Once upon a time or so long ago that it could well be imagined, a little girl was given a jade tree cutting. Well, not quite a cutting. As the story goes, a colleague of her father had sent it for her and somehow during the transfer the bottom half broke off. Her father couldn't bring it home to her like that, so he jury-rigged a tinfoil support to keep it upright in a tiny glass, and he kept it on his desk until it had sprouted roots again. (Clearly her father had no experience with jade trees or he would have known this wasn't necessary – they're practically weeds!) As for the little girl, she thought it was the tiniest glass she had ever seen. The cutting was only an inch (2.5 cm) high.
You might guess by the title of this post, the little girl was me and this is about my jade tree, now in its 5th decade.
From the tiny cutting, the tree grew. We both grew. When I left home, it was one of two plants that came with me. I gained a third one that summer and all three of them easily fit on my coffee table in my first apartment. Above, that's just one of its many offspring.
When I decided to go to college, it came along and it suffered the frequent moves of my co-op work terms, and a roommate's cat, Speedball, that occasionally “pruned” it while stressing about not being fed, as cats sometimes do. By then it was big enough for the cat to lie underneath.
After graduation, I moved into my own apartment with my now growing collection of plants, and I remember when I later moved into my house that one of the most stressful days of my life was trying to prevent my three biggest plants from colliding with each other in the back of a borrowed van on moving day. They were my jade tree, the pot wedged firmly between my legs; the 6' (1.83 m) tangerine tree, lying on its side and rolling with every turn; and my 6' (1.83 m) euphorbia, also on its side and trying to roll the other way. I was pretty much sprawled backwards across the van floor with a hand on each of the tall plants. We made it! The photo, above, is from just minutes ago on a snowy Ottawa day.
All of these years, the jade tree was growing and being repotted into progressively bigger pots and, all of that time, I was still able to rotate it when it grew towards the light and it was gorgeous. Believe it or not, I had never pruned it although I often thought about what I might trim when it got bigger.
I tried putting it in the center of the window for a summer and it even bloomed for me but the purple on the undersides of its leaves indicated that it was a little too bright and I moved it again.
Late one night, I was in bed when I heard a large CRACK and I ran downstairs to see what had happened.
I really thought a window had broken. But no, the jade tree's trunk had sheared off right at the soil level. I thought that was the end of it. There was nothing I could do except pick up some pieces and pull out a big knife to finish the cut. The culprit seemed to be some rot in the trunk but knowing how hardy these plants are, I wasn't going to give up. So rather than putting it in water, I found a bucket big enough to hold the plant and just let it sit on the floor of my kitchen.
I let it sit for over a week until I knew it had dried out. Then I added water and set out to root the biggest cutting I had ever seen, and it worked! At the start of roots, I repotted it, now 6" (15 cm) shorter and more stable, I thought. Years passed and it continued to grow.
The plant was past the point of being easy to rotate and it was somewhat lopsided. On the day it fell, the house shook.
I lost half of it that day, bought a bigger and sturdier pot, and repotted it again. And because it had suffered so much trauma, I just left it alone.
Many of the best cuttings became more jade trees which I gave away.
I had so many baby jades.
Above, that's all that was left, and more years went by.
This photo is from a few years ago. When I went to Australia for 9 months, I had little choice but to leave it it in the hands of a tenant I hadn't met and request that he please water it, and I was thrilled to see it well taken care of when I returned.
Here it is again for comparison and once again I'm contemplating how the heck I'm going to prune it.
Images
Photos from my iPad and Canon SX620 HS by 
Enjoy!