is the same concept using coconut fiber. Both provide a moist, textured surface that aerial roots love to dig into. To use one, insert the pole into the center of the pot and tie or pin the vine against it at several points along the stem. Use soft plant ties, small clips, or even bobby pins pushed into the moss. The nodes (the little bumps where leaves emerge) should press against the pole, because that’s where aerial roots develop. Misting the pole regularly or watering it directly helps aerial roots penetrate the surface faster. Once roots anchor into the moss, you can remove the ties.

The main downside of moss poles is maintenance. They dry out quickly indoors, especially in homes with central heating. If the pole stays dry, aerial roots won’t bother attaching to it, and the vine just dangles loosely. Self-watering moss poles, which have an internal tube you fill from the top, solve this problem but cost more. Coir poles hold less moisture than sphagnum and are harder for roots to penetrate, but they last longer and don’t decompose as quickly.

Trellises and Flat Boards

A small wooden or bamboo trellis placed behind the pot gives the vine a lattice to weave through. You can also use a flat plank of untreated wood, rough-bark cork board, or even a piece of tree fern fiber mounted to a wall. The rougher the surface, the easier it is for aerial roots to grip. Smooth surfaces like plastic or finished wood don’t give roots anything to cling to, so the vine will need permanent ties rather than eventually attaching on its own.

Flat boards and planks work especially well if you want the pothos to grow against a wall. Mount the board with some clearance from the wall surface to allow airflow behind it and prevent moisture damage to the wall. Secure the vine to the board with plant clips or small staples pushed gently into the board (not through the stem).

Walls, Hooks, and Command Strips

If you want the vine climbing a wall without a dedicated support structure, adhesive hooks or small command-strip clips spaced every six to twelve inches along your desired path let you route the vine wherever you like. This approach looks clean and modern, but the vine won’t develop strong aerial root attachment to a flat painted wall the way it would on a textured organic surface. You’ll need to keep the clips in place permanently, and the leaves won’t grow as large as they would on a moss pole, because the vine isn’t getting the same degree of surface contact and moisture at its roots.

How to Train a Pothos to Trail

Training a pothos to trail requires even less intervention. Place the pot on a high shelf, in a hanging planter, or on a tall plant stand, and let gravity do the work. The vine will grow downward naturally. You can guide individual vines by draping them over hooks or along a windowsill to control the direction of the cascade.

A few things make trailing pothos look fuller and healthier. Pruning is the most important. A single unpruned vine grows longer and longer but produces fewer side shoots, eventually looking leggy and bare near the base. Cutting a vine just above a node encourages the plant to branch at that point, filling out the top of the pot. You can root the cuttings in water or soil and plant them back into the same pot for an even bushier look.

Rotate the pot periodically if the plant sits near a window. Trailing vines grow toward light, and without rotation you’ll end up with all the growth on one side and a bare spot facing the room. Rotating a quarter turn every week or two keeps growth roughly even.

The Leaf Size Effect

One of the most dramatic differences between a climbing and a trailing pothos is leaf size. A pothos that has been climbing a moss pole for a year or two can produce leaves several times larger than the same plant would produce while trailing. In its native habitat, mature climbing Epipremnum aureum develops leaves that can exceed two feet across, though indoors you’re more likely to see leaves reach the size of your hand or a bit larger. Still, the difference between a climbing pothos and a trailing one is striking enough that people sometimes don’t recognize them as the same species.

The leaves don’t just get bigger. They often change shape. Juvenile pothos leaves are plain hearts. As the plant matures on a vertical support, leaves may develop irregular edges, lobes, or fenestrations. This process is slow indoors and depends on light levels as much as climbing orientation, but it does happen. Bright indirect light combined with vertical growth gives you the best shot at seeing mature foliage form.

Aerial Roots and What They Do for You

Those stubby brown nubs along a pothos stem are aerial roots, and they’re more than just anchors. Studies comparing aerial roots and soil-formed roots in Araceae species (the plant family that includes pothos) have found that aerial roots are consistently more effective at taking up nitrogen than soil roots.² In practical terms, when aerial roots are actively growing into a moist moss pole or a damp surface, they’re supplementing the plant’s nutrition, not just holding on. This partly explains why climbing pothos tends to grow more vigorously than trailing pothos in the same light and watering conditions.

Indoor humidity affects how well aerial roots function. In very dry rooms, aerial roots may stay small and brown, never elongating enough to grip a support. If you notice that your pothos is producing aerial root nubs but they’re not growing or attaching, low humidity is the likely culprit. A humidifier nearby, grouping plants together, or regularly misting the support surface can help. You don’t need tropical greenhouse conditions; keeping the area around the plant above roughly 50% relative humidity is usually enough to see active aerial root growth.

Light, Water, and Soil Considerations for Each Growth Style

A climbing pothos and a trailing pothos have the same basic care needs, but the growth direction changes a few practical details worth keeping in mind.

Light matters more for a climbing pothos if your goal is mature foliage. The plant interprets bright indirect light as a sign that it’s getting closer to the canopy, which reinforces the signal to produce larger leaves. A trailing pothos in a dim corner will survive, but it grows slowly and produces small, widely spaced leaves. If you’re trailing a pothos purely for the visual cascade effect, moderate light is fine. If you’re climbing it and hoping for impressive leaves, give it the brightest indirect spot you have.

Watering differs slightly because a climbing pothos on a moss pole has additional surface area that wicks moisture away. You may find yourself watering the pole and the soil independently. The soil dries out at its normal pace, but the moss pole dries out faster, especially near the top. Some growers pour water directly onto the top of the pole and let it trickle down, keeping the climbing surface moist without overwatering the soil. A trailing pothos in a hanging basket can dry out faster than one on a table because air circulates around the entire pot. Check hanging plants more frequently, especially in warm weather.

Soil and pot choice are the same for both styles. A well-draining aroid mix (potting soil with added perlite and orchid bark) works well. Pothos tolerates being slightly rootbound, so you don’t need to upsize the pot aggressively. When the plant does need repotting, the process is easier with a trailing pothos since you can simply lift the whole thing out. With a climbing pothos attached to a pole, you’ll need to either transfer the pole and all into a larger pot or carefully detach the vine, repot, and reattach.

Switching From Trailing to Climbing (and Vice Versa)

A pothos that has been trailing for years can absolutely be trained to climb, and a climber can be redirected to trail. Neither transition harms the plant, though there are a few things to expect.

When you redirect a trailing vine upward onto a pole, the section of vine that grew while trailing will keep its smaller leaves. New growth above the highest attachment point will start trending larger as the plant adjusts. The transition in leaf size is gradual, not instant, so you’ll have a visible gradient for a while: smaller leaves at the bottom, increasingly larger ones toward the top. Some growers like this look; others prefer to prune the smaller-leaved section once the top growth fills in.

Going from climbing to trailing is less visually dramatic. The vine simply reverts to producing smaller leaves once it loses contact with the vertical surface. If you remove a pole and let the plant hang, existing large leaves stay large, but all new growth from the tips will be smaller. You won’t lose the foliage you already have.

Common Mistakes When Training Pothos

A few recurring errors trip people up. Tying the vine too tightly around a support can strangle the stem as it thickens. Use ties with some give, like soft fabric strips or velcro plant tape, and check them every couple of months. Twist ties and thin wire cut into stems over time.

Another common issue is attaching the vine at only one or two points. This leaves long unsecured stretches that sag away from the pole, and the nodes in those stretches never make contact, so no aerial roots form. Pin or tie the vine at every second or third node for best results, at least until the plant starts gripping on its own.

Using a pole that’s too short is a subtle problem. Once the vine reaches the top and has nowhere left to climb, it starts trailing again from the peak, which can look messy and confuses the plant’s growth signals. Either use a pole tall enough to accommodate a year or more of growth, or plan to extend it. Stackable poles that lock into each other solve this neatly.

Finally, people sometimes assume a pothos will climb on its own if given a nearby surface. It won’t, at least not reliably indoors. In a humid tropical forest with rough bark and constant moisture, aerial roots seek surfaces aggressively. In your living room, you have to play matchmaker. Press the vine against the support, hold it there, and wait for the roots to do the rest. The plant is willing. It just needs a little help getting started.

Variegated Cultivars and Growth Direction

Pothos comes in many cultivars: Golden, Marble Queen, Neon, Manjula, N’Joy, and others. All of them climb and trail using the same mechanics, but variegated varieties (those with white, cream, or pale yellow patches) grow more slowly because less of their leaf surface contains chlorophyll. This means a Marble Queen or Manjula climbing a moss pole will take longer to produce large leaves than a Golden or Neon pothos would. The mature foliage effect still happens; it just requires more patience.

Highly variegated cultivars also tend to revert to more green coloration in low light, as the plant prioritizes chlorophyll production. If you’re climbing a variegated pothos toward a light source, the upper leaves often retain better variegation than lower ones, creating a natural gradient from green at the base to more strongly patterned leaves up top. This can be quite attractive and is one reason variegated pothos looks particularly good on a tall pole near a bright window.