Albert's Greenhouse

I've had this Amorphophallus titanum for many years. It all started out with a table of plants out of tissue culture on a bench at Dewey Fisk's place in Florida many years ago, a time when nobody had any for sale anywhere. And for $65, I became the proud owner of a plant that I knew I had no hope of growing to maturity. But it was rare - and there was some attraction to it from the point of view that the petiole was smooth, splotched and beautiful. And at the time I figured I might get a bigger greenhouse one day.

Well, I moved and got a smaller greenhouse. With a 6.5 foot ceiling. And this summer, the tuber resprouted and the leaf immediately hit the aforementioned ceiling. A friend of mine took it as a sign to build a bigger greenhouse when it happened to him. I took it as a sign that I would need to donate the plant.

The plant is now happily in its new home at a local university, helping young people learn about the great variety that is out there in the plant world. And I have a lot more room in the greenhouse - for more stuff I have no hope of growing to maturity.

And it turns out that the world is full of people willing to pay good money to buy a plant they have no hope of keeping alive for more than a year or two - that they for the most part have no place owning to begin with. Just mention the "biggest" flower, the "largest" leaf, or the most rare anything, and you've created an instant market composed of people who simply must have whatever it is. No matter if they can't grow it well, and no matter if it's not very interesting for reasons other than its rarity.

I was at Lowe's yesterday to pick up some a few pots, and as is my habit, I stopped by the houseplant section to see what the latest and greatest thing to come of out the shadehouses of Florida might be. And among the usual alocasias and spahtiphyllums was a section of pots with what looked for all the world to be a small tropical tree. And the label said - "grows to 40 feet tall" on it. This was a houseplant, and it was being sold in a non-tropical climate. Nobody I know has a 40 foot ceiling. But somebody had the idea to produce the tree and market it, all with the knowledge that it's totally unsuited for any climate we can provide it. And apparently, people were buying them, too.

So much of what we buy is based on what the plant looks like when we buy it - we fall in love with something, but we have little idea what it will become.