My first cactus was the beginning of my plant collection six years ago.
Cacti are unlikely houseplants. They do not display the lush leafiness of Monsteras. They can be a (literal) pain to handle and repot. They are not known for their air-purifying qualities. They do not display the sudden, overnight growth that some other plants do. They are picky about how much light they want, and even pickier about how much (or, how little) water they want.
When I got that first cactus, I was signed off work with burn-out. One night, as I was fretting about work, my partner J. said, sleepily, "Don't think about work. Think about something nice. Think of cacti". Neither of us knows how he came up with cacti, but it became a phrase we returned to again and again: "Think of cacti". After a few weeks, J. bought me a bunny ear cactus in a neighbourhood plant store. The store soon became a favourite of mine. It is filled to the ceiling with all kinds of houseplants, and its owner is both knowledgeable and really friendly. It stocks few cacti, however. In fact, pretty much all of the plan stores I visit sell few cacti--as do most online plant stores.
On lists of most popular houseplants, cacti usually end up last, if they make the list at all. Their succulent cousins like donkey's tail (sedum morganianum) or jade plants tend to be a lot more popular with their thick leaves and quirky shapes.
This made me think. How did we ever end up with cacti as houseplants in the first case? And how do they tie in with the contemporary houseplant boom?
Most articles on the current popularity of houseplants suggest that it is driven by millennials who are delaying major life choices. Houseplants, as this therapist says, fulfil the human need for "connection and nurturing" that would be otherwise fulfilled by having children.
Millennials also love houseplants according to these articles because they are less likely to own their own homes, and often don't have (large) outdoor spaces in which to create a garden. "Those of us who go through the stress and strain of finding an affordable flat amid rising rent prices must reckon with an increasingly troubled sense of home – losing sight of where this actually is, or whether it even exists, with each chaotic relocation", Liv McMahon writes. Houseplants give these millennials a sense of home.
Perhaps houseplants are just the right amount of demanding: not as demanding as a child, or a cat, but also more demanding than an inanimate object. They do particularly well on social media, of course—on the small squares or rectangles that populate our feeds. Green, glossy leaves against an Instagram-worthy white background are satisfyingly pleasing to look at.
On social media we can display our houseplants, as much as our lives, in a heavily curated way, without the brown leaves or straggly branches. We can perform a certain way of living on social media, with houseplants as our symbols.
I am sceptical of many of these articles on millennials and houseplants. It is, of course, hard to measure whether houseplants make people happier. Perhaps these people are also happier because of their economic means, for instance—economic means that allows them to buy houseplants.
But I do recognize that taking care of plants, whether indoor or outdoor, can be soothing. There's something about taking the time to feel the soil, observe how the plant grows and get to know its needs. Perhaps the contemporary popularity of houseplants is simply E.O. Wilson's biophilia hypothesis played out on a small scale. Houseplants, then, might be just another way in which we demonstrate that, as Wilson argued, our love for nature is innate, a result of evolving in intimate relation with the natural world.
At the same time, of course, taking care of houseplants in most cases requires buying houseplants, which for many people is a luxury they can't afford. Having the space for houseplants in your home, no matter how small it is, and having the resources to buy plants, pots and soil is a mark of privilege--especially if we aspire to the kinds of plant interiors so popular on social media.
In a clip on the New Yorker website, one plant shopper says that taking care of houseplants--keeping them alive--shows that you are knowledgeable, that it accords status somehow. Having houseplants, then, is a performance of your own knowledge, your green thumb, and, of course, your economic capital.
The luxury of buying, owning and caring for houseplants is put into perspective by Stephanie Sendaula's description of growing up without houseplants:
"My family could barely take care of each other, let alone anything in addition to people within the family unit...
Plants were items that I saw in the homes of white friends; they always felt unapproachable and inaccessible, in a way that signified a status that was just out of reach. I knew better than to ask my parents, grandparents, or aunt ... why we didn’t have any. They had better things to worry about, like where our next meal was coming from or whether they could afford any of the regular bills that kept arriving in the mail."
Houseplants are a luxury for those with more money, and less trauma.
Essentially, Sendaula describes how owning a plant becomes as a mark of respectability, much like during the Victorian age, the red geranium sitting on a cottage windowsill was "a mark of aspiring respectability" for working-class families.
Much like the lush, leafy interiors of #plantstagrammers are a performance of skill, money, status, self-care or trendiness, Victorian homes filled with plants performed a certain identity. Through houseplants, they displayed respectability, affluence, and the fact that the wife of the family had time to devote to houseplants, rather than having to do housework herself. Of course, Victorians didn’t put houseplants in all rooms. Houseplant experts warned against putting houseplants in the bedroom, as they were sure that gases emitted by the plants at night would kill them in their sleep.
1920s Modernism reacted strongly against Victorianism in all its forms. Literature changed, music changed, visual arts changed, and interiors changed as well. As Catherine Horwood writes, it was no longer fashionable "to stuff a room with palms and ferns just as it was no longer fashionable to cover surfaces with heavy velvet drapery dotted with dust-gathering ornaments".
This is where the cactus found its moment of glory. In all its minimalism and understatedness, it became the plant of the moment, as one of the few plants that seemed to fit into the kinds of uncluttered Modernist interiors of the post-World War I era.
Amidst the lush leafiness of millennial interiors, filled with dramatic maximisers like Monstera delicosa, the cactus is definitely the prickly underdog. In a 2019 New Yorker article, the owners of the Cactus Store capitalize on this by relishing the weirdness of cacti in a way that certainly endears me to cacti: “They’re not just interior-design objects ... they’re the ultimate survivors.” I can appreciate the weirdness of cacti: how they resist our care, and especially the main way in which most of us “nurture” our plants, by watering them. For most of the year, in fact, cacti just want to be left alone.
Of course, the cacti sold by the Cactus Store are part of a performance as much as the Monstera deliciosa or Pilea peperomoides sold in other plant stores are. They are deliberately marketed as weird, even unlikeable. And: they are expensive.
Paying twenty-three dollars for a small cactus may not seem a lot if you know that the most expensive cactus on sale in the store costs fourteen hundred dollars. Yet being able to spend any amount of money on houseplants rather than on rent, bills or food, still speaks of economic privilege, much like the Victorian middle and upper-classes bought houseplants and built conservatories as a means of displaying their status in a way that was unattainable to the working-class family with a lone geranium on their windowsill.
Without the contemporary houseplant craze I most probably would not have ended up with 120+ houseplants. Even though I like to espouse trends, seeing houseplants in so many virtual and non-virtual spaces around me makes me more interested in them. Seeing them makes me want them more. So I might be as much part of this performance as #plantfluencers on social media.
But that's okay.
Houseplants bring me joy. I love the life, the texture, the interest they bring to my house. I love observing them. I love seeing leaves unfurl. And because of that joy, I also love learning more about them. Not just how to take care of them, but also how they are the product of social and economic developments, of imperialism and expansion, of trends and fads, of culture as much as nature.
That cactus that I got six years ago didn't cure my burn-out--setting firmer boundaries at work and disentangling myself more from it did. But I do look fondly at it as it sits on my windowsill, slowly--so slowly--growing away, unaware of it being anything but a cactus.
I’m curious, how did you end up loving houseplants? And cacti: yes or no?
Currently
Getting very excited about building a little collection of wax plants (hoyas) and crushing hard on my Hoya carnosa tricolor, which is sporting some gorgeous pink leaves.
Enjoying listening to this podcast on life in the woods, especially the reflections on craving a slower life.
Loving the delicate pink/purple flowers of the Oxalis triangularis I grew from bulbs this year.
Needing to really start potting up some of those cuttings I wrote about two weeks ago.
Interestingly, cacti seem to be pretty popular at my favorite local plant shops in Chicago. I love my cacti but it’s really hard to know if they are happy!
I love a cactus. But you’re so right, they seem to have fallen out of fashion. I’ve got a cactus as tall as I am (6ft+), and probably just as heavy too. It came from a friend of ours who didn’t have space for it anymore. He gave it to us for free - the only catch was that we had to take responsibility for transporting it across London. Needless to say, that thing was an absolute beast to wrap up, shift down his stairs, into the van, out of the van, up our stairs, and then unwrap. I got plenty spiked that day! Worth it though, to have such an enormous cactus keeping me company as I write.