I brought home a red aglaonema today and as I was poking around at the soil to feel if it needed a drink, I felt something hard underneath the surface. I decided to unpot it to see what it was. Long story short, I ended up bare rooting the thing trying to get at this hard bit and to my surprise it turned out to be some sort of cage pot (I'm sure there is an official word for this but I don't know it) around the stems. This pot thing was maybe 2 inches in diameter and all of its roots were growing out of it. I ended up having to carefully cut it off and it was just a mess of roots inside. What's the purpose of something like this? I wish I had taken photos before I cut it off but I was too concentrated on freeing the roots. Here are some photos of the plant so you can get a feel for its size, the "cage pot" in question, and the original 6" pot it came in. I hope I wasn't supposed to keep it on the plant or something, I just found it so weird, like it was choking the plant.