On Guilt and Funeral Plants
by Colleen Vanderlinden • September 15, 2009 • Miscellaneous • 10 Comments
Surely there’s a special place in hell for those of us who kill funeral plants. Especially when we were specifically entrusted with them because of our supposed ability to keep them alive.
I’m a terrible houseplant grower. I have a few houseplants alive right now only because they are of the virtually unkillable type hyped all over the web for those of us who want to grow houseplants, but for some reason or other, torture them to a long, slow death instead. I have an Aspidistra (truly a “cast iron plant!”) a pothos, a couple peace lilies (spatyphyllum) and a couple of small Peperomia that I’ve managed to keep alive for a long time now (as in, over a year.) Yes, that is a long time.
So, you can imagine my trepidation when my mother-in-law gave me this huge funeral plant—you know, those arrangements of a few plants put together in a basket that people sometimes give in lieu of flowers?– that someone sent when her mother passed away back in July. I loved my husband’s grandmother nearly as much as I loved my own, and I felt obligated, as the family’s resident garden nut, to accept the plant.
The first problem was, there is no place in my house where I could place this gigantic basket of plants. The basket itself was the size of a small laundry basket, and contained five plants: two draceana, a large variegated peace lily, some little palm-type thing, and a schefflera. I asked my mother-in-law, sheepishly, if it was ok for me to break the basket up into individual plants. She was totally fine with it (part of the reason I inherited the plant was because she had no room for it, either.)
Repotting, done. Plant placement where kids won’t destroy the plants, done. Regular watering…
Ah, crap.
Because I used whichever nice looking pots I had around, I ended up putting one of the dracaenas in a terracotta pot. Not really a problem, as long as they’re right in front of my nose and I am reminded to water them. Except that my cat, Bug, thinks dracaena are absolutely delicious, and will devour a plant in an afternoon (yes, he’s done it before.)
So, the plant went on top of the cabinet that is above my writing desk. Where I forgot about it.
Until this morning, when I picked it up, thinking “hey, I should probably water that!” and a good 3/4 of its leaves fell off. Now, chances are that with proper care and a little babying, this plant will be just fine. It does have several healthy leaves left, after all. And if I repot it in a nonporous pot, that will help with the watering, too (notice that its former arrangement-mate, in a glazed ceramic pot, is doing just fine.)
Yes, yes. Everything will be just fine. Really. (You can’t really tell in the photo, but the sad plant on the left has totally lost the leaves from one of its three stalks. They fell off a minute ago.)
I’m a terrible person…
I’m a great proponent of guilt free gardening. I also am wary of imbuing too much emotional currency into plants, because, well, they die (especially in my house. My kids call my front hall the death zone).
So don’t worry about hell – and compost any plant that looks awful. The only thing worse than guilt is living with guilt and a dead plant.
The plants might be better off if you’re not reminded to water them as much. Dracaena marginata need better light than people usually give them (bright indirect or filtered sun, ideally: they are not low-light plants) and a lot less water than people usually give them (you can wait until it’s almost completely dry to water, so long as it gets a good soaking; I have one in an 8-inch pot that gets watered about every six weeks). The water thing is especially important if you’re using a peaty soil like Miracle Gro, which will hold water on the roots forever: they’re much easier plants if given good soil that drains quickly.
More or less exactly the same goes for the Schefflera.
Dracaenas are supposed to be toxic to cats, though yours is not the first cat I’ve heard of that liked to eat them and seemed to be no worse for it. So I’m not sure how seriously to take this alleged toxicity.
Good call on splitting the plants up; they would have argued over water endlessly, if you’d kept them together: mixed planters are a very bad idea for indoor plants, just in general.
Kerry: You’re right. They are just plants, after all. Phew.
Thanks for stopping by!
Mr. Subjunctive:
I was hoping you’d end up chiming in on this one! I had no idea with the Dracaena–I’m going to move it to a better spot. I’m thinking now that (in addition to the damn cat eating it) I probably drowned my old Dracaena. I’ll watch the watering this time around.
Thanks so much for the advice–I need all the help I can get
I am so glad I am not the only one who feels this guilt over funeral plants!! I am about to take a co-workers funeral plant home and try to save it!!
Can I just say here that I think funeral plants are one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard of? Handing off a fussy plant to a grieving person to look after is downright unkind. People should be looking after themselves at such a time, not worrying about what to do with plants that have been foisted on them.
FTR, I think dracaenas are hideous. If anyone has the temerity to send a dracaena to my funeral, I shall haunt them. And I shall bring aphids!
I agree with Chookie about the impracticality of funeral plants, but understand your guilt about any plant with sentiment attached to it. My family has a plant known as the “Grandma plant.” It’s a hoya that my dear grandmother had before she died in (get ready for this…) 1986. For 23 years, my mother, my sister and I have kept pieces of the grandma plant alive — in fact, we cannot kill it, and it keeps reproducing. There are at least a half dozen offspring, and many pieces are getting very large. My wise youngest sister refuses to take any of the grandma plant, saying she doesn’t want to kill it. Huh!
I’ve managed to acquire a funeral plant too – a potted rose that looks alternately glorious (for about a week when it blooms) and horrendous (the rest of the year). But can I chuck it? No. It’s too laden with all the associations of the person it was meant to memorialize and the fact that I’ve kept it alive for years now. My advice – palm off your “heavy” plants now before it’s too late!
Oh yes. This post speaks to me. I have killed more funeral plants than I care to think about…
I am so glad to find another gardener who struggles with houseplants. I thought I was the only one whose outdoor green thumb turns brown once I come inside. Maybe I’m the pied piper of spidermites and I just I can’t see them marching in the door behind me.
I’ve been enjoying your site.