THERE IS THE pandemic, and then, there is the plantdemic – an emerging social phenomenon of mass buying exorbitant houseplants for, among other reasons, plain boredom, and parading them on social media in hope of becoming the next “plant-fluencer”. The interweb and the University of WhatsApp are the fountains of wisdom on modern plant-growing, and it is here our exploration begins…
“OMG!! Look at this amazing God’s CREATION!!”
I received in the dead of night, an image thus captioned from a “plant collector”[1]. Rolling my eyes, I texted in response:
“This is a horticultural[2] hybrid, created by nursery folk through artificially breeding plants that wouldn’t naturally produce offspring with one another in nature. And to be honest, it looks gaudy and freaky!”
“What’s horticultural?” came the response, with three emojis bearing protruding tongues.
