Episode 256: celebrating the LGBTQ+ community and their houseplants
Transcript
Episode 256
[music]
Jane: LGBTQ+ people, this episode is all about you... and your plants! Welcome to On The Ledge podcast, episode 256. I'm your host, Jane Perrone, and in this episode, I'm celebrating the wonderful, wonderful world of LGBTQ+ people and their houseplants. Plus, I answer a question about drawing the line with Streptocarpus.
[music]
Jane: It's LGBT+ History Month here in the UK right now. You can find out more about this month via the website lgbtplushistorymonth.co.uk. So, I decided to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community and their houseplants in this special episode.
So, what should you expect? Well, On The Ledge has been, always will be, about you, the listeners, and so I reached out to listeners who feel like they're part of this community and asked them to answer the question: "What do houseplants mean to me?" and the result was this tapestry of different voices talking on this theme, bringing your own unique perspectives to it. There were a few listeners who didn't want to record their own messages, so those messages are voiced either by me or by my assistant, Kelly. So, without any further ado, let's hear your words about "What houseplants mean to me".
[music]
Charlotte: What do houseplants mean to me? To answer that question, I definitely have to start from the beginning. So hi, I'm Charlotte. I'm 18 and I'm bisexual and non-binary. My journey with houseplants started in secondary school. It wasn't a pretty time. I felt pretty alienated from my peers due to my queer identity, which unfortunately led to severe anxiety and depression. Around this time, in 2019, my mum bestowed upon me this spider plant that she'd been given, that she didn't want. I didn't want it either, but I knew that if she took it, she would definitely kill it, so I begrudgingly accepted this plant and I cared for this spider plant. In return, although I didn't know it at the time, it gave me a purpose and it gave me space to be myself. It didn't judge me, it listened to what I had to say, it grew and it thrived and it made me feel better. So I started to collect more and more houseplants, and, long story short, I live in a jungle! It's amazing. It's great! I've got, like, 80 houseplants, life is good and it's thanks to this houseplant collection that I'm growing and I'm thriving and I'm happy in my queer identity. I'm now studying for my Level 3 diploma in Horticulture, which is a thing by the way, and I'm pursuing a career in tropical plants with an aim to inspire others just to buy that first houseplant because houseplants provide this freedom to grow and be mindful and they connect us to nature and they're just beautiful. It's amazing that we're able to have plants indoors, in this world where a lot of us don't have access to a garden. Houseplants for me are essentially the pursuit of freedom because I can wholeheartedly say that that is exactly what they have given me.
Eric: Hello Jane, my name is Eric Voff and I live in Los Angeles, California. I started heavily getting into houseplants when I moved to California about 20 years ago and now I have even made it my career. I work as a horticulturalist for an internet plant company. I also provide plant advice and create content for my company. I really appreciate you talking about how difficult it is to diagnose typical plant problems from either just a photo or a video. I have also struggled with this and find that sometimes the best action is no action. I am a proud, older gay. I grew up in the era when being gay was much more of an issue, but I was also part of the people who fought for early gay rights through groups like ACT UP and Queer Nation and now I am definitely enjoying the fruits of my labour. My husband, who I've been with for almost 20 years, is also a big plant nerd. We appreciate our time on the patio taking care of, and looking at, our many, many houseplants that, here in Southern California, we basically just grow outside on our patio.
Jack: I'm Jack. I had two homes as a child: one rural, a dairy farm in the soggy Midlands. It was cold, it rained, I wasn't interested in tractors or machinery and I didn't seem to fit. I liked books about explorers in faraway places, dense jungles, and exotic islands, for these were the places where people had exciting lives and adventures. I was lucky. My second home was thousands of miles away in Australia. It was hot and lush and heaving with rampant life. It smelled of eucalyptus and rainforest floors, alive and throbbing and explosively colourful. Our garden there had not one single gloomy conifer or desperate, lumpen laurel. Instead, it had coconut palms, ginger lilies, and Strelitzias. As a small person encountering the tropics, this was my first impression of what real colour was. Far from the smudgy greens and dull, muddy Friesian farmyard shades, I found turquoise, iron red, psychedelic lorikeets and sulphur yellow. The plants were the ones from my adventure books -- finally! Soaring palm trees, broad fans of giant foliage and enormous frothy ferns. Forest you could find a dinosaur in and the kind of gardens impossible in the UK. It was a world of vibrant life and colour and a place I found I could fit. This is why I love houseplants so much. A common connection for queer people is the feeling of not belonging or being in the wrong place. My LGBTQ mates, some of them gardeners and some of them not, all agree that building a world for ourselves is crucial. We have to make our spaces, we have to establish our own communities and we must construct worlds in which we do fit and do belong. Mine is filled with tropical plants because they connect me back to the joy of finally finding a space outside of the humdrum grey that I didn't belong in. My houseplants make me feel alive. For me, every screaming leaf and extravagant frond is a foliar "F.U." to anyone who said I was too loud, too colourful, too flamboyant, too gay. Each weird Alocasia and peculiar succulent, partying with abandon on my sunny windowsills, is a reflection of the life and the character that LGBT+ communities celebrate: different, strange, non-binary and fiercely alive. Here is where I fit and where everyone is welcome. My Babylonian garden of South London tropical excess! I'm a geek, I'm weird, I'm beautiful and I cherish every single haughty, geeky, weirdo friend I've made along the way. Houseplants rock!
Sam: Hi Jane, my name is Sam and I'm 17 years old. I'm probably one of the younger listeners of your podcast that are in the LGBTQ+ community and the houseplant community, come to think about it. You asked the question, what houseplants mean to me. As a relatively young LGBTQ+ person, finding myself was really difficult throughout school and I think a lot of other people find that in the community. They will resonate with that message quite a lot. I think houseplants, for me, are a pillar. They're something that I can always depend on. Like, no-one really cares what a houseplant does, what a houseplant looks like, what a houseplant sounds like today. No-one can really judge them. I think being able to pour my positivity, creativity, and my passion into houseplants really, really roots me and gives me something to gaze upon. When I'm not feeling great myself, my houseplants are, and no matter how much sadness I feel, they are always looking good and houseplants always keep me uplifted. I think a lot of LGBTQ+ people feel that.
Wilma: Hi Jane, from cold, snowy Alberta. My name is Wilma, or Wil, as my family and friends know me. I was raised on a hog farm. We had sheep, fowl, rabbits and guinea pigs also. I was a tomboy, always working with my father, and he had a very big vegetable garden with flower beds around the house and fruit trees and shrubs. My mom has always had houseplants since I can remember, and in my teens, I started growing some also. Because I grew up in a Christian family, I was too afraid to come out as a queer, but once I went back to school, to Olds College, to learn horticulture, that's when I came out. I've been a horticulturist in Alberta and BC, in retail and production, and the last 15 years, I worked as a Hort Technician at Olds College, working in the atrium with lots of tropicals in the greenhouses, growing annuals, perennials, tropicals and even weeds for weed ID. I worked in the botanical gardens and now I work in the plots, in the vegetables and fruit trees and shrubs. I love variegated plants and I'll even leave variegated weeds until they go to seed, then I'll pull them out. We have quite a few queer staff on campus and even a queer club for students at the college and the high school, but it's still hard for teens and others to come out in Olds and in Alberta. So, thanks for all you do, Jane. Love your podcasts!
Anon: I have something to say about being LGBT and being in the plant community -- it's home. It was the first community that didn't care who I loved. For the first time in a long time, I found a group of people who were so open and accepting of who I am. Through this community, I've learned to love and accept myself and start to really be me.
James Whiting aka Plantsbythere on Instagram, says: "Houseplants have been a part of my queer life in so many ways. They've helped me express my personal creativity at events like the Chelsea Flower Show, who've finally given some space to houseplants in recent years and have steered me to change my career to be more fulfilling. But on a more personal note, houseplants really help me to relax and be aware of my own wellness when times have been tough, by giving me purpose, a routine and something to focus on when things felt overwhelming and heavy. Just having the presence of nature in my home allowed me to focus my mind and energy. They have inspired me to push my own social boundaries and make new connections with people that perhaps I would have shied away from in the past. Houseplants have been in my life from a really young age, but ever since coming out, they've been a prominent and important aspect of my life and even my personality. They've changed my outlook, inspired my goals and I know they will be at the centre of everything I do as a gay person in the future. There is a long way to go in the world of horticulture to make it feel more inclusive, but we'll get there, one houseplant at a time!"
Adam: Hello, my name is Adam, my pronouns are he/him and I am also the one who has the Instagram account at @knotdude and the YouTube channel at @knotdude. I am a Hoya head! I love Hoya! Thank you so much, Jane, for reaching out and asking me to be a part of this episode about what houseplants mean to me. Houseplants entered my life at a time where there was not a lot of stability. Like many LGBTQ+ folks, I was not living authentically. I was pretending to be somebody who I wasn't and pretending for that long and constantly feeling like you are a bad person because of how you feel and who you love causes a lot of distress and that's where I was. Houseplants came into the picture and here were these things that I could care for, that I could tend to, that I could nurture, all the while being authentically me because they don't care. They don't care who gives them the water, they just want the water. So houseplants became a therapy for me and it was an important therapy and I'm so grateful that I found this hobby when I did and I found my love for houseplants when I did because it was a saving grace in my life. And here we are, multiple years later, still going strong, lots of Hoya, living in the desert now, but my plants are happy, and that makes me happy. So, plants are very special to me for all of those reasons and I just wish that everyone else can also feel that same amount of joy and that same amount of admiration for plants. Thanks again for having me on your episode, Jane, and cheers to all you plant nerds!
Jane: I do hope that you've been enjoying hearing all these wonderful stories and voices. More to come shortly. First, I'm going to tackle this week's question and it was a question I saw on a Facebook group, not one directed to me but I did answer it because, well, you know, I love to share the knowledge! I know this is something that sometimes gets asked, so I thought it would be valuable to share what I said on that Facebook group here. The problem with this Streptocarpus was that the person who'd received it thought that it might be variegated and that was because they looked at the leaves and there seemed to be a yellow area, or a paler area, towards the end of the leaf. It kind of looked like a two-tone leaf and, of course, lots of houseplant people love variegation and look for it everywhere, so variegated Streptocarpus sounded like a good thing.
Now, if you're not familiar with Streptocarpus, the common name is the Cape Primrose, and they are relatives of African Violets and Flame Violets and they are within the Gesneriad family, which, if you're a long-time listener, you know I absolutely love. So, they're known for their flowers, but there are indeed variegated Streptocarpus in existence, but the leaves don't tend to look like this leaf in question. They tend to have cream splashes on them and don't have this almost half-moon effect, except the inner part of the leaf is green and the outer part is paler.
So, what is going on? Well, Streptocarpus are plants that are very good at demonstrating something called the "line of abscission" and I know that sounds a little bit like something out of Game of Thrones, but let me explain! If you've got a leaf on a tree that is deciduous, where the leaves fall off in the winter, before those leaves fall off, the plant does something called resorption. It makes perfect sense. The plant does not want to waste the energy that's in that leaf. So, the plant breaks down the materials in that leaf and resorption happens because that stuff, all that good stuff, is being reabsorbed into the plant to get it through the next season. Then, once that's happened, abscission happens and that's where, in the case of a deciduous tree in the autumn, the leaves fall off. With Streptocarpus, it's a little bit different but the same process is happening. So, when light levels start to drop in the autumn here in the northern hemisphere, the plant detects this and starts to realise that the photosynthetic machinery that it's got in the form of all of its leaves, is a bit excessive. It doesn't need as much leaf surface area in order to photosynthesise because the light levels are that bit lower.
So, this plant starts to do a bit of resorption on some of its leaves and it works from the end of the leaf in. So you end up with a leaf that looks half yellow, or pale, and half green and the line of abscission shows you how far the plant's got with that leaf. Oftentimes with Streptocarpus, you'll find that it doesn't go all the way up to the end of the leaf that drops off. It might lose half the leaf, going yellow, and the inner portion will stay green. I don't know why, in particular, Streptocarpus are very visible in the way they operate this line of abscission. Obviously, with a lot of plants, they just turn yellow and they drop and it's as simple as that. Not with Streptocarpus. It tends to operate in this way, so you see this line of abscission really, really clearly. If you want to have a look at my Streptocarpus, which is showing this very thing, I'll put a picture in the show notes at janeperrone.com and you can also check my videos out on Instagram, where I'm @jlperrone and on TikTok, where I'm OnTheLedgePodcast. I've done a short video explaining this and showing my plant and its line of abscission, so do go and take a look at that.
Well, I hope that's helped somebody with a Streptocarpus and just, also, to say there are still Primulinas, another member of the Gesneriad family, that are being sold as Streptocarpus. So if you've recently bought a Streptocarpus Pretty Turtle, it's not a Streptocarpus, it's a Primulina - different species altogether. Streptocarpus come from the continent of Africa, whereas Primulina are from South East Asia, so good to know if you happen to be as obsessive about plant IDs as me. Well, that's question of the week done. If you've got a question for me, and I do have a Q&A coming up, drop me a line to ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com
Now it's time to head back to our consideration of "What houseplants mean to me," in celebration of LGBT+ History Month.
[music]
Gaia: My name is Gaia and this is what houseplants mean to me. Houseplants are a breath of fresh air in any city, a testament to being in the moment and a truth, cloaked in green, that growth is often good. They are memories of good and bad people and places. They are life and death exposed, as not only natural but necessary. They are pictures of progress, a show that warrants discovery at every step. They are salvation and freedom, being the embodiment of the fact that you must be how you are meant to be and to never negotiate. They are friends, free of judgment and often great to talk to and remind us that we need what we need and that is final. A point you would think would be a given but, oh no. They are a connection with all things above and below. They are proof of our place and they are confirmation of uniqueness, often being beauty. Houseplants, for me, helped me see that beauty is not in the eye of its beholder but it is in you and me.
Cheyan: My name is Cheyan, or Che, and I rediscovered gardening in 2016. When I picked up my first succulent from a grocery store, little did I know it would lead me on a path of self-discovery, healing and truly learning to love myself. When I initially got back into gardening, my mental health was in a poor state, and caring for plants became an extension of taking care of myself. It caused me to become more observant, to notice and reflect on small daily changes and to dedicate time for myself every day. I began to notice that if my plants weren't looking their best, it correlated with my mental state. Making myself get up to do plant chores became a meditative sort of practice, where I would reflect on what was happening in my mind and work through things. In 2019, I began to sell plants and I'll never forget how happy I was the first time I got a message from someone expressing how happy it made them. Connecting to others who struggle or deal with mental health and sharing similar healing experiences has been one of the most rewarding aspects of gardening and it has helped me to make some incredible friends over the years. I truly believe that gardening and plants helped save me from myself and has given me a means to help others facing similar struggles.
Michael: Hi, I'm Michael Perry, also known as Mr. Plant Geek. I'm a plant expert and a homosexual man, so I wanted to talk about plants and how I've always found them a refuge and a comfort blanket, especially in my early days when I had worries about my sexuality. And it wasn't cool to love plants in those days either, but they were what I used kind of as a refuge, kind of almost hiding behind, in a way, which is very different to how I treat them now, but they were always there for me and that is brilliant. Horticulture/plants were the way that I escaped from the world around me and, indeed, how you can do that these days too, but the world has changed and everything is a lot more open, and it's kind of more acceptable, not only to be a gay man, but also to love plants as well. So I'm really, really happy that that change has happened. But what has lubricated that, has been social media and different platforms online, so we should never discount the importance of those platforms. Plants have always been by my side, they brought me through some of the most tumultuous moments and now they still are helping me to connect with the outside world. Social media is really helping us to find other people with really niche plant interests, but also other people with niche life interests and different sexualities and different approaches to life as well and social media is a great lubricant for all that. The thing that just softens all the edges is plants. Plants have really helped us connect with each other all at the same time as well. So with that kind of cocktail of the free, I think that we're doing really, really well and the representation is just immense, not only for plants but also for the LGBTQ+ community as well. So I'd really like to thank plants for bringing me to be as proud as I am today.
Bobby: My name is Bobby and I use he/him and they/them pronouns. I am a visual artist and plant enthusiast based in Naarm, also known as Melbourne, in so-called Australia. I have been studying virology independently for the past three-and-a-half years, which I find completely fascinating. What came to mind was that, for the longest time, when I've been posting online about my love for plants, it kind of became like this motif in my practice, where I would identify with different plants at different stages. For the longest time, I was going by the name Hannah the Cactus and that was really fitting and was right for me at the time. But over the years it's kind of changed, and different plants have meant different things for me. I suppose it's like a symbol, if that makes sense? And then, after that, when I changed my name to be Bobby, I tried out another kind of prickly plant. I tried out the name Bobby Thistle and that also was really fitting for a while as well. And I suppose, for the longest time, both the cactus and the thistle plant represented this protection or this wall of barricading myself and protecting myself and feeling strong. More recently, I suppose I found a bit more resonance with the plant moss and have just become completely obsessed and just bewildered by how remarkable a little plant it is. I don't know how much of that is linked with being a part of the LGBTQ+ community. I suppose just playing around with these symbols and these plants and them representing different things at different points in my life, and that having a little bit of crossover with my name and my sense of identity and self, or at least what I put on Instagram. Yes, that's definitely been something that I've related to, I suppose. There's a lot of ways the plants bring me a lot of comfort and a lot of joy as well.
Leon: Hi Jane! This is long-time listener, Leon van Eck. I use he/him pronouns and I'm a biology professor at a small private university in Minneapolis, Minnesota. So, what do plants mean to me? Well, growing up as a gay boy in South Africa in the 90s, I didn't really feel like I fit in or belonged. I was too timid to play sports, which all seemed to be pointless and rough for my liking. Likewise, I didn't really relate to most of the pop culture everyone else seemed to be into. What I did love was to escape into the natural world, whether through reading about nature or spending hours in the garden. The planet has so many weird and wonderful organisms and I wanted to know about them all. From caring for plants in my childhood bedroom to building my own orchid greenhouse as an undergraduate student, my early interest in plants has blossomed into an obsession. I love growing plants, reading and listening to other people talk about plants and seeing plants growing in their native habitat. Being surrounded by houseplants makes me think of the diversity of habitats they come from, and the diversity of adaptations those plants have evolved to thrive in those places. And of course, they are so, so pretty. And what I long for most in this world is for things to be more beautiful. When times got dark, whether through disease, depression or disappointment, I always had an orchid bud to look forward to. Plants make you excited about the next day, the next season. To me, they embody hope for the future and now, I get to teach young people about how amazing plants are for my career. When I'm not teaching introductory botany, I'm managing the university greenhouse and plant collection. I also have 103 houseplants in my office and students are very enamoured of them when they stop by. It's a great opportunity to talk plants with students more casually. When I can convince them to consider a career in the botanical sciences, I feel like the presence of so many plants in my office is entirely justified. It has been particularly rewarding seeing how many LGBTQ students are gravitating towards the plant sciences. I had found a vocation and a sense of belonging in working with plants and I hope they do too.
Jane: This comes from Ian Drummond, indoor plant expert and obsessive and author of 'At Home with Plants': "Houseplants have always been a part of life. One of my first memories was being given a spider plant from my parents when I was around four years old. I was then hooked. As a child, I was a bit of a loner, so houseplants really did become important to me. Houseplants help our mental health and they also teach us a lot too. They teach us about care and that we are all complex and have different needs. So, coming out as a young, gay man, the plants around me became even more important. My houseplant studio, The Green Room, at the 2021 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, was a real celebration of gay culture and a thank you to houseplants for what they've given me in my life and career. I even had a drag queen DJ for the opening of the show!"
Jane: Thank you so much to everybody who contributed to this episode. I'm so proud of you all! I hope that's okay to say, but it's true! I'm just always blown away by the brilliance of the On The Ledge community and it was so wonderful to hear your diverse, eloquent voices in this episode, so thank you!
Onto other matters before I end the show. As I said in the last episode, my book Legends of the Leaf is out on 27th April. So in the episodes between now and the book coming out, every week I'm giving you a fact from Legends of the Leaf. And, in fact, the book has now gone to print, so I'm hoping the book will be hot off the presses soon. In the meantime, I want to bring you a fact every episode from the book and this week it concerns my old favourite, Saxifraga stolonifera.
I'm sure putting this in a book of iconic house plants will be, for some, a bit of a controversial decision. My answer to that is, it's my book and I'll do what I like! But seriously - I mean, I was serious about that! It is my book, I can do what I like! - but also, I believe this houseplant is iconic. It's been around for a really long time and grown as a houseplant and so I do think it's worth including. And the other reason why it's a fascinating houseplant is because it's an edible houseplant. Maybe that's news to you, but the Strawberry Saxifrage has been eaten for a long time in Japan, its native home, where it's considered part of a category of plants known as Sansai, which means mountain vegetables. The Japanese used the tender young leaves of this plant as tempura, so I would imagine many of you have eaten tempura before. I have not eaten Saxifraga stolonifera tempura, but I am raising up some young plants to give it a try in the next few weeks. So, it's a really fascinating plant. I have done an episode on it, which I'll link in the show notes, but it has an edible use and has also been used medicinally for hundreds of years in traditional medicine, where it grows wild. I think one of the uses is for haemorrhoids and maybe don't try that at home! You can now pre-order it online in all the usual places. I hope if you have any problems getting hold of it, do let me know and you can find the details for the book on my website show notes, at janeperrone.com. Hopefully, I'll be bringing you good news soon of the beautiful book being in my hands. Can't wait!
That is all for this week's show. I will be back next week with more planty content for you lovely, lovely people. Have a great week. Bye!
[music]
Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by The Joy Drops, Dead From The Beginning, Alive 'Til The End, by Doctor Turtle and Dizzy Spells, by Josh Woodward. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.
Subscribe to On The Ledge via Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Player FM, Stitcher, Overcast, RadioPublic and YouTube.
Listeners from the LGBTQ+ community talk about ‘what houseplants mean to me’, plus I answer a question about Streptocarpus.
February is LGBT+ history month, so I’m devoting this episode to celebrating the incredible houseplant community among LGBTQIA+ people. In this episode you can hear from more than a dozen listeners who took up the challenge of explaining ‘what houseplants mean to me’.
Thanks so much to the voices you can hear in this episode: Charlotte, Ezra, Cheyan, Gaia, Sam, Jack, Erick, Leon, James, Michael, Ian, Adam, Billy and Wil.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
I wanted to talk about why Streptocarpus sometimes develop on odd leaf pattern especially in winter - the end of the leaf looks pale and then closer to the centre of the plant, the leaf looks regular green. What’s going on - is this a pest or variegation? Neither. It’s called a line of abscission: this happens when light levels drop in winter and the plant starts to withdraw resources from a leaf. This is called resorption. FOr some reason Streptocarpus offer up a great lesson in resorption through a very obvious line of abscission. It won’t kill the plant, and it should recover as light gets brighter in spring.
You can watch my video about Streptocarpus and lines of abscission on Tiktok and Insta.
Want to ask me a question? Email ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. The more information you can include, the better - pictures of your plant, details of your location and how long you have had the plant are always useful to help solve your issue.
HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE
Contributions from On The Ledge listeners help to pay for all the things that have made the show possible over the last few years: equipment, travel expenses, editing, admin support and transcription.
Want to make a one-off donation? You can do that through my ko-fi.com page, or via Paypal.
Want to make a regular donation? Join the On The Ledge community on Patreon! Whether you can only spare a dollar or a pound, or want to make a bigger commitment, there’s something for you: see all the tiers and sign up for Patreon here.
The Crazy Plant Person tier just gives you a warm fuzzy feeling of supporting the show you love.
The Ledge End tier gives you access to two extra episodes a month, known as An Extra Leaf, as well as ad-free versions of the main podcast on weeks where there’s a paid advertising spot, and access to occasional patron-only Zoom sessions.
My Superfan tier earns you a personal greeting from me in the mail including a limited edition postcard, as well as ad-free episodes.
If you like the idea of supporting On The Ledge on a regular basis but don't know what Patreon's all about, check out the FAQ here: if you still have questions, leave a comment or email me - ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com. If you're already supporting others via Patreon, just click here to set up your rewards!
If you prefer to support the show in other ways, please do go and rate and review On The Ledge on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen. It's lovely to read your kind comments, and it really helps new listeners to find the show. You can also tweet or post about the show on social media - use #OnTheLedgePodcast so I’ll pick up on it!
CREDITS
This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, Dead From The Beginning, Alive Till The End by Doctor Turtle and Dizzy Spells by Josh Woodward.