Molly Williams - Taming the Potted Beast: The Strange and Sensational History of the Not-So-Humble Houseplant

Taming the Potted Beast

copyright 2022 by Molly Williams. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of reviews.

Andrews McMeel Publishing

a division of Andrews McMeel Universal

1130 Walnut Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64106

www.andrewsmcmeel.com

ISBN: 978-1-5248-8166-5

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022935718

Editor: Allison Adler

Art Director: Holly Swayne

Production Editor: Thea Voutiritsas and Brianna Westervelt
Production Manager: Julie Skalla

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For Dorothy and her healthy dose of s kepticism
and eternal love a nd support

C ontents

Introduction

The idea for the book youre holding in your hands came to me during a bout of pandemic boredom in 2020. A houseplant lover and constant social media lurker, I was perusing a popular buy-sell -trade Facebook page dedicated to rare houseplants when I randomly stopped on a listing of a philodendron Pink Princess, a plant I used to see retail back in 2018 for $40. The plant in the online listing was juvenile, had three maturing leaves, and was planted in a four-inch growe rs pot.

The January 2020 asking price? Five hundre d dollars.

I was bl own away.

The price was utterly ridiculous, and it made me wonder how much these folks willing to drop hundreds to thousands of dollars for their dream plants know about the plants that theyre spending fortunes on. Did that woman from Chicago in desperate need of a variegated Alocasia macrorrhiza Stingray know that the object of her desire originated from Southeast Asia? How much do any of us know about this hobby were all wrap ped up in?

So began my adventure into the depths of houseplant history.

So, you might be asking, who is this book for? Is it for plant-o -phile s ? People obsessed with both horticulture and history? New plant parents? Old plan t parents?

Guess what? Theres something in this book for everyone! From historic al content to DIY plant projects, Ive got you covered. The only requirement is that you, the reader, must love houseplants. Or, like most of us, love-h ate them.

If you havent noticed, houseplants are having a major moment, but exc itement over plants isnt new. This gargantuan trend has been thousands of years in the making. Houseplants go way, way, way back in history, with colorful an d storied timelines of their own, full of historical highs, devastating lows, an d sensational turning points along the way.

And here you were thinking that your houseplants were just a nice way to bring nature into y our home.

This book will fill in the gaps and unearth the little-known , peculiar history of the houseplant in all its green glory. Well begin when King Nebuchadnezzar II ordered the Hanging Gardens of Babylon to be built for his new bride, Amytis, and unknowingly set the roots for modern-day houseplant fandom. Then well carry on through the ages, learning about the plants that kept company with kings and queensand, on occasion, threatened to kill them.

After we page through history, we come to the present, where were ove rpaying for popular plants and maybe unwittingly contributing to a new botanical black market. Todays plants can be sourced from just about anywhere in the world and from all kinds of purveyors, from outlets as mundane as Walmart to specialty online collectors and fancy-schmancy boutique shops. Fantastic, right? Unfortunately, theres a dark side to this plant fever: its led to a worldwide plant-poaching problem. Even worse than swiping plants from their natural habitat, garden-variety criminals are driving up the prices of certain rare plants, stealing from conservatories and private collections and reselling their loot for big bucks.

The indoor cultivation and domestication of botanical specimens has be en a happy hobby for millennia, by all kinds of civilizations and in all kinds of living spaces. From the marble and terra-cotta pots of the Romans to the Victorian terrariums and the miniature plants of multiple Asian cultures, there are secret histories to be told. These are the historic events that have led to the adorable succulents in our office windows and feisty ficuses in our greenhouses. We should be familiar w ith them.

The pages of this book will take you on an exhilarating botanical adve nture through the ages, and each stop will enlighten you with historical contextas well as provide instructions for at-home plant projects. Each chapter includes a section that will help you create and care for an era-appropriate historical houseplant menagerie. Youll learn how to create indoor gardens, grow veggies like g inger and microgreens, tend to your own indoor lemon trees, sculpt a shrub, lear n how to nurture a swooning plant back to life, and much more.

Then, after their scandalous history has been revealed and the DIY pro jects are all done, in the back of the book is a quick and handy reference section called Timeless Tips for Keeping Your Historical Houseplants Happy. Youll find a handy breakdown of basic houseplant care by plant type. Youll also learn water and light requirements, propagation techniques, buying tips, container selection, and how to quickly identify com mon pests.

This isnt a comprehensive botanical or historical text. It would be i mpossible to include every culture and every tributary timeline across the thousands of years that humans have been bringing plants indoors. Think of this book instead as a resource to guide and inform you on your houseplant-collecting journey. I learned so much in the process of writing this book, and I can only hope youll learn just as much in your own exploration of this curious and compelling history.

* Unless noted, all plants mentioned in this book should be considered toxic to pets and are not for human co nsumption.

T amin g
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Chapter 1

Leafy Wonders of the Ancient World

The Neolithic Era (10,0003,000 BCE)

T he journey begins in 10,000 BCE with the first documented evidence of the domestication of plants as crops. This is also known as how this whole domestic plant fad got started. Are these technically houseplants? Nope. Are they important in terms of our story? A bsolutely.

This is the beginning of wheat, barley, chickpeas, lentils, and so man y other grains that we grow and use today. Get ready to learn about the plants of ancient Mesopotamia and the Fertile Crescent. Then, take a side trip to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which are known as one of the seven wonders of the anci ent world.

In Your Leafy Legacy, learn how to create your own Babylon with the most magnificent hanging houseplants. After all is said and done, your home might become one of the wonders of the mode rn world!

The Agricultural Revolution

What is now called the agricultural revolution was when early humans transitioned from nomadic tribes that hunted and gathered into the first civilizations. This transition coincided with the invention of the wheel, the discovery of fire, and the use of hand tools. These developments bridged the gap between the New Stone Age and the Neolithic era and propelled humankin d forward.