Here’s a framing I want you to try, and I promise it’s less depressing than it sounds: assume your Pothos has pests. Right now. All of them, probably.
Not because it definitely does. But because the alternative framing, the one where you assume your plant is clean until proven otherwise, is how people end up posting photos on Reddit captioned “what’s wrong with my Pothos?” with a plant that is visibly, extravagantly infested.
If you start from “there are probably a few bugs on there,” you check the leaves. You wipe them down. You notice things early. And a few bugs stays a few bugs instead of becoming a horror film.
Nobody is going to tell you the truth about pests, so I will
Total eradication is not a thing.
Houseplant pests are the indoor equivalent of weeds.
You can pour as much weedkiller on your lawn as you like and the dandelions will be back, because dandelions have spent several thousand years getting extremely good at coming back.
Thrips, mealybugs, aphids, scale and spider mites are the same.
They live outside in vast numbers. They come in on new plants, on the breeze through an open window, on your jumper.
They adapt to pesticides at a speed that would be impressive if it weren’t so annoying.
So when an article promises you a spray that will get rid of thrips forever, that article is lying to you, or it’s selling you something, or both.
What you can do is keep the population so low that it never causes visible damage.
A Pothos with three thrips on it is a healthy Pothos. A Pothos with three hundred is a problem. The distance between those two numbers is made up almost entirely of how often you look.
The bit most pest articles leave out
Stressed plants are more attractive to pests. A plant under stress releases hormones that effectively advertise itself as an easy target, which is why the sad Pothos in the dark corner that hasn’t been watered properly in two months gets destroyed while the one on the shelf by the window shrugs off the same bugs.
This means light and water are pest control. Not metaphorically. The single most effective anti-pest measure available to you is a Pothos that isn’t struggling.
The five you’ll actually meet
| Pest | What you actually see | What the damage looks like | Where it hides |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thrips | Skinny black specks like grains of rice. Larvae are pale green and worm-like | Silvery or bronze patches, distorted new leaves, growth that stalls | Inside leaf folds, in unfurling new growth, in any crevice it can find |
| Mealybugs | White fluff, usually in leaf joints. The bugs themselves are white and barely move | Yellowing, weakening, and in bad cases the plant falls apart | Leaf axils, undersides, where stem meets leaf |
| Aphids | Small green (sometimes black) bugs, clustered together | Sticky residue, curled or stunted new growth | Soft new growth, stem tips |
| Scale | Small round or oval limpets stuck to stems and leaves. They look like scales, hence the name | Slow decline, then sudden collapse. They drain the chlorophyll out | Stems, leaf undersides, along the veins |
| Spider mites | Almost invisible. You see the damage first, then fine webbing | Tiny pale speckling, a dusty or stippled look, then webbing | Leaf undersides, dusty corners |
Thrips
The main event, as far as Pothos are concerned. They love soft new growth, they lay their eggs inside the leaf tissue (which is not playing fair), and they can hide in cavities small enough that not seeing any proves nothing at all.
They also do spend part of their life cycle in the soil! Which is rude! Don’t bother repotting though, they mainly live on the plant.
If you only learn to identify one type of damage, make it this one: silvery, bronzey patches and new leaves that come out damaged or don’t come out at all.
Thrips on Pothos: How To Identify and Get Rid Of Them
Mealybugs
White fluff. Whether the fluff is eggs or waste is a question I’ve decided not to investigate, because it’s unpleasant enough as it is.
Mealybugs would rather be on something succulent, a Crassula or a Hoya, so they’re less of a Pothos specialist than thrips. That doesn’t make them harmless. I lost a Hoya linearis to mealybugs because I didn’t catch them in time and the plant simply fell apart.
Mealybugs On Pothos: The Complete Guide
Aphids
Greenfly. Easy to squash early, a nightmare once they’re established, and mercifully not that interested in Pothos. Pothos leaves contain calcium oxalate crystals, which is what makes them mildly toxic to pets, and my working theory is that this makes them less appealing to aphids than something soft and innocent like a fern.
Grow your Pothos outdoors, though, and all bets are off.
Aphids On Pothos: How To Deal With Them
Scale
I hate scale. It does very little visible damage right up until the point where you wake up one morning and the plant is covered in them. They’re armoured, which means most sprays bounce straight off.
Not common on Pothos, thankfully. Monstera owners are less lucky.
Spider mites
Ignore the advice that spider mites only turn up in hot, dry rooms. My old place was cold and damp and I had them anyway, because what spider mites actually love is dust, and they will happily set up in a dim corner to get it.
You’ll spot the damage before you spot the mite. If you can see webbing, you’re past the point of gentle intervention and into cutting-back territory.
Spider Mites On Pothos: Signs and Solutions
What about fungus gnats?
Little black flies doing lazy circuits around your plant. Almost everyone gets them, mostly because they arrive already living in shop-bought compost.
Fungus gnats are a nuisance, not a threat. They’re irritating in the way that a fly in the car is irritating, and they are not going to kill an established Pothos. The larvae live in the top layer of damp soil and eat decaying organic matter.
The reason you have them is that your soil is staying wet. Let it dry out more between waterings and the population collapses on its own, because you’ve removed the nursery. That’s it. That’s the fix.
How Often To Water Your Pothos
How to tell pest damage from everything else
Er, you develop an eye for it, and it’s very hard to teach.
Ask on Reddit what’s wrong with your plant and someone will correctly identify thrips from a slightly blurry photo, and you’ll want to know how they possibly knew that. They knew because they’ve seen it two hundred times.
A useful shortcut: pest damage tends to be scattered, irregular and progressive. It shows up in new growth, it spreads, it gets worse. Physical damage is a one-off. A tear, a crease, a brown patch that appeared and then never changed again. If the mark hasn’t moved or grown in three weeks, something happened to that leaf once, and it’s not an infestation.
(The classic Reddit exchange is someone posting “what’s wrong with my Pothos?” and the top comment simply reading “show us your cat.” Cats are responsible for an enormous amount of mystery leaf damage.)
Not sure what you’re looking at? These cover the most common non-pest explanations:
Why Are My Pothos Leaves Turning Brown?
Why Does My Pothos Have Black Spots?
Root Rot In Pothos: Can You Save It?
The strategy that actually works
There is no clever product. There’s a boring routine, and the boring routine wins.
1. Keep the plant healthy. Adequate light, sensible watering. A Pothos that isn’t stressed is a much harder target. This is the big one and it’s the one everybody skips because it isn’t exciting.
2. Clean the leaves regularly. Physical removal beats chemical warfare. Take the plant to the shower or the sink and blast it. Wipe the leaves. Get the undersides. Doing this every week or two keeps populations too low to establish, and it costs nothing.
3. Blast little and often rather than going nuclear occasionally. Hitting a plant with something aggressive every few months does less than a rinse every fortnight, and it gives the pests a nice long gap in which to rebuild and develop resistance.
4. Soap or oil if you want to escalate. Insecticidal soap or neem oil work by suffocating the bugs. I don’t measure. I put a drop of oil, or even dish soap, into a one litre spray bottle and that’s the recipe. Do it in the evening, because both can make leaves more likely to scorch in strong light, neem especially.
5. Predatory mites if you’re serious. They’re the closest thing to a real solution, but they’re slow to get going and they’re not cheap, so I’d treat them as an option for when you’ve got an active infestation rather than a starting point.
I don’t reach for strong pesticides, because I have a house rabbit with a delicate respiratory system.
The Pothos escape hatch
One of my favourite things about this plant: if you cannot be bothered to fight the pests, you can cut the whole thing back to the soil and start again.
It sounds drastic. It isn’t. Pothos regrow from the base with enthusiasm, and a hard chop removes the entire pest population in one go, along with the damaged leaves you were going to be looking at for the next six months anyway.
If you can see spider mite webbing, or the plant is more damaged leaf than healthy leaf, this is the move. Cut it back, clean the pot, take a few clean cuttings from the healthiest vines if you want insurance.
You almost never need to repot because of pests
This one comes up constantly and it wastes a lot of people’s afternoons.
Pests live on the plant, not in the soil. Fungus gnats are the exception, and even then the fix is watering less, not changing the compost.
If your chickens are being eaten by a fox, changing their bedding won’t help.
How To Propagate Pothos: Every Method Explained
Frequently asked questions
Can you get rid of Pothos pests permanently?
No. Anything promising permanent eradication is selling you something. Pests live outside in huge numbers and will keep arriving. What you can do is keep the population low enough that it never causes damage, through regular leaf cleaning and keeping the plant healthy.
Do I need to repot my Pothos if it has pests?
Almost never. Thrips (except for one stage of their life cycle), mealybugs, aphids, scale and spider mites all live on the plant itself, so fresh soil changes nothing. Fungus gnats are the exception, and the fix there is letting the soil dry out more, not repotting.
Are Pothos more prone to pests than other houseplants?
Less, if anything. Their leaves are tougher than a lot of houseplants and they contain calcium oxalate crystals, which seems to make them less appealing to soft-bodied pests like aphids. Thrips are the exception. Thrips are interested in everything.
Will neem oil get rid of pests on my Pothos?
It helps, it doesn’t cure. Neem works by suffocating insects on contact, so it does nothing to eggs laid inside leaf tissue. Apply in the evening, because treated leaves scorch more easily in strong light.
Can pests kill a Pothos?
A severe untreated infestation can, yes. But Pothos are hard to kill and they regrow from a hard cutback, so even a badly infested plant is usually recoverable if you’re willing to lose the top growth.
How often should I check my Pothos for pests?
Whenever you water it. Turn a few leaves over, look at the newest growth, and you’re done.