A tiny patio garden with simple plants is like a miniature universe (philosophical musings) 🪴✨
Privet. Normally I write in Spanish and Russian, but I realize that the English subreddits have a lot more interesting stuff, so I decided to practice my English. Bear with me. I'm not a philosopher, nor an academic, and honestly, I'm a terrible gardener. Even so, I promised to clean and tidy up my grandmother's two little gardens, which are a bit neglected. I haven't been watering them because it's been pouring rain in Mexico City, so I started removing the dry leaves and burying the roots of those shaggy plants. I'm more of a self-taught biologist, but lately, my thinking organ is hyper-excited about a scientific experiment I decided to run using my grandma's plants.
Just a heads up: I use AI to check my grammar and do quick research, but the topic I'm writing about is 100% what I see, feel, and think with my own humanity, and of course, the pic in this post is also real.
The point is this: as you can see, we have several specimens of a stoloniferous plant with long flat leaves coming from a central node. In Spanish, they call it "Mala madre" (Bad mother), which sounds mean to me, "Cinta" (Tape), which is super bland, or "Lazo de amor" (Ribbon of love), which is mega cheesy. In English, you guys call it Spider Plant… oh come on! Really?
The scientific name is Chlorophytum comosum, but it gives me zero vibes. I definitely want to invent a new name because "Mala madre" is sort of cruel (poor plant, being judged without knowing), Spider Plant is just ew, and Russian is almost the same. If you could drop some name ideas in the comments, just between us, I'd appreciate it a lot. I promise to choose wisely.
For those who don't know it, the Spider Plant is fascinating: it produces long stems that curve in the air, literally like the arches of the Brooklyn Bridge, until they touch the ground, root, and a new baby plant is born. Basically, stolonization is weaving a network of nodes, very different from spider webs.
The experiment: Our plants are producing few stolons (the tails with the baby on the tip). Why? Are they past their asexual reproduction age? Or did they just get tired of dropping babies on the hard tile floor?
So, I set up an experiment. As you can see in the pic, I placed a small clay pot super close to them, inhabited only by little rain plants (they sprout on their own every rainy season, so we could say it's "their" soil). The idea is to see if any of the spiders launches its precious cargo into the small pot (without my intervention) and decides to colonize it, instead of crashing against the tile.
Now, here goes my ratio insaniae. Seeing these stolons stretch out looking for soil, I can't stop asking myself:
- If the plant actually notices the little pot and aims its shoot there, ignoring the stone floor... don't you think it's a form of communication between me and the shaggy plant?
- By trying to install its node in a soil already "inhabited" by little rain plants, are we witnessing an act of invasive colonization, or is it simply something parallel to the tiny plants?
- If the "shaggy green plant" scores, can we consider this gesture (aiming the baby to the fertile spot) an act of intentionality? Or is it just a biochemical-mechanical reflex and I'm just projecting?
I have other questions, the kind that belong in a philosophical subreddit, which I'll leave on my personal profile with my wild theories.
Catch ya later! 🌿 — A clumsy gardener who believes plants use fractal logic in their reasoning.