With lovely, eye-catching green blotches on a cheerful white plant, the Snow Queen pothos is a common houseplant that is also inexpensive. These plants are easy to find at almost any garden center, grocery store, or department store.
Another reason that this plant is so popular is that the ins and outs of Snow Queen pothos care really don’t take much work at all, making them a perfect plant for beginning gardeners.
So keep reading to find out just how you can keep this new addition to your houseplant collection happy and thriving!
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How to care for the Snow Queen pothos
With relatively few special care needs, the care of your Snow Queen pothos is fairly simple. If you are looking for a houseplant for a child or another person who is new to keeping plants, this plant is a great option because its needs are so simple. They need indirect sunlight, have low water needs, and only need average soil.
How much light does a Snow Queen pothos need?
Snow Queen pothos need partial shade or indirect sunlight. If you place it near a window, be sure that it is not too exposed to the sun. If the window faces the south, be sure to put a curtain or sun shade that will filter the light from the window.
These plants are great for growing indoors because they manage quite well with very limited amounts of light. Even if you live in a dark apartment, just put your Snow Queen pothos in the same room as your window, and it should still thrive. With as little as 4 hours a day of indirect sunlight per day, a Snow Queen pothos can still do well.
However, the low light can be taken a bit too far with your Snow Queen pothos. If it gets too little light, the green color on the plant will fade and it will begin to look sickly or it will begin to develop more green spots that will overtake the pretty white foliage. If this happens to your plant, find a sunny spot quickly to help it recover.
Find out everything you need to know about how much light your pothos needs here!
How often should you water a Snow Queen pothos?
Snow Queen pothos do not need large amounts of water. In fact, they do best when they are allowed to dry out fully between waterings. You can figure this out by putting your finger in its soil and only watering when the top one to two inches are dry.
This fact makes the Snow Queen Pothos one of the easiest plants for beginning plant owners to care for, with even the question of when you should water your pothos being very straightforward.
Many owners of healthy Snow Queen pothos feel the dirt with their fingers and when they feel the dirt is dry down to their second knuckle, that is when they will water the plant. Based on this, you will not have to water your Snow Queen pothos every day and probably not even every week except possibly during the warmest months of the year.
Of course, you do not want to let this go too far so that the soil gets very hard and dry. If you let your plant go too long between waterings, the plant will begin to droop, showing signs of thirst. You must water the Snow Queen pothos when it gets to this point or the plant will die.
Water the plant until the water pours out of the drainage holes at the bottom of the pot. You may find it helpful to water your plant in your kitchen sink and let the plant sit in the sink for several minutes until it stops dripping. When you do this, you may not have to water it again for another month.
How do you repot Snow Queen pothos?
Because pothos plants grow so quickly, they often can become pot-bound, which occurs when the roots fill the pot, making the soil hard and compact. Repotting a Snow Queen pothos involves removing the plant from the old pot and repotting it into a new, larger pot and with some fresh soil.
Just like a human child wearing shoes that are too small, a root bound pothos will struggle to grow. The roots may protrude from the top of the soil, and the plant’s leaves may start to turn yellow or brown.
A pot-bound pothos plant will not have roots that spread out all throughout the soil. The roots will begin to coil around in a circle at the bottom of the pot. The dirt will grow hard as the roots begin to fill the pot, pressing the dirt into ever smaller spaces.
Repotting will give your Snow Queen pothos new life. When you repot the pothos, gently tip the plant out of the pot and tease out the roots, loosening them with your fingers. Once the roots are spread out, add new dirt to your new, larger pot, and add the plant, along with additional soil.
Repotting your Snow Queen pothos will add nutrition to the plant in the new dirt. Additionally, the plant will grow better because the roots will have access to more air and water. Be sure that you give the Snow Queen pothos plant a good watering after you have repotted it.
Related: 7 Simple Steps to Repot Pothos Plants
Does the Snow Queen pothos like humidity?
Snow Queen pothos, as well as all pothos plants, are tropical in origin. Because of their jungle origins, they prefer humid conditions. However, with many homes having relatively low humidity, it’s best to find a way to boost humidity levels in your home so your plant thrives.
Adding a humidifier or a pebble tray can be great for this. You may also want to consider grouping your plants close together, which helps boost humidity levels around all of them.
As a short term solution to help with this, you may also want to mist your plants’ leaves with a spray bottle once a week. They only need a light misting. If you soak the plant so that the leaves are dripping wet, you can invite fungal diseases.
The fact that a pothos plant loves humidity makes it a great choice for humid areas of the home, like bathrooms. These lovely plants will probably thrive in a more humid area and add beauty and relaxation to your bathroom.
Find out all about your pothos’ humidity needs here – including the best tricks for boosting humidity levels in your home!
How to propagate Snow Queen pothos
If you have a Snow Queen pothos that you love and you would love to have more, there is an easy solution. You can easily propagate Snow Queen pothos by just snipping a bit of an existing stem and placing it in a glass of water. It will soon sprout roots and you can then pot it up.
When you cut a piece of Snow Queen pothos stem to make a new plant, you should make sure that there is a leaf node on the stem. Break the leaf off of the stem, making sure to leave at least two leaves to nourish the plant on the stem. Immerse the stem in water, covering the place where you broke off the leaf with water.
After a month or two, your plant should have several good sized roots growing from the stem. Then you will want to pot the plant in a small pot. Be sure to use good, loose potting soil to nourish your baby plant.
If you allow the Snow Queen pothos plant to sit in water too long, it may have a hard time adapting to life in a pot of dirt. After several weeks, be sure to plant the new plant in a pot with soil.
You may also be interested in: 8 Simple Steps to Propagate Pothos Plants Successfully
What kind of soil does a Snow Queen pothos need?
Pothos generally prefer potting mix that has plenty of vermiculite, peat, and perlite to ensure that the mixture stays loose and airy for the plants. Finding a bagged mixture at the local garden center that is especially labeled for houseplants will help you make the best soil choice for your pothos plant.
All kinds of pothos plants need loose, well draining soil in their pots (here are our tips for picking the best soil for your pothos). You want to allow plenty of air to access the roots of the plant. Soil that is allowed to get compacted or soil that is too heavy will allow the plant’s roots to stay wet, leading to your pothos developing root rot and fungal diseases.
Garden soil from your backyard or bags of topsoil from your local garden center are not the best choice for your pothos plant. These mixtures may contain weed seeds that could sprout in your pothos pot or they may also contain plant diseases that could kill your Snow Queen pothos. Additionally, this kind of dirt will probably have too high a clay content, which can compact and hold too much moisture for the pothos plant.
Is Snow Queen pothos variegated?
Snow queen pothos plants have mostly white leaves with speckles and lines of green on them. Given that variegated plants are plants that have areas of differing colors on the leaves, the Snow Queen pothos is indeed a variegated plant.
A variegated pothos plant appears two-toned, or multi-toned. In the case of the Snow Queen pothos, the stems are mostly white and the leaves are multicolored and variegated.
This pattern does often mean though that it’s confused with the Marble Queen Pothos, another of the similarly variegated pothos types. The extra white patches on the Snow Queen Pothos can help to tell them apart, but you wouldn’t be blamed for struggling to distinguish the two.
Find out all about the Snow Queen vs Marble Queen Pothos – including just how to tell them apart!
How do you make the Snow Queen pothos more white?
The unusual color pattern that is mostly white with some green blotches is what gives the Snow Queen pothos its name. Healthy Snow Queen pothos that are well cared for will remain mostly white with slight green coloration. To make it more white, just keep it in an area with at least 4 hours of indirect sunlight per day.
Sometimes a Snow Queen pothos will begin to develop more green spots than white. This can be disappointing because much of the fascination of the Snow Queen pothos is the fact that this perfectly healthy plant is a mostly white pothos.
The main reason that a Snow Queen pothos will begin to have more green spots is that the plant does not have enough sunlight. The green parts of the plants are the parts that photosynthesize, creating energy for the plant from the sunlight.
If the Snow Queen pothos does not have access to enough sunlight, the plant will compensate by creating new growth with a greater concentration of green spots on the leaves. The extra green spots will create more energy for the plant, compensating for the low light conditions.
Can the Snow Queen pothos revert?
Like most variegated plants, a Snow Queen pothos can revert to a plant with large areas of green on the leaves. To avoid this, keep the Snow Queen in an area with plenty of indirect sunlight. This will give the plant enough sunshine to keep it from needing to develop leaves with a greater concentration of green on them.
Variegated plants like the Snow Queen pothos are often grown specifically for the multi-colored presentation of the leaves. For this reason, when the plant begins to revert, increasing the amount of green on the leaves, plant owners will often be disappointed.
And given that this beautiful pattern is probably what drew you to get a Snow Queen pothos in the first place, this disappointment is understandable. However, if you do not give your Snow Queen pothos the correct amount of light, it will indeed revert to something similar to the color pattern normally seen on the Marble Queen pothos, if not even less variegated than that.
Is the Snow Queen pothos rare?
While most plant owners are of the opinion that their plants are pretty special, the Snow Queen pothos really is not considered a rare plant. It can be fairly easy to find a Snow Queen pothos in most garden centers, florists, department stores, or grocery stores.
If you have a friend who already owns a Snow Queen pothos, you can get a cutting from their pothos and make your own. Propagating the Snow Queen pothos is simple and will only take a few weeks and a glass of water.
Are Snow Queen pothos slow growing?
Probably because the plant’s leaves have smaller green patches to make food for the plant, the Snow Queen pothos is considered to be a slower growing pothos variety. These plants are also generally more compact than some other variations, so they will grow bushier.
However, the Snow Queen pothos does have the ability to grow just as large and beautiful as any other version of pothos plant. It will just take a bit more time to get to that same size.
For this reason, do not give up on your Snow Queen pothos plant if it is taking more time to grow the size that you ultimately want it to be. Just be patient and, eventually, your lovely, eye-catching houseplant will match the growth size of many of your other pothos variations.
Check out these tips for how to make your pothos grow faster.
How can I tell if my Snow Queen pothos is having problems?
Snow Queen pothos communicate quite clearly when there is a problem. All you have to do is look at the plant every few days and check out what the leaves are telling you. Yellow leaves, drooping leaves, or brown leaves are tell-tale signs that all is not well with your Snow Queen pothos plant.
From there, it’s simply a matter of using the process of elimination to figure out what the issue is, given that many signs of problems with your plant can be similar for different causes. Could it not be getting enough light? Have you gone too long between waterings?
The best way is to simply review your Snow Pothos care schedule and see if something may have been overlooked.
Why is my Snow Queen pothos turning yellow?
The most common cause of yellowing foliage on pothos plants is overwatering. Snow Queen pothos plants need to dry out a bit between waterings. If they sit in soggy soils, their roots will get stressed and eventually, they could even develop root rot or fungal diseases.
On this basis, wait until the top quarter of the dirt in the pot is completely dry before you water your Snow Queen pothos. After all, these are the kinds of plants that thrive on benign neglect. You don’t have to tend it or water it too often as a consistently overwatered pothos can lead to more severe problems with your plant.
Instead, just check the soil moisture once a week and water the plant if the top few inches of the potting soil is dry.
Be sure that any pot that you use to plant a Snow Queen pothos in has good drainage holes. Water the plant until water pours out of the holes at the bottom of the pot and then discard any water that sits in the saucer or tray underneath the plant. This should keep your Snow Queen pothos happy and its foliage in good shape.
Why is my Snow Queen pothos drooping?
The most common reason for a Snow Queen pothos to start getting droopy is that it has gotten too dry and needs more water. Drooping leaves are an indication of dryness. Water the plant immediately and, chances are, the plant will perk up pretty quickly.
If the entire pot of your plant is completely dry, you may want to soak your plant to quickly rehydrate the soil. Excessively dry soil will get hard and not soak up the water like a sponge.
To soak a drooping pothos plant, fill your sink or a basin with 3 to 4 inches of room temperature water. Take the saucer off of the bottom of the plant and set the whole pot in the sink of water. Leave it there undisturbed for 40 minutes to an hour.
Soaking the plant will allow the roots to take a long drink of sweet, fresh water. Additionally, the dirt will become re-hydrated more fully than from a simple watering. After the time is up, return the plant to its saucer and its original sunny spot.
Why is my Snow Queen pothos turning brown?
There are several reasons that your Snow Queen pothos could be turning brown. Common reasons include too much sun, underwatering, overwatering, or over-fertilizing. If you notice that it’s also drooping and its leaves are turning crispy, underwatering is likely the problem.
That is, a Snow Queen pothos that has not been watered enough will develop droopy leaves. If you ignore this sign of thirst, the leaves will start to get crispy and brown. Give the plant a good soaking as described above to help refresh it and help it heal from being so dry for so long.
Overwatered Snow Queen plants will also develop brown patches if their dirt is consistently soggy and waterlogged. You may also notice brown stems on your pothos when this is the case. To fix this problem, let the plant dry out completely before you water again. Pour off any water that is sitting in the saucer at the bottom of the pot. If your pothos plant is in a pot with no drainage holes, repot it into one that meets your pothos’ drainage needs by having good drainage holes in the bottom.
If the pothos is developing brown tips on its leaves, the cause is probably excessive fertilizing. Excess fertilizer can cause salts to build up in the dirt. To flush out the salts, run water through the pot several times, allowing the water to gush out of the holes in the bottom of the pot.
If your Snow Queen pothos plant is exposed to bright direct sunlight, it will develop brown spots in the white patches of the plant, with most of the brown concentrated on the side of the plant closest to the window. To fix this problem, you can hang a sheer window curtain to lower the amount of direct sunlight coming through the window or move the plant to a spot that is more sheltered from the sunlight.