1.
A piece of furniture, to sit in a particular location and occupy space in an interesting way. Favored by photographers, the wealthy, realtors, TV producers, artists, office workers.
2.
An air-cleaning appliance, to remove chemicals in the air, or chemicals one imagines to be in the air. Favored by the paranoid, the urban, those with multiple-chemical sensitivity, office workers, owners of new homes.
3.
An interloper, which belongs outside, planted in the soil, but is for some reason indoors where it doesn't belong, being all unnatural and stuff. I've only seen this in Amy Stewart and Michele Owens of Garden Rant, though I suppose this interpretation might appeal to people with very rigid opinions about Where Things Go, or those who have previously had bad luck with indoor plants.
4.
Money, or at least potential money. Endorsed by obsessive hobbyists who have reached the point of hoping that the obsession could at least partly pay for itself, or who are trying to convince a family member that it's a good idea to open more space up for plants; also adopted by retailers, wholesalers, and their employees.
5.
A victim, or object of guilt. Popular with beginning indoor gardeners, the very busy, the recently-vacationed, the easily-distracted, the overly-confident, and those who did not do the research before purchasing.
6.
A (hypothetical) weapon. This could be something only I think about, but I've given enough thought to which of my plants could be used in self-defense that I think I make up for all the people who don't think about it at all. People inclined to this stance are obviously paranoid, threatened, inclined to fantasies of themselves being heroic, or some combination thereof.
7.
A chore, a never-ending task, an obligation, a duty. Favored by those who have received plants as gifts, those who thought they'd like a houseplant better than they actually do, those with hectic, complicated lives that mostly revolve around taking care of others, those who have collected more plants than they can reasonably take care of, the dysthymic, the exhausted.
8.
A memento of someone who has died, moved, or otherwise gone somewhere else. Favored by the recently (or not-recently) bereaved, the involuntarily lonely, the sentimental, the hopeful.
9.
Absolution for one's environmental sins. Did you clear-cut a 300-year-old forest to make room for your McMansion and its 5-SUV garage? Buy a couple peace lilies and all is forgiven. This perspective is preferred by those with long, solitary commutes, those who sometimes forget to recycle, and those who don't know how much fossil fuel is involved in making a plastic pot, putting a plant into it, shipping the plant 1500 miles across the country, heating and/or air-conditioning the store, making the plastic bag the plant gets put in, and burning the gasoline in the car to get the plant back to the house.
10.
A magic charm, which attracts luck, wealth, happiness, wisdom, or some other positive, unattractable characteristic. The preferred interpretation of cynical marketers, who are somehow able to ignore the fact that the original ranges of the plants in question are often inhabited by people who are very poor, unlucky, or miserable, by comparison to the intended buyers of the plants.
11.
One checkbox on a long list of plants to be checked off. Favored by hoarders, collectors, competitive types for whom dying with the most plants means winning, obsessives.
12.
An object of wonderment. Preferred by those who start plants from seed, who didn't know their plant could flower, children, scientists, artsy-fartsy types (not as far from scientists as you might think), stoners, the easily impressed.
13.
Nature itself! A small piece of rain forest, brought into one's home! Favored by pretty much anybody who doesn't look at them as interlopers or furniture.
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label essay. Show all posts
Monday, April 11, 2011
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Houseplant
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Funeral Plants, part II (for the recipients)
So you've lost a loved one recently, and everything for the past couple weeks has been kind of a blur, and you're only just now cluing in to the fact that you've got a plant in your home that wasn't there before, and you're wondering what you're supposed to be doing to take care of it.
We'll get to that, but first let me just say I am genuinely sorry. Not that I know you, not that I knew them, but still. Everybody pretty much agrees that death is confusing and painful and hard. The universe is often appallingly stupid that way. I can't do much about this except sympathize, which I do, and help you deal with the plant, which I will. So.
Often, florists place plants in plastic-lined baskets, or wrap the pot in colored foil. The purpose is to make the plant more attractive by hiding the plain plastic pot the plants are grown in, and catch any water that drains out of the plant when it is watered, so it doesn't wet carpet or tabletops or whatever. However, this is a very bad thing for the long-term health of the plant. If your plant is in foil, remove the foil and throw it away. Plastic plant saucers are available to protect carpet or furniture, if you need them, or you can use a plate or a plastic lid or whatever. (I use plant saucers at home.)
If your plant is in a plastic-lined basket, you can either remove the basket (my preference) or place something (like a brick) in the bottom of the basket to raise the pot up, so that when you water the plant, it won't have to stand in the water that drains out. The latter is probably a temporary solution: usually the plastic is pretty flimsy, and tears sooner or later, and then the water leaks out anyway.
The reason this is important is, although all plants need water, the roots also need oxygen. The soil of a plant that stands in water will be waterlogged, which prevents air from reaching the roots. If the roots die because they're too wet, then they can't take up water for the rest of the plant, which means that the rest of the plant also dies, sooner or later. (Worse: when the roots die back and the plant is unable to take up more water, the plant often wilts, which a lot of people think means that the plant is too dry, so then they dump more water in.)
Gift plants may also be planted in decorative pots lacking drainage holes; if you receive such a plant, you need to repot it into a pot that can drain. (There are plenty of attractive options with drainage holes out there.) It's technically possible to grow plants successfully in pots that lack drainage holes, but it's much harder to know how much water you're adding and how much is there already, so it's very easy to overwater and end up with a waterlogged plant.
For anything after this, it becomes important to know what plant(s) you have. Florists tend to use the same things over and over as condolence plants, leaning heavily on those of a certain size, usually with rounded leaves (sharp, pointy, jagged shapes are apparently considered unsettling), and a shape that isn't too unusual or dramatic. Normally, it's a single kind of plant, but occasionally dish gardens, with multiple plant species potted together, may be sent. Since there's such heavy reliance on the same plants over and over again, there's a pretty good chance that I can guess what you have without having to see it. Here are the usual suspects.
Peace lilies (Spathiphyllum cvv.) are the king of condolence plants, I suspect mainly because of their common name. Plants vary in size and color but always have white flowers, held above the tops of the leaves. Read about how to take care of peace lilies at the Spathiphyllum cvv. profile.
The other very common condolence plant in my personal experience is the rubber tree, Ficus elastica, particularly the variety 'Burgundy,' which is actually nearly black. Read about how to take care of rubber trees at the Ficus elastica profile.
Chinese evergreens (Aglaonema cvv.) have fairly large leaves, patterned in varying shades of gray, silver, and green. There are many varieties, which differ in size, color, or patterning. A few new varieties are being introduced which have pink, red, orange, or yellow in the leaves as well, though the green/gray varieties are still much more common. Read about how to take care of Chinese evergreens at the Aglaonema cvv. profile.
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Dumb canes, or dieffenbachias (Dieffenbachia spp.) are similar to Chinese evergreens, but tend to be white or yellow where a Chinese evergreen would be gray or silver. They are also poisonous, and are not a good choice if you have pets or children who might chew on the leaves by accident. Read about how to take care of dieffenbachias at Part II of the Dieffenbachia cvv. profile, and learn about their toxicity and history in Part I.
Crotons (Codiaeum variegatum) are very diverse. Leaves can be nearly any color (red, orange, yellow, green, dark purple, white) and shape ("leaf-shaped," long and skinny, nearly round, threadlike), with spots and streaks all over. They can be kept as long-term houseplants, but they're more demanding than the others on the list. Read about how to take care of crotons at the Codiaeum variegatum profile.
Pothos (Epipremnum aureum) is an atypical funeral plant; florists usually stay away from trailing plants for these situations, because of the possibility that the vines will be stepped on. One sometimes sees specimens that have been trained to climb a post in the center of the pot, though, and it's a common addition to group plantings. Pothos is a very robust indoor plant that does well for most people. Several varieties are available, with white, gray, or yellow variegation. Read about how to take care of pothos at the Epipremnum aureum profile.
Small specimens of the above plants are also frequently used in mixed containers. Some other common small plants for dish gardens are below.
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English ivy (Hedera helix) is a trailing plant that I haven't written about much yet. I don't have a lot of experience with this plant, because what experience I have is pretty uniformly bad. Does best in a cool, humid spot with bright light but no direct sun. They're sensitive to dry soil, so don't let them get overly dry. English ivy is also very prone to spider mite infestations.
Heart-leaf philodendron (Philodendron hederaceum) is another trailer. It looks a lot like pothos, but they really are different. I have written a post about how to tell the difference between heart-leaf philodendron and pothos here, and the profile for Philodendron hederaceum is here.
Parlor palm (Chamaedorea elegans) is another plant I haven't written about very much, due to bad experiences with them. Care is basically the same as for English ivy, but unlike English ivy, they prefer warmer temperatures.
Arrowhead vine (Syngonium podophyllum) will eventually trail, but the plants used in dish gardens are usually small juvenile plants, which have an upright habit. The Syngonium podophyllum profile is here.
Baby rubber plant (Peperomia obtusifolia) is a plant I actually like, but haven't written about yet. They do best with some direct sun, but will survive fine in bright indirect light (the variegation may not be as intense, though). Let them get fairly dry between thorough waterings. Plants will suffer if exposed to extreme temperatures (above 90F/32C or below 60F/16C). Despite the name, they are a different species from rubber trees, and aren't actually "baby" anything: that's a full-grown, if young, plant in the picture.
Madagascar dragon tree (Dracaena marginata) is a very common dish garden plant, which I talk about in its profile.
Ribbon dracaena (Dracaena sanderiana) is the same species as "lucky bamboo," but the variety used in dish gardens is almost always variegated. I find them hard to kill, and also hard to make interesting or attractive, as a separate plant. The profile for Dracaena sanderiana is here.
Nerve plant (Fittonia albivenis) is a small, attractive plant with veins that can be white, pink, or red. They shouldn't be allowed to dry out (they'll wilt dramatically, but will revive if watered -- most of the time), and prefer high humidity. Some sun is okay, but they're happy with bright indirect light too. Temperatures should always be at or above 60F/16C. Fittonias are easiest to grow in terrariums. The profile for Fittonia albivenis is here.
Pineapple dracaena (Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig Compacta'), like all of the Dracaena deremensis varieties, is a tough plant that handles neglect well. Though 'Janet Craig' is a different, larger variety, most of what is said in the Dracaena deremensis 'Janet Craig' profile also applies to 'Janet Craig Compacta.'
Friendship plant (Pilea involucrata) is much like Fittonia -- it would be happier in a terrarium, though if you water when the soil is moderately dry and give it decent light (bright, but not necessarily sun), and keep the temperature above 60F/16C, it's fairly easy to grow.
Prayer plant (Maranta leuconeura cvv.) is so named because the leaves change position during the day: they're horizontal during the day and vertical at night. See the Maranta leuconeura erythroneura profile here.
Polka-dot plant (Hypoestes phyllostachya) is a fast-growing, weedy plant with leaves covered in white, pink, or red polka dots, hence the name. It needs a lot of maintenance but isn't hard to keep alive. The Hypoestes phyllostachya profile is here.
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Umbrella tree refers to two different species in the genus Schefflera, but only S. arboricola is a common dish garden plant. Some varieties have white or yellow variegation. They do best when allowed to get almost completely dry between thorough waterings, and should be kept above 50F/10C. Scheffleras are prone to spider mites, particularly if grown in direct sun in a room with dry air; they don't mind bright indirect light, though.
If you have received a plant you are unable to identify from this list, I'll do my best to identify it and direct you to good care information if you can e-mail me a photo at 7mrsubjun7cti7ve@aol.com (remove the three 7s from the address first; they're there to foil spambots).
You may also wish to read:
Funeral Plants, part I (for the senders)
The Ten Houseplant Commandments: covers most of the basic mistakes people make with houseplants.
Repotting Questions (With Answers!) Part I and II: covers how, when, and why to repot.
How Often Should I Water This?: about watering plants on a strict schedule, and why you shouldn't do it.
Caring For Unknown Tropical Plants: what to do with houseplants you can't identify.
Friday, May 14, 2010
The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part II
(This is Part II. If you haven't read Part I yet, you should do that before reading this. It has "Ghost Whisperer" jokes, carnivorous plants, and a hopeful but tragically misguided plan to solve the invasive species problem by making every species invasive.)
Finally, I very badly want to know which past ecosystem my anonymous commenter wants us to return to. They've never been static. I grew up in an Iowa that had ring-necked pheasants (Phasianus colchicus torquatus), as did my parents and grandparents, and everybody around here thinks they're native North American birds, but in fact they've only been here since the late 1800s. Should we round them up and send them back to Asia? Honeybees aren't native to North America either, and were only brought over from Europe in the 1600s. It'd be an agricultural disaster for the U.S. if we lost them all, but a true native-species purist would send them back. Hell, human beings -- even so-called "Native Americans" -- are new as of about 10,000 to 14,000 years ago. And on bigger time scales, the continents have been sliding around for millions of years. Where does one draw the line and say, this is the ecosystem we need to preserve?
And even if one picked a time to reset the clock to, and even if all the rats and pheasants and honeybees and Ardisias could be rounded up and disposed of, the fact is that the ecosystems are already irreparably transformed. The ecological niche of "passenger pigeon" (Ectopistes migratorius), whatever it was, can no longer be filled by passenger pigeons. We've wiped them out. So in that sense, you can't turn back time -- the ecosystems cannot be restored exactly as they were. Indeed, were all humans to vanish, and all plants, animals, and other organisms to magically return to their original habitats, it would only cause more extinctions: some native plants and animals actually depend on the actions of non-natives right now. Avocados (Persea americana) are thought to have evolved to be swallowed whole by now-extinct ground sloths, who would then distribute the pits in their droppings. No such animal exists now, so if humans disappeared, we would likely take the avocado down with us.
Of course, we're likely to take a lot more of them with us if we're not magically zapped off the planet, as recent events in the Gulf of Mexico suggest. But still. If we're going to "restore" the ecosystems, then we should acknowledge that there have been several of them in any given location, and decide which one to restore them to.
So what does it all mean, Mr. Subjunctive?
Oh, fuck if I know. I guess my first point, and the most important, would be that showing up on a stranger's blog to yell at them about their choice of posting topics is really rude and it's not going to do anything but make them defensive and sarcastic. Especially if you're a testerical asshole who gets off on telling people where plants "should" be grown.
But also, look. Invasive species are a real problem, and I think governments should be taking them more seriously. If we're going to eradicate them, though, we should commit the resources to doing so that are necessary.1 I'd also like to think that eradication is possible, but honestly, I'm not sure I do. In the same way that total elimination of spider mites from a large collection of houseplants is all but hopeless, complete elimination of Ardisia from the Everglades is all but unattainable too. All it takes is one missed pregnant female spider mite, and a distraction. All it takes is one overlooked Ardisia seedling, and complacency. Even with the full backing of local government, community organizations, national environmental groups, President Obama, Wonder Woman, all the angels in Heaven, and Mr. Anonymous shrieking threats at every blogger in creation, I don't see Florida getting rid of its Ardisia problem. I don't think they want it badly enough. (I don't know that they ought to want it that badly, either. There are other things the state could do with that money.) Unless Ardisias can be made valuable enough to be worth digging up, they're Floridians now.2
Which means that I think it's all the more important that people pay attention to the evaluations of organizations like HEAR. If it's impossible to get rid of the invasives we've got, we could try not to bring in any new ones. I'm not optimistic about that, either, because I well know the gardener's longing for novelty, and the logical impairment that goes along with it.3 But perhaps it's worth a try anyway.
In the long run, I'm not sure any of this matters. Mr. Anonymous berated me quite a bit for growing plants that "shouldn't" even be on this continent, but the fact is, "should" is a meaningless word in this context. Plants and animals have always moved around as sea levels rose and fell, as land bridges appeared, as volcanoes created new islands, as birds flew from place to place. I mean, it's not a good thing that so many plants and animals are disappearing: the Everglades are a distinct and interesting ecosystem, and it's a shame to have them changed at all, but that was all done well before I ever wrote a damn thing about Ardisia elliptica. In fact, the first introductions of Ardisia elliptica to Florida were in 1947, when I was in my negative mid-twenties. And, even if all the world's Ardisias were to pop out of existence all at once tomorrow, the Everglades has a dozen or more other invasives in it which are all just as bad or worse.
So perhaps we should be taking the long view. In another 250 million years or so, South America and/or Africa4 are going to crash into Florida and ruin the Everglades anyway. Even if Mr. Anonymous is standing there astride the little trickle of water between continents, commanding them not to merge, they still will. But hey, a bright spot: maybe Ardisia elliptica and all its descendant species will begin to die out in the process, and the sentient, plastic-and-oil-eating molluscs who rule the earth at that time will be beside themselves with worry about how to preserve the fragile, precious Ardisias. Stranger things have happened.
8. Questions for discussion.
1. Do you feel, in your heart of hearts, that efforts to eradicate invasive exotic species are worth the time, money, and collateral ecological damage they cause?
2. Particularly since there's a good chance that we'll wind up covering the ecosystem with oil before we get all the invasives out anyway?
3. Have you ever deliberately planted something you knew might escape cultivation and become invasive? If so, why?
4. Isn't Mr. Anonymous an enormous testerical jerky douchebag?
5. "Rape" as ecological metaphor: for it or agin' it?
6. What, specifically, is lost, when a native species is outcompeted and driven extinct by an exotic? Why should anybody care? Why do you think people don't care more? (Or, if you think people care too much: why do you think people care so much?)
7. What do you suppose is up with people being able to mass-produce plants in Florida that are known to wreck Florida ecosystems? Why is this permitted? And why don't they just go pick them up in the wild and throw them in pots to ship north?
8. Am I totally wrong? Is Mr. Anonymous right to criticize me for encouraging production of an ecologically dangerous plant? Does it still matter, sixty-three years after their introduction to Florida, if I tell people Ardisia elliptica makes a good houseplant? Why or why not?
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Additional reading:
The Garden Professors: Are Natives the Answer?
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Photo credits: all my own.
1 Though this obviously excludes the brown anole (Anolis sagrei), which is invasive and causing all kinds of problems in Florida and Hawaii, but should nevertheless be allowed to run free and unfettered as long as Felipe is still down in Florida somewhere.
2 If I have a plan for getting rid of invasive plants, that's pretty much it. Find something they're good for, and then turn business loose to exploit and despoil. What Florida needs is a George Washington Carver of Ardisias.
3 It would be really interesting to stick a hardcore gardener (like most garden bloggers and PATSP readers, I'm guessing) in an MRI machine and show pictures of unfamiliar plants to him/r. What would happen in the logic center of the brain? Is there a part of the brain devoted to novel plants? What about a taxonomic center, that tries to figure out what the plant is most related to? Does activity shut down in the ethical department, as the gardener plots how to find and take the plants? Does the spatial-relationships area go wild as the gardener tries to figure out where s/he could fit the new plant into his/r garden? I think there are some interesting neurological questions to be answered here.
4 Predictions vary. On one map I found, it looked like South America crashes into North America; on a second, North America and South America kind of both slam into Africa at the same time. Either way, the Everglades are in the middle of it all, and presumably go through some changes.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
The One About the Native Plants Purist, Part I
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On December 7, some anonymous person showed up on the Ardisia elliptica profile and dropped a big ol' douchebomb on me for owning one and writing a profile about it. I was called irresponsible, stupid, ridiculous, and silly, because of Ardisia's potential to become invasive and "rape" (his/r word1) ecosystems. It's so rapey, in fact, that its sale is actually illegal in Florida. I actually spent quite a bit of time on the plant's invasive tendencies in the profile itself, which you'd think would let this person know that, minimally, what s/he2 was telling me wasn't news, but you know how people get.
When I pointed out that I live in USDA Zone 5 Iowa, and Ardisia elliptica is not cold-hardy past Zone 9, and that furthermore the plant has been indoors for essentially its entire life, and was therefore not going to be raping anything, much less an entire ecosystem, his response was that it didn't matter, because his stumbling across my blog "proved" that I had South Florida readers,3 and what if one of them were moved to buy the plant because of my profile?
Which, you know, whatever. If its sale is in fact illegal in Florida, then South Florida readers won't be buying it anyway, so I don't quite get how this is a concern. But if you actually read the profile, it's not even especially glowing. I mean, yes, the plant makes a good, possibly even excellent, houseplant. It really does. I'm not going to apologize for saying so. But I think it's clear that I'm not advocating planting it in South Florida, or Hawaii, or anywhere else it might become invasive, and in fact am specifically telling people not to, at some length. So, you know, what the fuck, dude?
The conversation went on from there, various rudenesses were fired from both sides, and if you want to see the blow-by-blow you can go to the Ardisia elliptica profile and read the comments for yourself. But the reason I bring it up in the first place, aside from the obvious pleasure it will bring me to see other people join me in calling him a jackass and douchebag,4 is because he did say one thing that surprised me a little: I don't understand why you can't just be happy with North American plants.
It hadn't really occurred to me that this was something especially desirable, because, again, it all stays indoors, all the time, and so it's totally irrelevant where any of the plants come from. But okay, fine, let's see.
And it turns out that there are very few North American plants suitable for indoor cultivation. The bulk of those which are tend to be cactus and succulent species from Northern Mexico and the U.S. Desert Southwest;5 to get anything at all lush and green, you either have to go south, to the rainforests of South Mexico,6 or north, to the U.S.7 And anyway, since when do native plant purists consider it good enough merely to get the right continent? Species from North America can and do become invasives when planted in other parts of North America; for example, Syngonium podophyllum is invasive in Florida, but native to Mexico and Central America. So to be really satisfactory, I'd have to limit myself to plants native to the Upper Mississippi Valley, or maybe even the state of Iowa specifically. And you know what? Iowa doesn't have a climate much like the modern American home, so the modern American home isn't a good place to grow plant species native to Iowa. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it wouldn't be very comfortable for the humans involved.
Which Anonymous might counter with, well why do you even need houseplants at all? Can't you just be happy growing stuff outside? Which is such an obviously stupid question that it shouldn't be dignified with a response, so I won't.8
The thing is, though, this is all idiotic. Most plants aren't invasive. I mean, I think there's been so much of a fuss made about invasives in certain circles that people honestly think that anything introduced is bad.9 Also, invasive plants share certain characteristics: rapid growth, ability to self-pollinate, production of a lot of seeds, seeds that spread to new places via bird droppings or via wind, poisonous or inedible foliage, the ability to regenerate from a piece of root or rhizome, that sort of thing. These are measurable and observable qualities of the plants, and it's possible to make pretty solid advance guesses as to how big of a problem a plant is likely to be. Indeed, there are sites on-line where one can see the results of such assessments, like for example hear.org (HEAR = Hawaii Ecosystems at Risk).10
And most plants, native or not, behave themselves just fine. On-line conversations get heated about natives vs. exotics, and people get defensive about whether or not they should have the right to plant potentially invasive non-natives in their garden -- because of course they are good and responsible and would never let such a plant spread in ecosystem-damaging ways11 -- but whatever benefits there are to native plants, it's still not useful or accurate to be treating all plants like invasives just because they're from elsewhere.
(I've seen one person, who apparently meant it, say in a blog comment that "every plant is invasive somewhere." This is not even a little bit true, alas. It's a shame it isn't, because then we'd have the endangered-plant problem completely solved: all we'd have to do would be to introduce the endangered plants to all the available ecosystems until they found one they liked, and voila, endangered species saved! I mean, of course they'd be saved by becoming invasive and endangering something else, but that's easy enough to fix -- we'll just move the newly endangered plants around until they find something they like. Reshuffle the deck fast enough, and none of the cards will disappear.)
This hypervigilance against exotic species reaches amazing new heights of stupidity and dogmatism when you're talking about an "invasive" that can't freeze, being grown in Iowa, or when you're talking about the invasive potential of a plant that stays inside year-round. Plants that don't go outdoors don't become invasive, even if they might really, really want to. Plants that die from freezing temperatures aren't going to invade anything even if they're thrown on the compost pile. So, you know, chill the fuck out already.
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My anonymous persecutor12 did make one point which is very nearly valid, which was that because the plants I buy are mostly grown in Florida, it doesn't matter whether I'm right or wrong about Ardisias being invasive in Iowa.13 By buying the plant and encouraging others to do so, I'm creating a demand for a plant which may harm the area in which it is being produced. The reason this is only very nearly valid, and not actually valid, is that I am not responsible for writing and enforcing legislation in the state of Florida. Ardisia elliptica is supposed to be illegal in Florida: you can't plant or even own them, if you're an ordinary Florida citizen.
So how is it that certain companies are permitted to mass-produce Ardisia for sale?14 Indeed, if Ardisias are that abundant in the wild, to the point where they're wrecking ecosystems and stuff, why not just send people out to pull them up, throw them in pots, and ship them to zone 5, where they will eventually die an ungainly death? You get rid of the plants, you get money back for doing it. Why bother growing them in greenhouses, on purpose, at all?
Or! For my purposes as a consumer, it really doesn't matter to me whether my plants are grown in Florida, Texas, or on the third moon of the planet Zecuponia 7.15 There's every reason to think that they could be grown right here in Iowa, in fact: my personal plant has bloomed and formed berries, and I'm assuming that the seeds within the berries can be germinated if they ever get around to ripening. There's no reason why someone couldn't start a greenhouse in Iowa to produce Ardisias for other people in cold climates; I imagine the main reason that nobody does is because nobody could compete with Florida prices.16
If escaped Ardisias really are despoiling the natural Florida ecosystem -- and I'm not saying they aren't -- then I have to wonder why they're still being cultivated there. Is the Ardisia industry bringing in that much money and that many jobs? Do Floridians just not care that much about their ecosystems? Are sinister lobbyists for Big Ardisia convincing Florida legislators that there isn't really a problem, and any government oversight on Ardisia production would ruin Florida's economy forever? Is my anonymous anti-invasive friend perhaps a little overwrought and testerical?17 I don't know. But in any case, the state of Florida has it in its power to completely remove the apparently grave threat posed by PATSP and other Ardisia advocates, by not cultivating them there on purpose, and they don't do it.
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Finally, even assuming that I accepted the premise that Ardisias are ruining everything, and stopped writing about them in any but the most disparaging terms, destroying them in garden centers whenever I came across them, exactly what would be accomplished? It's like telling someone not to say anything pleasant about starlings, lest someone be moved to keep one as a pet. That particular toothpaste is already out of the tube, and unless the entire state of Florida mobilizes to find and destroy Every. Single. Ardisia within its borders, and search every vehicle entering the state from top to bottom, it's now part of the Florida ecosystem. Period.
Complete eradication of an invasive species is the sort of thing that really requires a commitment from an entire state's government and population in order to be successful, and that's clearly not happening in Florida. Also, I'm not even sure that invasive plants and animals are ever completely eradicated. Maybe on small islands, where the chances of re-introduction from outside are minimal, and the population is constrained by the limited land area. Maybe then. But for all the effort put into trying to control and remove Asian carp, sparrows, Caulerpa taxifolia, garlic mustard, kudzu, multiflora rose, pigeons, gypsy moths, purple loosestrife, Hessian fly, cane toads, nutria, zebra mussels, lampreys, rabbits, cottony cushion scale, rhesus monkeys, rosy wolfsnails, monk parakeets, varroa mites, spotted knapweed, English ivy, gray squirrel, leafy spurge, brown tree snakes, dandelions, fire ants, tree of heaven, northern snakeheads, water hyacinth, crown of thorns starfish, and the many, many other problem species out there, in the various places they've wreaked havoc -- have any of them actually been eliminated? Is this a problem that ever gets fixed?
I don't exactly mean to say that since Ardisia elliptica is already in the wild, we ought to just give up and let it take over, just that there is a choice to be made here. Either Floridans specifically, and the U.S. in general, need to commit to eradication of the species, come up with a way to make controlling them more economical, or give up and let them take over. Because if you don't put enough money toward fixing this problem, you may as well just be throwing it away, year after year after year. And this is never, ever going to be dealt with properly if special exceptions are made for commercial plant growers. Hurricanes do happen, buildings do get knocked down: any plant being cultivated or mass-produced can get out and start the whole thing over again.
(Come back on Friday for the exciting conclusion. I promise a solution to the Ardisia elliptica problem, sentient molluscs, and wild speculation on what happens to gardeners in MRI machines.)
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Photo credits: all my own.
1 Which for various reasons kind of bothers me: I tend to think that, all else being equal, the word rape should mean rape, and not being defeated in video games, made to pay taxes, or any of the various other things it is sometimes intended to mean. It's not even a very good metaphor for those things, as metaphors go. This use of the word, w/r/t the environment, has some historical precedent, and I used it right back in my reply, in the same way, so I'm probably not the best person to be raising objections. But even so, it does seem like there should be a line somewhere.
2 I'm almost positive that the anonymous commenter was male, due in large part to "his" use of the rape metaphor and obvious comfortableness in wandering onto a stranger's blog and calling its author irresponsible without, apparently, actually reading the post "he" was objecting to. Technically, I don't know, but I'm going to go with "he" for the rest of the post, because . . . he's obviously a guy.
3 If you want to be nitpicky, it really only proves that I have had one South Florida reader. Though I know I've had others, so fine, point taken.
4 (Well, you'd better.)
5 Examples: Echinocactus grusonii, Pachyphytum ovatum, Agave victoriae-reginae, Beaucarnea recurvata, Leuchtenbergia principis.
6 Anthurium podophyllum, Syngonium podophyllum, Chamaedorea metallica, Dieffenbachia spp., Selenicereus chrysocardium.
7 Tolmiea menziesii is native to the U.S. Pacific Northwest. A lot of carnivorous plants, for some reason, are from the continental U.S. and/or Canada, though none of them are particularly well-suited for cultivation indoors in someone's living room or office. (Dionaea muscipula is from the border between North and South Carolina, but also Sarracenia, Darlingtonia, Pinguicula and Drosera are all partly or totally North American genera.)
There are also a number of species which are occasionally claimed to be from the continental U.S., though the evidence is sketchy. Philodendron hederaceum, Phlebodium aureum, Peperomia obtusifolia, and Pedilanthus tithymaloides might be native to South Florida, Stenocereus thurberi may be native to Arizona, and Tradescantia zebrina and pallida might be native to South Texas.
8 And anyway, I shouldn't have to defend myself against things I imagine some jackass might ask. We'd be here all damn day.
9 An argument could be made that any introduced species is technically harmful to the native ecosystem, because even if it's behaving itself, it takes up space which could belong to a native. I mean, domesticated corn (Zea mays) is all but helpless to reproduce itself without human intervention, because we've bred them to be like that, so it's about as far from invasive as you could get. At the same time, the big cornfield at the end of my back yard is still taking up space that could be native Iowa prairie, full of native trees, butterflies, birds, leeches, or whatever, and so it still hurts the environment even if it were being cultivated with the most attention possible to fertilizer runoff, pesticide use, erosion, and so forth. (Which I doubt it is, but that's something for another post.)
I forgive this loss to the environment because, basically, I like to eat food. I find it helps me to stay alive, and staying alive has been a goal of mine for a good fifteen years now. Which is also a matter for another post.
10 HEAR assesses Ardisia elliptica as having a high risk of invasive and disruptive behavior (see assessment page), which is a lot like closing the barn door after the horse has already become an invasive plant. (A. elliptica is already all over Hawaii in the way that "Ghost Whisperer" is all over basic cable.) But it's cute that they're trying.
11 Which is no doubt perfectly true of many of the people saying this. However: everybody thinks they're responsible and conscientious people who would never do anything harmful, even the people who are obviously not. So we can't really go by someone's self-assessment.
Also, even people who are responsible citizens can be distracted away from taking care of their gardens, for example by dying, or having to move suddenly, and there's no way you can guarantee that these things won't end up happening to you. I.e., I'm not trying to call anybody irresponsible or immature exactly, just saying that if you deliberately plant something known to be invasive in your climate or climates similar to yours, or a plant which strongly resembles known invasives, your intentions and plans don't count for shit, because you are not in absolute control of what happens.
12 (Help, help, I'm being oppressed!)
13 (SPOILER: I am right.)
14 This is not a problem specific to Ardisia elliptica, either -- the same supplier was sending us a number of different plants which were Category 1 invasives in Florida. (Category 1: plants that have been determined to cause ecological damage in the state already. Category 2 invasives have expanded their ranges but have not yet provably hurt anything.) The Category 1 invasives they were shipping to us: Ardisia crenata, Ficus microcarpa, Lantana camara, Nephrolepis cordifolia, Schefflera actinophylla, and Syngonium podophyllum.
We also got the following Florida Category 2 invasives from Florida: Chamaedorea seifrizii, Epipremnum aureum, Jasminum sambac, Livistonia chinensis, Murraya paniculata, Pteris vittata, and Tradescantia spathacea. The full list of Category 1 and 2 plants as of the year 2009 is available as a .pdf file here.
So it's not just a matter of the Florida horticultural industry having a special exemption for Ardisia: they apparently have an exemption for everything. One hopes that this is because they have tough-as-nails regulators breathing down their necks at all times to make sure they don't accidentally do anything that's going to harm their native ecosystems -- I mean, aside from the harm that happens when you pave over large expanses of native ecosystem in order to construct gigantic greenhouses on them -- but it's probably actually that they get a special exemption because the city leaders want to be business-friendly or some such, or because they've convinced the regulators that there isn't really a problem, or because the regulatory agencies are so underfunded that they don't even try enforcing the rules for these plants. America is frequently fucked-up in this way.
But either way, what this tells me is that either 1) the citizens and elected officials of the state of Florida are just not that into their natural ecosystems, or 2) that the problem is not nearly as serious as Anonymous indicated, and Ardisia is not raping the environment so much as making unwanted sexual comments to it. I lean toward #1, having had some experience watching politicians ignore environmental issues.
15 (But not the seventh moon of Zecuponia 3! I mean, there's carnivorous plants, and then there's carnivorous plants, amirite?)
16 Heating a greenhouse in Iowa is not cheap, as I was informed way more often and emphatically than necessary while working at the garden center.
17 Testerical. (tess-TEAR-ih-cull) (from testes, by parallel with hysterical) Adj. 1. Exhibiting excessive or uncontrollable emotion; irrational. Said of men. See also n. testeria.
Friday, September 11, 2009
Cleve Backster Part III: Implication
So far, I've more or less described what Cleve Backster's claims are, with respect to primary perception, and tried to show why they're less impressive than they first sound. This final section is mostly not about Cleve Backster at all, and is instead about the part of Backsterism that I find most interesting: his audience.
Why does primary perception seem to just automatically make sense to so many people? We all know, after all, that in order to have thoughts and perceive the world around us, we have to have a brain and nervous system,1 and even Backster isn't arguing that plants have nervous systems.2 Nor has Backster, or anybody else, proposed any way around this lack-of-a-brain problem: for all of Backster's theorizing about "primary perception," he has yet to propose any actual physical receptor in the plant that receives the signal and leads to the actual physical response, or come up with an idea about what is being transmitted between organisms, or even come up with an explanation for why the electrical conductivity of a leaf should be changing at all. I mean, not that this should all be entirely his responsibility to explain, but he could at least act like the questions are interesting.
And yet: tell a gardener, especially certain flaky-crunchy environmental types of gardeners,3 that plants have feelings and that wanting a plant to do better will cause it to do better, and a lot of them will agree with you and tell you they've observed that very thing. Indeed, they'll find it so obvious as to not even be worth thinking about, except insofar as it means all life is interconnected and Gaia and Nature and isn't it all just so wonderful and amazing? (Everybody else seems to find the interconnectedness of all life so much more profound than I, who was more or less raised on PBS nature specials,4 do.5 Sometimes this bothers me.)
But so anyway. This gut feeling that plants should be responsive, on some deep level, to human thoughts and feelings, and not just any human's thoughts and feelings but our own personal thoughts and feelings, is very common. And who knows, maybe plants are aware of stuff on some level or another. But I contend that from a purely emotional, in-an-ideal-world way, we shouldn't want Backster to be right, and the sorts of people who tend to believe that there is something to primary perception (who are generally the sorts of people who care about others and want people to get along and are empathetic when others have a problem) should want it to be true considerably less than everybody else does.
Why should this idea, of all ideas, be giving anyone warm Gaia fuzzies?6 If Backster is correct, after all, then plants have feelings, and can feel, at minimum, anxiety and pain. He hasn't really even tried, as far as I know, to demonstrate that plants could feel love, or appreciation, or generalized benevolence: the only feelings he's really demonstrated are anxiety and suffering. (In fairness to Backster, those are much easier things to test for.)
So it's all very nice to think that you and your Hoya have a loving, mutually appreciative relationship which makes it grow well. That's easy: you watch out for it, you don't injure it on purpose, you get rid of bugs when you find them. Why wouldn't it love you? But how about your lawn? Your lawn has received years of abuse and mutilation at your hands, and every single one of those mowings hurt. Your lawn, according to Backster's theory, has every reason to hate your guts and want you to die. How are your warm Gaia fuzzies doing now?
And this is not just your lawn; this is everywhere. Everytime you eat a salad, you're eating plants in such abject terror that they're unable to endure the fear without fainting.7 Trimming your yew, taking a pothos cutting, dividing a Hosta, pinching a coleus: in every case, says Backster, not only are you causing pain to another living, feeling being, which would be bad enough, but it knows you're going to do it in advance and consequently gets to helplessly anticipate the pain for several minutes before the actual cutting starts. If you were doing this to a kitten, they'd lock you up. And rightly so.
And there's really very little that human beings do that doesn't have suffering plants at some point in the process. Most of what we eat, wear, pave over, walk on, write on, build with, decorate for Christmas, give one another on Valentine's Day, all of it: soaked in death and pain and fear, according to Backster.8 Sure, go vegan, support animal rights, be against factory-farmed eggs, milk and meat because of the cruelty.9 But you have to eat something, right? And if being against cruelty is your motivation . . . well, best case scenario, you can eat fruit. Period. Maybe.10
So it's really just as well that there's no compelling evidence that Backster's theory is true. Plants probably really don't know what you're thinking, they probably really don't suffer (at least not in the way you do, or even the way a fish would), your lawn is probably not plotting to kill you. And you're probably really not leaving an ever-widening wake of botanical terror and misery behind you with every step you take and breath you draw. So relax already.
I don't imagine that most people consider the universal-suffering angle of it when they're wondering about the emotional life of their plants. Backster himself dwells more on the amazing interconnectedness of all organisms, life energy, and so forth, even though most of his actual experiments are about executions and threats, which now that I think about it is kind of amazing, rhetorically. But it seems to me that there has to be more to the appeal of primary perception than merely people feeling a connection to nature. There are lots of other, less troubling, ways to feel connected to nature, after all. My suspicion is that Backster has accidentally (on purpose?) come up with a theory that satisfies some psychological needs, and that is what keeps this stuff in the public consciousness. Just a guess of mine; I can't prove it's right. But:
Backster's work partly makes intuitive sense to us because it flatters our egos. In the ordinary world, you have a plant, you give it light, fertilizer, and water at the appropriate times, and it grows lush and strong, because that is what it's genetically programmed to do when given those inputs. The plant may be important to you, but you are not necessarily important to the plant. In the world of primary perception, though, you have a plant, you give it light, fertilizer and water at the appropriate times, and it grows lush and strong -- because it loves you. A lot of people don't even get that kind of direct emotional feedback and appreciation from our families, neighbors, co-workers, bosses, etc. So the theory starts out being kind of seductive and emotionally rewarding.
But it gets better, because it only counts in one direction. If you have a plant, and you give it light, fertilizer and water at the appropriate times, and it goes black and dies anyway, nobody is going to tell you the plant died because it found you so repulsive that it would rather die than continue to live with you. Nobody's going to wonder about the mysterious wrongness of your soul that causes plants to blacken and die. Nobody will ascribe the death to the plant's seething rage over being forced into captivity. No, in that case, suddenly everything becomes about stimulus and response: pH, temperature, humidity, pests, etc., and it's not about you in the slightest. So if the plant does well, it loves you, and if it doesn't, well, maybe the air was too dry. You get all the emotional gratification with none of the risk of rejection, and who's not going to at least want to believe that?11
Even besides the obvious emotional appeal of having another organism that cares so much about you that it can literally feel your pain, Backsterism also lets you think that there's another sentient being in the world to whom you are the most important thing in the universe, and allows you to take special credit for perfectly ordinary plant behaviors, like growing.12, 13 As nice as it might be to think that your plant grows only because you share a close emotional bond, which makes you a worthwhile person, wouldn't it also be pretty nice to think that your plant grows because you have skills, knowledge, and all-around competency in plant growing, that makes you a worthwhile person? And the second one of those can actually be verified!
Another factor might be that plants, when compared head-to-apical-meristem14 against people, for my money mostly come out looking better: they're easier to understand, they don't take your stuff without asking and then put it down somewhere else, they don't stop talking to you in order to take a cell phone call from another person, they don't commit genocide or start religious wars, etc. I mean, people are frequently very disappointing, and I have zero blame for anybody who wants to look for alternatives. (I'm not kidding.15)
But anyway.
Because of all this, I feel a little . . . strange, for trying to debunk Backster. I mean, surely this isn't really hurting anybody, right? If it helps some little old lady in Utah feel less alone, is it really so bad for her to think somebody's listening to her when she talks to the plants, or feel loved when her Phalaenopsis flowers? I mean, this is all basically harmless, right?
Well yeah, kind of. Certainly the world has bigger problems to deal with. At the same time, dealing with these bigger problems is going to involve making decisions, and making good decisions does require, minimally, having some kind of grasp on what is actually going on. For example, my opinion on biofuels kind of does depend on whether Backster is right.16 I'm not likely to be the one making that decision for the world, but I would like the people who are to be using the best information available, not just whatever people want to believe or whatever flatters egos. Even at the individual level, these things matter somewhat. It's harmless if our hypothetical lady in Utah believes her plants have feelings, but it's less harmless if some scammer starts selling special water for $25 a gallon that, I don't know, eases plants' suffering, enhances communication between plant and human, or something.17
So here we are at the end. I've more or less convinced myself that if there were something to Backster's work, after 43 years there would be more and better evidence than what he's come up with, which is more or less what I thought when I started out, though at least I have better reasons for thinking this now. You probably didn't change your mind during the course of the posts, either: this is fine with me. What I'd like to do at this point is try to engage people in a conversation about this. If you think I'm being condescending by saying, basically, that I think hard-core Backsterites are all just sad, lonely people trying to validate themselves through their houseplants (not exactly what I was saying, I think, but maybe that's how it sounded), say so. If you have changed your mind, if I brought up a perspective you hadn't considered, if you see a glaring flaw in my logic, you just named your band Warm Gaia Fuzzies, whatever. I thought fairly long and hard about all this, but I know there are perspectives I missed. So please. I invite conversation.
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1 Some people, I suppose, would argue that neither of these are strictly necessary, and a soul is sufficient. Ghosts and whatnot. Okay, fine, whatever. Unless you're prepared to argue that plants have souls, though, my point still stands.
2 (or souls, for that matter, unless I misread him)
3 I have nothing against gardeners or environmentalists, though there is a particular section of the gardener / environmentalist / critical thinker Venn diagram that I find sort of especially hard to relate to (here labeled "flakes & suckers").
I mostly reside in the "dumb people who think they're practical" region, though I move around. Occasionally I even totally kick ass. I most emphatically do not mean by this that people in this category, or any of the others for that matter, are necessarily stupid or unpleasant or whatever. People in every spot on this diagram can be totally sweet, viciously nasty, drooling idiots, or brilliant original thinkers, all of which is an entirely different and unrelated Venn diagram.4 Aside from the occasional brief mention of evolution, or "millions of years," nature specials were one of very, very few categories of TV program that my parents found acceptable. Which I was interested in anyway, probably (in true circular fashion) because I watched nature specials all the time. I eventually got over having a problem with evolution (it helps considerably if you learn what evolution actually is, as opposed to the monstrous strawmana creationists claim it is), but growing up thinking of "Growing Pains" and "Doogie Howser, MD" as forbidden fruit has probably warped me in ways I'm not even aware of.
a (Monstrous Strawman = Band Name Alert!)
5 Well of course life is all interconnected. We all share common ancestors, so we have certain biological similarities in common, and we all live on the same planet, in a complex ecological web, so we are critically interdependent on some/most/all of these other species as well. That anybody could find this mind-blowing, rather than just obvious, sort of baffles me, but then, I was watching National Geographic specials about the Serengeti while you were watching "Miami Vice," so my perspective on these things is odd.
6 (Warm Gaia Fuzzies = Band name alert!)
7 Well, "fainting" is Backster's word for it. I would suggest "coma," or maybe "the sort of pain that knocks you unconscious" as more accurate, considering the scale of the trauma we're talking about.
8 Backster never comes right out and says this, of course. In fact, it's hard to find acknowledgment, in his book, that he's deliberately inflicting pain, suffering or death on one organism in order to measure the responses of another, even though his theory is pretty clear that this is what has to be happening. I don't have a problem with somebody making a career out of torturing plants and yogurt, because I don't believe that plants and yogurt can suffer, but Backster does, or at least claims to, and manages to justify it to himself somehow. This is not right, y'all. I mean, better this than kittens (there's much less doubt that kittens are capable of suffering), and it should be noted that I don't get the impression that Backster is a mean or cruel person in general: quite the opposite, if anything. But there's still something really off about a man who can make a career out of what he believes to be torture and execution and not see any problem with that.
9 Not that you asked, but: I am not a vegan, nor have I ever been, though the husband has (not at the moment, but I think he'd still count as ovo-lacto, or maybe just lacto, presently), and as a result I eat a lot less meat and fish than I used to. All of the good arguments are on the side of the vegetarians (environmental, animal cruelty, nutritional, etc.), and I don't really dispute any of this. But I also still drink a lot of milk, and it's not even the good kind of milk from free-range hippie cows who stand around and sing all day in idyllic meadows until it's time to be milked by gentle hippie milkmaids of all ethnicities and genders who play the autoharp and paint one another with henna tattoos all day while the cows are singing, but eeeeevil factory milk that's probably full of bovine growth hormone and tobacco by-products and asbestos and is extracted by machines operated by slack-jawed men who burn tires for entertainment and can't spell and wear clip-on striped ties with plaid shirts.
Because, apparently, I am a bad person.
Or maybe I just really like milk and really dislike spending money.
But that probably also makes me a bad person.
10 I'm assuming that fruit would be okay because the whole point of fruit is to "pay" animals for dispersing and fertilizing seeds; therefore it wouldn't make much sense for the plant to consider it painful. Though with seedless varieties of grapes, watermelon, bananas, oranges, etc., there's a different problem: eating seedless fruits would be exploitation, because you're receiving the payment for a service you're not providing, and that's damaging to the plant's dignity. So seeded varieties only, and then only if you plant the seeds afterwards. Preferably while surrounded by hennaed milkmaidsa, with autoharp accompaniment.
a (The Hennaed Milkmaids = Band Name Alert!)
11 Even I would like to believe my plants love me, and that I'm important and appreciated. It sounds nice. It's less appealing to think that the lawn wants me dead, that each plant that's died in my care meant it as a gigantic "fuck you," and that the plants I've thrown out due to mealybugs have been cursing my name all the way to the landfill, but sure, it would be nice to be able to think that the plants spend as much time thinking about how to make me happy as I do thinking about how to make them happy.
12 Hey, your Streptocarpus bloomed. That's pretty awesome, it must think you're a wonderful person. Of course, millions of Streptocarpuses that never met you and have no idea who you are have also bloomed. And the flowers might mean that the plant is making a last-ditch effort to reproduce and pass on its genes before it is consigned to oblivion (some plants really do do this; I'm not making it up) due to your shitty care, and you're actually a horrible caretaker of plants. It's risky, trying to get your personal affirmations from plants. Of course, people aren't so great for that kind of thing either.
13 Curiously, both of these things (being at the center of someone else's universe and taking exceptional credit for nonexceptional growth and development) are also generally involved in having a baby. As far as I can remember from the book, Backster never mentions having kids, and I don't think I even remember him saying anything about getting married, either, though I'm less sure about that. Google searches reveal no wife or children either. Coincidence? Sure, very possibly. But maybe not: he would hardly be the first person to invent a child substitute, if indeed that is what's going on. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily, so long as you remain aware that your substitute is not an actual child. Some people do have trouble remembering this. Watch "Dog Whisperer.")
14 (apical meristem = growing tip)
15 (I realize it can sometimes be difficult to tell.)
16 Perhaps not the best example, since biofuels are sort of problematic anyway: they don't increase atmospheric CO2, but they don't do anything to decrease it either: ideally, whatever energy source we come up with should reduce CO2 levels. They're also not great from an air pollution standpoint, from what I hear. So I'm probably against them to some degree either way. But you know what I mean.
17 (Maybe some kind of anesthetic for taking cuttings? The skeevy, predatory part of my mind that comes up with scams is unable to come up with any very good ideas, which is unusual, since I'm usually frighteningly good at coming up with that kind of thing. But whatever. It doesn't matter: I know there's money in primary perception somewhere, for anyone who's sufficiently unethical.)
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