Might be a Podocarpus. Can you get some close-up pics of the foliage? Might be best to put some twigs on a flatbed scanner, and scan at 200dpi. Also look to see if there are any flowers / seeds / fruit on it, that will make identification easier. Resin

that's not a biting of anything. it's some kind of damage done to the leaf. It could have been folded or crushed at some point. maybe when it was repotted several leaves got crushed. So not problem there. the rest of the leaf is a good colour of green. Its not lacking sunlight for sure. Now if you placed it outdoors in direct sunlight it would have caused sunburns and damaged the plant. -- an error I made myself when I transplanted here in Canada. I came from the tropics where these plants are plentiful. These are under canopy plants and so they enjoy indirect sunlight -which is the reason they have such large leaves because that's needed for all the sunlight they can get. They are climbers too as they tent to grow up jungle trees to capture that sunlight. But they always stay within the shade. Yep, they can grow upwards of 20 feet. I've seen taller growths in the rainforest. However you do need to consider root space. if it's cramp then it can no longer sustain taller growths. you can always keep it short. Anyway.. you get the point. No direct sunlight. And lots of humidity.

Yes, a node is the bud, the bump which is usually just above the line which divides sections of the stem. In your marked picture, you've indicated the brown section division line as a node rather than the bud, which isn't correct. You did identify a bud, which IS a node. Once a node breaks and produces a new growth, it can't regenerate again if the growth dies. If that growth dies but not all the way back to the parent stem, there could be a node that could grow. This is what has happened on your stem sections 4 and 5. So look for the nodes, the bumps on the stem, rather than stem sections. The node you cut into is high and obvious, sometimes they're flat with only an encircling indentation to show you where they are. I'm not of the opinion that cutting a stem with a node away from the parent plant will encourage it to grow. By doing that you cut off energy the main stem is providing to that stem sections with the node, making it weaker. You also introduce an open wound where rot could start. So there's no benefit by cutting in my opinion and I would leave everything alone, just be patient. It will grow whenever it's ready, it might even wait until spring. It's possible node 3 could grow, it hasn't turned black so that's a good sign. I suppose it depends on where the cut is on the node, hopefully it's on one side or the other of the microscopic tissue where growth comes from. There's a node between where you indicated Node 1 and Node 2. The node, the bump, should be just above the lower brown ring. I can't tell which way the short stem with Node 4 and 5 is growing, but there is a node in the section that comes off the main stem. The next section attached to it that terminates with a cut may or may not have a node. Looking carefully with a magnifying glass for the bumps might tell you. On watering, if you can't tell for sure if the medium is damp then it's pretty dry and I'd go ahead and water. These are tropical plants and don't like being completely dry at the roots.

It grows around Central Texas east of here.Sometimes the cops think it is Marijuana and arrest the people for it. Idiots. IT is an annual so get to it before it seeds.