Random plant event: Pilea depressa flowering

Pilea depressa is known around here as "baby toes," though sometimes around St. Patrick's Day it's "leprechaun toes" instead. It was difficult for me, when I first started this job, to make the distinction between baby toes and baby tears, which is botanically Soleirolia soleirolii: also a creeping, ground-cover-type plant.

In any case, Pilea depressa is popular. When we didn't have it, last fall, we got asked for it all the time, so I got some in and have propagated it into maybe seven or eight times the amount we had to start with. It sells steadily. Multiplying by a factor of seven or eight is a little excessive, possibly, but anything that propagates that easily is something I'm ashamed to buy wholesale, and I don't ever want to have to do that again. I'm the same way about Tradescantia pallida and Plectranthus verticillatus.

In any case, it does flower, though if the flowers aren't directly in your face you're not likely to notice them. They're tiny white eagle-claw flowers: clearly not intended to attract human attention. I have yet to try growing Pilea depressa at home: initially I didn't like it, didn't see the point of it.

I still don't see a point, as far as that goes, but I do like it now. Couldn't tell you why if my life depended on it.

Familiarity breeds contempt everywhere but in the greenhouse, perhaps. I eventually even grew to like geraniums.