Leafy survivors

I was looking around my new place today and marveling at the indoor zoo and botanical garden. Like my cats, my houseplants came from the most humble of origins to grow up big and strong. Unlike cats, though, I have killed quite a few houseplants and probably tortured several others in the cultivation process. The ones I've got now (the plants, that is) are the leafy survivors of my sporadic care. Proving the adage that the oldest things are still the best, the plants I've kept alive (or have kept themselves alive) are mostly cuttings from my mother's old plants.

Years ago and shortly after I moved out, my mother switched to plastic, but I wanted to carry on the lineage of the plants I grew up with. My ivy cuttings have grown so much over the years that they've produced a few generations of their own cuttings. It's funny to think that if my mother's ivy has survived as well with others as it has with me, her one little plant-in-a-basket she received as a gift when I was a child has grown its way all over town by now.

My snake plants both came from a cutting I received in my high school botany class. Botany was probably what started my whole fascination with plants. I'll never forget my crazy-looking teacher ripping the leaves off his plants, cutting into their stems or uprooting them with wild abandon just to show us something he thought was neat. We cringed at the way he brutalized those poor plants, but he must've had the greenest thumb in the world because the plants always grew back for him when they wouldn't for us.

I was just learning to drive when I took that class. My mother sat in the passenger seat, terrified, as I would veer into oncoming traffic while pointing out various weeds and shrubbery. "Look, Mom," I'd say. "That bush with the red berries is staghorn sumac. Deer eat it."

"That's nice, dear," my mother would stifle a yawn.

"Look, mom, that's phragmites. It's an invasive species killing off indigenous cattails by asexually reproducing by underground rhizome faster than cattails can keep up."

I imagined myself on Jeopardy, identifying the phases of field progression.

"KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE ROAD!" my mother yelled as the veering and honking began.

Come to think of it, though, I had a thing for plants when I was a little kid. I bought several small cacti with paper route money and named them after talk show hosts. Even back then, Oprah seemed destined to have a longer shelf life than the others because she was the last of the cacti to die off. I don't know what went wrong, because I faithfully watered them every day. Initially I chose cacti because they have reputations for being harder to kill than other plants. When I realized that even cacti died in my care, I decided to move on and kill prettier plants.

I purchased a whole collection of leafy houseplants and named them after European explorers—

the ones we had to study every year in elementary school social studies. My favorite was a Norfolk Island pine meant to serve as a personal Christmas tree that I called Sir Francis Drake. He kicked the bucket around February, just as I was getting ready to replace the Christmas lights on his branches with Easter egg ornaments.

I hesitate before buying any new plant today. Although some species are reputedly heartier than others, it takes a special plant to survive things like final exams, cat attacks, frequent moving and just plain ineptitude. But every once in a while the spirit of Darwin emerges in one of my impulse buys.

About four years ago, for example, I bought a two dollar plant-in-a-cup from Meijer. Today, it stands in my living room as a 5-foot tall monster. I didn't know tiny little plants such as that could become jungle-like trees, complete with bark and branches.

Whatever the logical explanation for the flourishing of my gargantuan plants, the survivors seem possessed by a magical power that withstands all the abuse and neglect they receive. As I survey my living room jungle, I can't help but marvel and be proud of my leafy survivors.