The Great Houseplant Census of

Mr McGregor's Daughter has suggested a mid-winter diversion - to number and share the houseplants currently in captivity in our dwellings. I'm granting myself a lot of permissions here - #1 is permission to be late! #2 is to count anything that's within the walls for the winter, including some stuff in the garage. #3 is to call everything by its common name instead of trying to hunt down the botanical one.

Our house was built in the late 1970's, with overhangs and a veranda to keep out the sun's heat rather than let its light shine in on leaves. Most of my plants are crowded into the bay window in the breakfast room. In a few feet of space you'll find:
2 water-filled bottles with rooting pieces from an ornamental chartreuse potato vines
1 small cactus from my niece some years ago
2 pots filled with Alligator Plant/Mother of Thousands from DivaAnnie
1 Thanksgiving cactus
1 Thai lime
2 Jade Plants
1 half-dead Pothos
1 Allspice plant - found on an expedition with MSS
1 cyclamen in full bloom
1 Meyer's Lemon tree
2 stapelia plants
1 amaryllis just finishing bloom
3 amaryllis not yet waked up
2 rooted cuttings of Cuban Oregano and
1 rooted cutting of some kind of succulent from Diva Mindy (think she said Donkey's Ears?)
1 badly-treated bonsai fig won in a drawing years ago and
1 salmon geranium that saves many a bloom day.
1 Haworthia does well here -
2 others are not so happy in the nearby laundry room window. Think that adds up to 27 in the kitchen area.


Out in the garage are 1 Mexican Lime, 3 plumerias and 1 piece of plumeria hopefully making roots, 1 more Stapelia/Starfish Flower and 1 Sambac Jasmine.

1 Shell Ginger still has leaves in the garage - it would have died to the ground this year outside. There's 1 small rooted piece of the Angel's Trumpet Brugmansia hiding behind it, bringing us to 36 plants.

Under the skylight in the living room there's 1 large red ceramic bowl that currently holds a ratty looking peace lily rescued from a big box home store. On the other end of the bookcase is 1 large basket of mixed houseplants... the kind you bring home after a funeral and do your best to keep alive.

On a shelf in the bedroom there's just enough light to keep yet 1 more piece of Stapelia/Starfish flower and 1 start of Kalanchoe (also from Diva Mindy) going.

In the guest room 3 more Thanksgiving Cactus hope for an errant sunbeam before the Arizona Ashes releaf. 43?

In the dining room a Staghorn fern pouts and I wonder if it would do better in the cold - instead of counting to 44 I should open the door and put it out on the veranda! Wait - on the other side of the room I forgot an aspidistra/Cast iron plant that also spends time on the porch, and yet 1 more Stapelia. All the Stapelia plants are rooted pieces from a single plant my Aunt Phyll gave me about 1987 or 1988. So I guess that's 46 pots of plants, although some of them have multiple plants in one pot.


If Mr McGregor's Daughter hadn't asked us to count our houseplants would I have noticed that this cactus turned red because its spot against the window glass was very cold in January?

Without her idea would I have thought to not only snap a photo of the venerable original Jade Plant from the front as we see it every day....

but also to pull out the stand and turn it around to capture the cool way the Jade branches have cascaded toward the light? Thanks MMD! The Jade plant has moved with us from house to house and from state to state, ever since we bought it at one of the greenhouses attached to Hausermann's Orchids in Villa Park, Illinois. I don't know if they sell anything but orchids now, but back in the early 197o's Hausermann's had aisles and aisles of houseplants and my sister & I especially liked to walk through and breathe the warm misty air in winter. One fine day about 1974, this Jade Plant came home with me.