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INTRODUCTION
Special Section: Plantarium: Human-Vegetal Ecologies
Marianna Szczygielska
Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Olga Cielemęcka
University of Turku
Plants are everywhere, but people tend to take little notice of them. While environmental reports warn about the largest loss in plant biodiversity to date, including often undocumented or overlooked extinction of many plant species, houseplants experience a revival in urban cultures. Huge and glossy leaves of Monstera deliciosa and fiddle-leaf figs (Ficus lyrata), funky pancake plant (Pilea peperomioides), and spoon-leaved peperomia (Peperomia), along with cacti and airplants (Tillandsia) fill millennial urbanites’ shoe-box-size apartments and their Instagram feeds. According to the US National Gardening Association, houseplant sales have doubled between 2016 and 2019, growing a thriving industry worth $1.7 billion (cited in Boyle, 2019). The so-called “plantfluencers,” with hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and signed book deals, shape this recent horticultural fascination by creating “trending” plants (Green, 2018). There are different interpretations of this generation’s turn to plants: it may be a way to reconnect with nature; a response to growing anxieties about climate change; or part of the blooming “wellness” industry. Some see caring for green companions as a substitute for delayed parenthood, plants becoming the new pets for city dwellers (Boyle, 2019). In times of environmental and economic insecurities and precarious labor conditions, when few can afford a large garden, many look for comfort and community in planting and watering their potted houseplants, sharing cuttings, or tending to community gardens or urban farms.
These intimate human–vegetal ecologies, however, are entangled with a long history of colonial scientific expeditions, imperialism, economic extraction, capitalist accumulation, globalization, and cultural appropriation that form the invisible roots which ground and anchor popular decorative houseplants in our spaces. As a result of these historical processes, oftentimes what comes to be considered a decorative plant in one geographical context bears different cultural meanings and functions in its local context. In this sense, the spatial notions of proximity and distance are collapsed in individual stories of plant circulation, at the same time espousing seedy temporalities of global plant travels. How much do consumers actually know about the potted plants that decorate windowsills and bookshelves, populate their houses and flats,...