Lucky Bamboo

The standard living wood object — used where a space is described as needing growth or upward movement. Lucky bamboo (Dracaena sanderiana, not a true bamboo) is the most common plant object in the practice. It sits in the wood family and is placed by the east and southeast directions in the conventional scheme.

This database documents placement principles, not outcomes. The standard living wood object — used where a space is described as needing growth or upward movement. The rule that a plant must be healthy is the tradition's own quality control — it is the one place where the sources explicitly say that a neglected remedy is worse than none.

The tradition's plant rules are older than the object: plants belong to wood, they must be living and healthy, and a dying plant is described as worse than no plant. The stalk count carries a separate set of readings that belong to popular practice rather than to the classical sources. It is grouped under Wood (木) in the five-element system.