Domestic Phytology (HOUSEPLANTS) with Tyler Thrasher
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Oh, hey, it's your neighbor who makes refrigerator magnets out of rocks, Allie Ward. And this is Ologies. These are plants. These are roommates that are plants. Let's talk about it with this guest who I'm just going to be straight with you is very famous for an ability to do plant things, and rightly so. So he grew up loving chemistry and is a second generation botany nerd. He's hybridized plants and created new

He's an artist and an educator and an author of the Grow a Damn Plant journal, as well as the book The Universe in 100 Colors, Weird and Wondrous Colors from Nature, which features a foreword by Hank Green, who's a former Ologies guest himself.

And he's also experimented with glow-in-the-dark plant creations and opalized flowers, which we're going to get to. But first, thank you to patrons of the show who sent in so many queries for him. We'll get to them. Also, we have a spinoff G-rated podcast for kids, in case you didn't know. It's called Smologies. You can find it wherever you get podcasts. And Smologies are classic episodes trimmed for brevity in their classroom and family-friendly because here in Ologies, we talk how we talk.

with candor and emotion. Okay, so I know cursing is cool, right? Yes, yes. I'm not going to go crazy. If you did, that would be fine. I get excited.

And we do, especially on this episode. So just feel free to do a tiny imperceptible butt dance, take a sip of whatever you're drinking to celebrate the swears in this one, because it's more than usual. It's plant passion through and through. I loved it. Instant classic. But before we get there, thank you also to everyone who leaves reviews for me to read and keeps the show up in the charts with them. And as proof, I thank one of you each week, such as Shark with Underbite, who wrote, I

And to understand that review and for more on porcupine noises, you can see our recent erythrozinology episode. Okay, next.

This one though, this guest and I, we're having such a good time. We recorded for almost two hours. So with editing and some quick asides, I have no idea how long this episode is going to be. I don't really care because it's amazing. So sit in a patch of sun and learn about how much love to give a cactus, $20,000 houseplants, fungus gnats,

Root rot, what to grow in a dark basement, the rarest plants in the world and the punishments for poaching them, grow lights for people and for plants, are houseplants ethical, how to keep your cats from taking whizzes in them, if you should name your plants, how often to repot them, how to keep an orchid out of your trash can, where to find out which plants are pet safe, if one should use their own surplus blood to feed them, and what botany crimes I have committed.

with widely beloved author, artist, houseplant expert, and domestic phytologist, Tyler Thrasher. Real name. I'm Tyler Thrasher. He, him. You do so many things. And honestly, part of wanting to do this episode was under the umbrella of what's wrong with my houseplants because you roast people so beautifully. How did you start?

getting so good at plants and where did science and art kind of converge to where you're you are this like mad scientist making all this cool stuff I think the term mad scientist fits and

For as long as I could remember, I've had this mindset of being curious about the world and then applying some creativity to it. I was the kid that would go out in the garden, pluck flowers and leaves, put it in a bowl and mash it up and make potions and then convince my little siblings, like, hey, I made it. Like, we made potions and that there were fairies in the garden we were chasing and like there was magic to be found. And that was where my head was at.

as a kid. And for a lot of reasons, I think kids are just naturally curious as humans are, but also it was a, like a safe escape for me. Uh, I grew up in a very fraught household. And so hiding out in the garden, making potions, it was sort of this like

hey, the world's cool. There's magic out there. Don't look at the house. Like, look at the garden. And so that's where it all started for me. And then my dad was a landscaper. We had this really beautiful garden that wrapped around the whole house. He built...

two ponds that were connected by a stream. And we didn't have a big plot, but he turned it into this wonderful oasis. And for him, it was mental health. He would come home from work, working at the nursery, and then just go out in the garden for hours till sunset. He would turn on the chiminea, and he'd just be out there just in the garden. And I grew up with that. It was a lot of fun. And then at one point, my dad

bought his own land to open up his own nursery called Finnegan Bros. And there was a part of my childhood where we lived in the greenhouse. There was like a back storage room. Whoa.

Sounds magical. Yeah, I'm conflicted. I take that one to therapy. But we lived in the back of this greenhouse and I would wake up in the morning to the smell of fertilizer and like the sprinklers on and he'd be in there working on the plants. And so those are some of the origins where my love for plants began.

Some of us have a green thumb. Some of us don't. Do you feel like it is nature or nurture? Where does that capacity come from, that capability? I think it varies. I talk to a lot of people who see my plants or hear me talk about plants and they're like, I have a black thumb. I'm like, no, I have a black... No, you...

It depends. I mean, should this plant be in your environment? And are you growing a very picky plant? Or what's your mental health? I mean, we can dive into that. Mental health plays a big role in caring for plants. Does it? Oh, my God. Yes. Oh, my God. We will dive into that. Okay.

Oh, shit. Absolutely. No. Also, your willingness to learn, stay curious, and ask questions. I do not believe there are black thumbs. I believe there are people that ask questions and they're willing to try again.

So Tyler is raising thousands of plants, even tinkering on his own hybrids and new cultivars with succulent varieties he's named Sticky Fingers, Lemon Curl, and this fuzzy desert sprout named Crassula thrashula. But he's also collaborating with his wife Molly on these two specimens called Luca and Nova, which are very cute and

human children. How can some people rear whole ass children, but others named me can't keep a plant alive? The stakes are higher. Yeah, it's true. You'll get arrested if you do it. Yes. Family and children's services are not knocking on your door for your plants. I am.

family and children's services with your houseplants. When people invite me over for dinner, they're like, don't look in the corner. I had one time we were at a friend's house and I was sitting on the couch and I just look over and I was horrified. There's a pot, which I was like, just like drought soil. And then just this bare stem. And I look at my friend, I go, Taylor. She goes, yeah, what's up? And I said, riddle me this.

What are you still doing? What are your hopes and dreams for this pot of soil? There's no plant here. And she's like, please don't look at that. I said, I'm already looking at it. I said, I've had the misfortune of having to sit here and stare at this while I'm eating dinner.

I was like, how dare you? I mean, yeah. Okay. So plants are hard and most people treat plants like decorations, but I think plants are harder. I mean, sorry, kids are harder. Children are harder, much harder. But I just, I think when your priorities shift, if you don't work in plant care,

It kind of falls on the bottom of the totem pole. Child care, caring for your home, caring for yourself, keeping yourself sane through rearing kids and staying married. I'm sorry, but maintaining a marriage and raising kids at the same time is fucking hard. There's a reason I don't have kids, and it's for the kids' sake. Oh my God. TBH. Now, plants. Plants, on the other hand, I do have some plants, and I got my first plant...

as many people did, March 2020. So a lot of us are coming on five-year anniversary with our plants. I bought a ZZ plant, is that right? Which is notorious for being unkillable, like a very good, easy one. It's after five years, finally sprouted a new leaf. And it is the same size it was when I got it, and it's in the same pot. So-

When it comes to beginner plants and also having a nursery in your family, did you see some people who, okay, if they're new to plants, definitely go this direction, get one of these guys?

Yes, absolutely. And again, it depends on your environment, but there are plants I think universally are sort of easier to care for. And to me, those are the ones that show the warning signs pretty readily. There's a lot of plants that you don't know they're dying until they're fucking done. But there are some plants that you can look at that have wilty leaves that kind of give you a heads up and they give you a grace period.

ZZ plants are a good one. They're very hardy. They're very tough. They are somewhat drought tolerant. So if you get the water at, ah, whatever, and they will slowly wilt. So they give you a long runway.

to reverse what you're doing or whatever your plant care patterns are, but they are very slow growing. So if you want something that's a little more rewarding, ZZ plants aren't really it. Like you said, five years before you got a new sprout, that's pretty typical. And a ZZ plant, which I learned through this episode, it's short for Zamioculus zamiifolia, and it has straight stalks with thick

waxy, very hardy oval leaves growing out from either side of that middle stalk, which is called a pinnate growth. Now, the ZZ plant, it is the only plant of its genus. Maybe everything else died, and this is just a survivor. Now, the ZZ plant, thus, it's a popular one. And once you know what they are, you're going to see them in...

atria of business buildings, in restaurants, and in the homes of people you know who have ADHD. ZZs do really well in medium to low light watered infrequently. Now, I started with a ZZ plant because I read that it thrives in neglect. So the kinship was immediate. And it being 2020, the trauma bond is just unbreakable. Then there's epipremnum or what people call pothos. Those are the trailing tropical looking vine plants. And those are

Very easy to care for and very easy to propagate. You can cut them, stick them in just a cup of tap water on your fucking kitchen windowsill, and you'll have a new plant in like a month. Those are fairly easy to care for. Succulents, people think are easy because they're like unkillable. Succulents are, in my opinion, more difficult than most houseplants you will find.

bring into your home. Okay. This is validating on so many levels because especially I live in an arid climate, right? I live in LA and succulents are cute. They're cute. They're small. Some of them have spikes. Some of them have tiny flowers. They seem like a good size desk plant that won't grow into your co-worker's cubicle, like tentacles. So

I thought, great, this is going to be easy for me. And I've killed so many succulents, I think from trying to over nurture them, which I like loved it to death. Do succulents vary in terms of like how much water one needs versus how much sunlight another needs? Or if you have succulents, can you treat them kind of the same?

Oh, my God. There are so many different families of succulents and genera and then species, and they all vary. Sometimes in the same genus, the care for two different species varies. Oh, dear. Yeah.

So you got to look at where's your succulent coming from? Is it coming from like South America or like North American arid regions or areas in Texas have some really cool succulents and cacti. South Africa, a lot of the succulents I grow are from Southern Africa, like mesoms, conifitum, lithops, stuff like that. Their care varies differently. Some succulents are more forgiving.

Some succulents have a very strict watering schedule. And if you do not adhere to that watering schedule, you will kill them. Some succulents prefer to be watered at night. What? Yeah.

Wow. Some succulents prefer to only be watered during fall and winter when the weather's cooler and their pores can open. Some succulents have dormancy periods where they cannot be watered at all during the summer. Some succulents will consume and pull up so much moisture that they explode. They have no mechanism to stop because these plants are designed to like

pull in whatever reserves they can get in case there's another drought. And so they don't get overwatered in these regions, but in a greenhouse, they won't leave a thing alone and they're just going to over-nurture it and then it explodes and dies. So just like our varied and unique little brains that can feel like exploding from too much input, succulents are more delicate than they appear. And one routine does not work for every succulent. So don't go around your house looking

with a cute $46 copper gooseneck watering can like a hydration fairy every Tuesday, no matter how adorable it feels. I get it. A watering schedule will eradicate your succulent collection.

Pretty quick. Okay. How do you remember who needs what and when? And is this something you write on the calendar or is this something that you have an alarm on your phone? How do you keep track? How do you project manage that? So fuck the watering schedule. Fuck the calendar. Fuck the alarms. Got it? Got it. Okay.

I'm gonna tell you the number one teaching tool for plants. Yes, you can talk to experts. I highly recommend visiting growers and sitting in the greenhouses. I make a habit of this every year. I sit with seasoned growers, like 60, 70 years old. They've been doing this shit for decades. And you just consume, consume the knowledge. I have a plant journal I designed called the Grow a Dam Plant Journal, which is kind of like your plant Pokedex. Like you just kind of write and make observations. And that's helpful.

But by far the best education tool I've had with growing plants. Kill them. I'm going to be real straight with you here. Nothing will get your shit in gear quicker than buying a $60 plant that is very hard to come by, that a grower handed down to you.

I said, I've been growing this for decades. Please take care of it. Propagate it. Spread it around the world. Get in as many homes and greenhouses as possible. And you fucking kill it. If you have the mental fortitude and the spirit to pick yourself back up after that and keep going, I'm telling you that's some of the best fucking notes you'll ever take. You will learn so much so quick.

So you can read, you can take notes in his fantastic and elegant Grow a Dam Plant journal, or you can jot down in it the soil recipe and the flowering months and the watering record. And there's even a space provided for, quote, why, how I haplessly murdered this plant, quote,

It's helpful. Honestly, all horticultural centers should carry the Grow a Damn Plant journal. It's very helpful and very charming. But yeah, to keep your plants alive, you can ask growers, you can Google, but nothing motivates like deeply disappointing the plant people that you respect. And one such person is Tyler Thrasher himself, who will address people's plant problems in front of his nearly half a million Instagram followers. And he does it with grace and love.

honesty and tough love. I'm out having just a lovely morning in the greenhouse and I got a new submission for Tyler, What's Wrong With My Plant? Let's check it out.

Wow. Alright look, I'm gonna give it to you easy. And then we're going to scorched earth. You kept it too wet. The soil's too wet. Look how black it is. Because it's turning into f***ing petroleum. You could power a city off of this s***. It's a witch's cauldron. F***ing necromancy. That's what you're delving into with this. It's f***ing necromancy. F***ing dark arts. Look at these nasty f***ing leaves.

They look like pruney zombie lips. And the thing is, I know in this pot, I know there was more plant. So, where is it? What's wrong with my plant? It will rise again. That's what's wrong with your plant. Ewy gooey botany.

Throw the whole pot away. I hope that was helpful. In another post, he responds to a fan's photo of a flaccid cactus that's kind of drooped Salvador Dali style over the rim of its pot with the question, Tyler, what's wrong with my cactus? Oh my God. Everything. One of everything is wrong with your dong cactus.

It's rotted from too much water. It's wrinkly from not enough water. It's burnt from too much sun. It's stretched out from not enough sun. Just root out the babies right here in dry soil and then just throw the rest away and take yourself to church. When you are haranguing people for their failures online, deservedly, what plants do you see succumbing to user error the most?

It's hard to tell because people send me just pots of soil with like dried twigs. Sometimes I'm like, what? People send me a picture. I'm like, ma'am, Susan, what the fuck am I looking at? But in the situations where there is something left to discern, a lot of our fiddle leaf figs, which I tell people, look,

This is not meant to be in a house. Don't be too hard on yourself. At the end of the day, you got to go easy on yourself. We're pulling plants from habitat and then demanding that they thrive in a fucking house, what, 2,000 miles from where they're...

Truth. Absolute truth. Cut yourself a break. But yeah, fiddle leaf figs are a big one. They're very picky and they'll drop leaves whether you overwater them or underwater them. And they require like the perfect soil mixture. And soil is a big part of this. We can talk about soil. Soil is a big part of

succeeding at growing plants and then another one are cacti people will send me a mushy cactus like a yellow rotted cactus that is swampy has collapsed in on itself it's goo it's succumbed to bacterial infection root rot the whole gamut and they're like can i salvage this and i'm like no it's time to toss it um

Oh, I get a lot of plants that are so severely underwater that I'm like, okay, there's no soil left. Like it's a brick. So now you got to break the soil apart, try to sustain some healthy roots and grow it back. I'm telling you, succulents are...

They're not easy. They're hard. Okay, that makes me feel much better. When it comes to the soil, how often do you have to replenish it? And what do you think about people who pee in their plants or put their diva cup in their plants? Do the plants, are they like little shopahors where they need those electrolytes and such? So...

The soil is a big component. Typically, the rule of thumb for me is I repot my plants regardless, like if they're house plants or aeroids, tropicals, like flowering plants or succulents, about every three years. In general, new pots, new soil every three years. Got it. Now there's some other...

factor. Sometimes plants are very vigorous. Maybe you nailed the soil mixture, the environments, and they're growing rapidly. Typically, when the plant is root-bound, that's a good time to repot the soil. So root-bound is when the roots pretty much take up the entire space of the container. Whenever you pull a plant out of a pot and the roots have formed the shape of the pot, typically you tickle the roots, you break loose the soil and break

loose the roots, maybe cut off some dry dead bits, and then you put it in a pot that's one size larger. So like if you have a three gallon pot, it's time to put it in a four gallon pot. And then at some point the plant reaches maturity and you no longer need to do that. You no longer need to keep sizing up. And then at some point it's mature enough, you start taking cuttings. But yeah, in terms of like, you know, menstrual blood or urine, look,

I don't menstruate, so I'm not diving into those waters. Well, kinds of waters. Not a lot of studies on this, TBH, I looked. However, blood does contain nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, those things plants love. And gardeners have been buying something called blood meal for a long time, which is...

just that. It's powdered cow blood you put on your plants. Apparently, all that nitrogen is slamming for the plants, and then the smell of death repels plant munchers like rabbits and deer and raccoons. So people love blood meal. So if you're a diva cup person, you can dilute like a day's worth of blood in a gallon or so of water, and you see how your plants do. It might not be bullshit, although bullshit also does work on plants.

Is there a soil, a houseplant soil that's like all-purpose flour? Or do you need like a 00 semolina for some and you need like almond flour for others? Yes. Oh, there's all kinds of all-purpose soils. And a lot of them, plums suck. Yeah.

I always recommend growers or hobbyists try making their own soil mixture just to have that knowledge. One of my favorite go-to brands, soil brands, is Fox Farms. I use black gold succulent mix as my base for all my succulent soil. And then I add extra pumice, which is volcanic rock. Mm-hmm.

specifically really small granules. And then I add clay turfus and sometimes extra like grit or construction sand. Just side note, this turfus is kind of like pebble gravel made from clay. And it was initially used on baseball fields, but then people realized, hey, this is great for plants because it stores pockets of air at the roots.

and it absorbs moisture, so the roots like it, and it staves off drought, so you need to water it less. So that's what he uses for succulents. But for tropicals, he prefers, or rather his plants prefer, Fox Farms' most popular blend. It's called Ocean Forest.

which according to their website is a powerhouse blend of aged forest products, sphagnum peat moss, earthworm castings, bat guano, fish emulsion, sandy loam, and crab meal, giving ocean forest a light aerated texture. If I were a plant living in your apartment, this would be like a five-star dinner, but

but Chef Tyler tinkers a little more with that as a base. And then I add in cocoa core, orchid bark, and horticultural charcoal. But yeah, there's nothing wrong with using a pre-mixed soil. I tend to stray away from soils that

already have like slow release fertilizers in them. Preferably, you want to pick a soil where you are in control of the fertilizer regimen. I don't really like the mixtures where they're like, oh, we already mixed that in there because you don't get to pick. They don't always nail it. I would prefer to pick how and when my plants are fertilized. That's just kind of my preference. And the fertilizer has things like nitrogen or potassium or magnesium. Is it like us taking vitamins?

Yeah. So these nutrients, they serve different functions like root health. They help release phytohormones that make the plant flower, make them greener, more vigorous. Essentially, they all serve a certain function and you want the right mixture. And also sometimes fertilizers can be to the detriment of your plants. Succulents, for instance, you don't want to pump them up. You

I don't tend to fertilize my succulents or if I do, I'll dilute my fertilizer to a tenth. So whatever I give my tropicals, a tenth of that, I

I use for my succulents because they don't get a lot of nutrients in these arid climates. There's very little available and you want to mimic that. Some growers are really sticklers. They want their succulents growing really small, compact, and really hard. They don't want them big and juicy and they call them leafy. They call them lettuce plants if they're too leafy and big. Well, these plants love the sun. Their growers thrive on shade.

that, whatever. Well, when you have something that's more tropical, if it's getting more water, is that kind of like in the rainforest where things become dilute a lot? Are you diluting a lot of those nutrients out just by virtue of watering it? Or do they just need more because they tend to grow and leaf out more?

Yeah, they grow much quicker, much larger, and they have more nutrients readily available. Think about a lot of epiphytes, things that grow attached to trees or in the nooks and crannies of larger trees and branches and stuff. They thrive on leaf litter. The leaves from these bigger plants die, fall off, and they form compost where these roots are, and then water will collect sometimes, and they thrive on this mucky, composty soil.

Delicious. There's a lot of nutrients in that. You kind of want to match that. You want to give them access to sort of the same abundance of nutrients as they would have in a very leafy, thriving environment with a lot of decay as opposed to succulents that will grow in like granite or grow in between two rocks where there's like nothing but that succulent. I want to...

turn our attention to an icon of plants. Let's say something good happens in your life or something bad happens in your life. You get a very lovely orchid that is blooming. Maybe it's from Trader Joe's. Maybe it's an expensive orchid. Someone says, I'm sorry for your loss. Congratulations on the job. The orchid looks amazing for a month. And then that orchid turns to two sticks with claw clips at the top. And you say, well,

It was nice knowing you. And it meets the trash. When it comes to orchids,

What are we doing with them? How long are their weird finger roots going to be in that pot before we see another flower? When do we give up on them? When do we say, I'll see you when I see flowers? Orchids are tricky. What I understand of orchids are like the ones you get at the grocery store or the more common varieties. I mean, they're pumped up. They are made as presentable and sellable as possible.

I mean, you're setting someone up for failure when you're giving them something at peak performance by people who have calculated how to get this plant as sellable as possible. They hand it off to you, and you are not those growers. You're not that nursery that has established this regimen for decades and decades. From what I've seen, a lot of orchids are sold in just straight-up soil.

Orchids are like epiphytes. So an epiphyte is a plant that grows on top of another plant. And it isn't a parasite. It's kind of like a charming roommate who crashes for free. An epiphyte in Greek literally means plant on a plant. So they're not in the ground so much as kind of clinging to a tree. Ergo. They need very loose soil. Some of the best orchid growers I know grow their orchids in like straight orchid bark where the roots are very loose and thin.

they can sort of gather whatever moisture they can. There's specific orchid pots that are more spacious and allow the roots to have more room. They're not so tight and compact where they can rot. And the best success I've had with orchids is...

I have a rain barrel I keep outside my garage greenhouse and I just take the whole orchid and just dunk it in the rain barrel and just hold it underwater for like, I don't know, 20 to 30 seconds. Let that orchid bark and the like loose material soak up as much moisture as possible, pull it out and put it on the windowsill. And then there's orchid fertilizer. There are specific fertilizers

fertilizer mixtures that can spark flowering. But from what I've seen, the biggest culprit for like orchid deaths are like people just take the orchid and put it in like a pot full of miracle grow. And then the roots die, they rot. And then the orchid slowly decays as the leaves fall off and it never flowers again. Do they flower?

every couple of months, once a year? I mean, I know it varies by species, but how often can you expect your orchid to be like, hey, and with a flower? I think it varies largely by species. I've only grown a couple of orchids. There's always that older lady whose orchids are flowering all of the time. Here's the other thing about plant people. They specialize in things, and then they're snobs. I'm not an orchid person. I don't like orchids. I...

I just won't bother with them. So I don't really have the knowledge to talk on orchids. Yeah. I don't know shit about beer. Guess what? I don't drink beer. So don't come at me telling me something about an IPA. I don't know.

And just a side note, this week, your pod mother, Jarrett, and I went to Ireland and just in general loafed and ate scones, but also recorded a few episodes with Irishologists. But not being a beer drinker, I winced with every sip of Guinness that I was politely choking down. And I'm so sorry, Ireland. I have so much love and respect for you. But if you're ever in my shoes, a kindly bartender that I met in a dungeon gave me the hot tip that many Irish folks only order a half

pint with a side shot of whiskey and they alternate sipping between them to sweeten it up. Or you can sacrifice your pride and ask for black currant liqueur added to your Guinness, which is like adding like blueberry Tarani syrup to expensive coffee, but who cares? But yeah, we have a whole beer episode called Zymology. We have a great coffee episode. We also have a gustatology episode about taste, which explains why some people genetically just can barely swallow bitter things.

Also, this aside means that that trip was a write-off. But yeah, orchids are Tyler's beer. And according to a few sources, including Martha Stewart and a Reddit forum for orchid lovers, don't overwater, don't overwater, don't overwater, don't water on a schedule, just see what the plant needs.

They love sunlight, but not like scorching midday sun. And orchids with enough sunlight will have light green leaves, but those deprived of enough light will grow thicker and darker green leaves. Don't repot them too often because it stresses them out.

And among the 28,000 species of orchids, pick ones that suit your environment's humidity and sunlight rather than just the ones that you think look the coolest. And also be patient because they're slow growing, but a well-loved orchid can live longer than a dog.

So be nice to it. Also, another tip is to have many orchids at a time so that you always have one that's blooming and you can feel good about yourself. So strengthen numbers. Don't give up on your supermarket orchid. I know you can do it. I have faith in you.

From the cheapest plants, let's say, to the ones that get stolen and poached and kidnapped and held for ransom. I know that when it comes to variegated plants, you know a thing or two. Is it variegated? Is that how you say it? Variegated, yes. Variegated, okay. Because I always see that word, and I know that means Monstera, is...

Maybe quite a find. I remember seeing something about how someone got like a free plan or like a $10 plan off someone on like Facebook marketplace and they didn't realize it was. Can you tell me why that happens and why they are so valuable monetarily on the open market?

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So I love variegation. It's just kind of like an obsession. Variegation is when there are chloroplasts that don't contain chlorophyll. So, you know, you have chlorophyll, which is the green part of the plant, and there are cellulose.

cells that don't have chlorophyll. So they appear white or yellow, sometimes light green if there are cells above that that are green. But essentially a variegated plant is a plant that has a pattern that is like green next to white, green next to yellow. If there's a lot of anthocyanins in the plant, which are the purple, red, blue, pink pigments, sometimes variegated plants can be green and pink. But it's when you see multiple colors on the same structure.

When you have variegation, you have these patterns, like plants with white stripes, yellow stripes, stuff like that. And in nature, variegation is not ideal. There's less ability to photosynthesize, which means there's less access to glucose and the sugars that are needed for the plant to grow. So they have stunted growth. They grow slower. And Mother Nature does not typically favor these mutations. And so they'll be...

covered, and they kind of get strangled and suffocated. They're also more recognizable by pests. So in nature, you don't want to be variegated. However, in cultivation, the odds of a variegated plant are very desirable, and it's seen as like a trophy or a prize. And it's kind of interesting how that happens. But the rarity, the odds of a plant being variegated are

and in itself make the plant more valuable. And that's literally it. Now, there are some plants with patterns that are very stunning, like the philodendron pink princess, which has like a dark greenish purplish leaf with like bright pink stripes. They look interesting. But yeah, variegated plants can go for multiples more than they're worth. We're talking some variegated plants going for 1,000, 5,000, 20,000, 40,000. What?

It's what people are willing to pay. Perhaps you've been distracted by current events of the past few years, such as a global pandemic and ongoing genocides and political upheaval and the very bad vibes surrounding the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni stuff. But during this historic time, the botany books of the future will also have whole chapters to the striped houseplant boom. Variegated plants blew up.

And it's a bubble. I tried warning people that this was a bubble when I saw it. People were selling like variegated monstera for like $5,000. Thousands. And these were plants that you could buy years prior for like a couple hundred. But there was a supply crunch during the pandemic. Everyone got into plants and then people are like, well, everyone has these plants, but I want, you know, Instagram, it's all about bragging and showing off the best parts of your life. But what that does is it causes this

sort of gold rush where people are like, okay, I could buy this $5,000 plant and I could propagate it. And then I could sell five cuttings for 2,000 and make 10,000. And it works at first. It's like a Ponzi scheme. If you are the first one to get said plant, you supply the market and you can keep supplying the market and you can outrun the people behind you trying to recoup their investment. And that's where the bubble pops. And sure enough,

There were plants that sold for like 20K. And then a few years later, they get tissue culture, mass produced by the hundreds of thousands. You can get that plant for $80 now. Oh, like beanie babies. Yeah. Oh, that hurts my heart. We had a lot of questions about that from listeners. So I'm so glad we talked about it. Can I ask you questions from listeners? Please.

I want you to know that we had 48 pages of questions. What? 48 pages of questions. And I know we're not going to get to all of them, but we're going to dive in. You ready?

Yeah, let's do it. And huge thanks to our managing director, Susan Hale, for sifting through them and putting your questions into categories for us. Impossible without her. But before we ask your questions submitted through patreon.com slash ologies, we'll donate to a cause. And this week, Tyler chose the Loveland Foundation, which brings opportunity and healing to communities of color, and especially to Black women and non-binary individuals. We have fellowships, residency programs, and

and listening tours. And the Loveland Foundation contributes to both the empowerment and the liberation of the communities that they serve. So thank you to Tyler for the heads up on the Loveland Foundation, which is linked in the show notes. And thanks to sponsors for making that donation possible. Oops, you just realized your business needed to hire someone like yesterday. You know how you can tell? Because you're crying. How can you find an amazing candidate fast? Easy.

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So we planted a call for questions. With some tiers able to submit audio, let's hear what you got. Plant trauma, we're ready for it. Let me see. Francis Joy, Spate, Severo Burns. Hey, Ali. I have a question about houseplants. I'm wondering, are there any that don't require sunlight? Because I live in a very dark place.

Okay, they're audio cut out because of a blustery wind, apparently. But yeah, they live somewhere very dark. Picture maybe a nuclear silo in Montana or a converted bank vault. Are there any that can do okay in, say, a basement apartment? Good God. It's a tough one. Francis. Yeah. How do I say this tactfully? Well, I think what you're looking for is

Is a fake plant. Oh, got it. No, there are plants that can grow in low light environments. Complete darkness? No. There are some that will put up with it. They won't thrive. And, you know, they will carry on like many of us. They will crawl their way to the end of life. ZZ plants.

don't need a whole lot of light. That's a low light plant. Some epipremnum, like I said, pothos, they're pretty low light. So for other patrons asking for tips on low light plants or in Jacqueline Church's words, crap natural light, like Felix Assel, Jessica Gonzalez, Adam Silk, Pacific Northwesterner, Marissa Jacobson, Sylvia Traverio, Clara Noongasser, and elongated muskrat, the common houseplant plant

or Epiprenum aureum hails from the small heart-shaped volcanic island in French Polynesia, but it can now be found in tropical forests,

and bookshelves all over the world. And if you always stumble saying pothos, you can also call it salon creeper, hunter's robe, Solomon Island's ivy, tarot vine, money plant, or devil's ivy because it goes hard and it does okay in the dark. Now a cactus, despite those very edgy spines, can't handle the gloom of an emo life.

No succulent. There's no succulent you're going to grow that I would recommend you put in a basement or like a north-facing window, depending on where you're at.

on the planet, but there's not a single plant that I would put in a windowless basement for very long. If you want to liven it up a little bit, my recommendation is always like, you know, dried florals, get some dried florals. The dried flora is really in right now. I sell glow-in-the-dark flowers, like a little plug. There are alternatives, but no, I can't think of a single plant that I would confidently hand someone and say, yeah, put that in your basement. Yeah.

And honestly, Frances, you may be a perfect candidate for Tyler's moonbeam flora, which are dried, preserved flower bunches that are coated in this bright phosphorescent mineral powder. And you can charge them up with lamplight or even heat, and they'll glow for several hours. And Tyler tends to use invasive plants that are choking out native species, so it's an upcycle.

So you got dark, but you want plants? Get glow-in-the-dark plants. There's no watering. But if you are dead set on a live flora, what can you plug into a wall to help out? Patrons Matthew Wynn, Jay Hagan, Succulent Lover Alex Alato, Deborah Gray, and Lauren Robinson, first-time question asker, wanted to know in Lauren's words, are there any grow lights that actually work?

What about grow lights? Do those work? Grow lights do work. You got to have the right grow lights. And let's just break it down real quick. Like, I don't really have a problem with grow lights, but does it make sense to consume the energy needed for a grow light to grow a plant in an environment that won't thrive? I don't know. What's the trade-off there? Now, if you're growing like a bunch of rare plants in a very controlled environment or, you know, like people who grow cannabis and stuff like that, yeah, if you want to control

every aspect of this plant's environment, sure, there's a lot of science to be done and explored there. But if you're like, I'm in a basement, I want plants, and you have the grow lights, they work. But I don't know, that's kind of personal preference. Some people need the grow lights for themselves in the winter, from what I understand. I don't know if the same ones that help with sad plants. I don't know. Okay.

Okay, so plants mostly react to the visible light spectrum and full versus broad spectrum lights can be kind of blurry. But some folks say go full spectrum because it more closely mimics the sun with some UV rays, which a few studies have shown are beneficial for plants and can increase their photosynthesis and leaf size. Now,

What about you? Let's talk about you. Are you sad with seasonal depressive disorder? You and your plant may need the same thing. So according to a new paper titled Bright Light Therapy for Non-Seasonal Depressive Disorders, a systematic review and meta-analysis

found that it's not just seasonal affective disorder that can benefit from bright light, but regular old depression as well. So sitting next to a fluorescent white light emitting 10,000 lux for 30 minutes in the morning was associated with a 41% remission rate in people with non-seasonal depression too, which is significantly higher than the 23% rate for other treatments. But before you go...

like single click buying a light, you can get this light for free by going outside in the morning where a sunny day will deliver around 50,000 lux and a cloudy one still some reports say 10,000 lux itself. So a morning walk or even just sitting outside with a coffee can be clinically a bummer buster, but

Since you don't want to overdo it on the UV spectrum light, just make sure to use sunscreen and hats and stuff. Also, catching those rays gives you more vitamin D and access to looking at outdoor plants that you don't have to care for. One question I wanted to ask you when we were talking about succulents before, and Adrienne Mahone, Allie Golding, Tiger Udi, Sagara Young, Aurora Cullen,

And Tesalu, a lot of people wanted to know, and Tesalu, first time question asker, what's the global impact of mass growing houseplants? Kathleen Sachs wanted to know if you could talk about ways that we can purchase ethically. Are there plants that are being plucked from the wild that are being sold unethically? How do we know which one was like, this is cool to buy? This is okay. Yeah. I'm not bored.

So plant poaching and plant conservation, that's really big in the aeroid community and in the cactus and succulent community. It's a big issue in the cactus and succulent community. Now for more on this, you can see the New York Times 2021 piece titled, In South Africa, Poachers Now Traffic in Tiny Succulent Plants, which details sting operations protecting endangered species of conifitum, these cute little succulents originally from Namibia and South Africa. And they look like...

little adorable little stubby fingers or knobs. And they're sometimes called dumplings, spheroids, or button plants.

Who could blame them for wanting to steal them? Well, it turns out a lot of people because it's pretty shitty and it's happening in various continents. According to this 2021 Vox article titled, these tiny succulent plants are being poached by the thousands. Uprooting one species of the Southern California coastal succulent called Dudlea can get you six months in the clink and fines up to half a million dollars. So,

Other than not having a lot of disposable income, how can you make sure not to buy something poached?

And there are a couple of ways you'll know if you're about to buy a poached plant. One, you will not buy it on a recognizable market. So you can't go to a Facebook plant page, shopping page. No one will dare post or sell a poached plant because everyone will know, professionals know immediately, and you are in trouble. I mean, Southern Africa, yeah, some of those people, you get imprisoned. A lot of these plants are endangered. The first telltale sign is, does the plant look rough? Is it a plant that...

you've never seen, like, say, some different Lophophora or Conophytum or different cacti. You're like, oh, I've never seen this plant before.

Why haven't you? Like, why is this plant not readily available? And if the plant looks like, when I say rough, I mean like hardened, like not fresh and pampered and like beefed up with fertilizer and show ready. Like if it looks like it was picked up off the side of the road, corked, la cacti, they form cork, they do what's called corking. They look really rough and scaly. I would say if it looks like the knuckles of like an 80-year-old man who's like worked in the field his whole life,

That's a plant grown in habitat. They're big, mature. You'll know. And most people will not sell them on like a recognizable market. The chances of you coming into possession or crossing paths with a poached plant are very rare because the punishment is severe. Hefty fines, sometimes jail time depending on where you are. It's also dangerous.

Yeah, I think you're mostly safe. Most people don't part with big, mature plants. A lot of people will not part with a plant they've grown for 60 years just because they also don't transplant very well. Well, if you're on the market and you see a conifitum that's like a huge clump or a massive clump of succulents and it's like 60 years old and someone's selling it, there's a good chance it's poached. Are most of the plants that you can get through nurseries, are they...

Many generations away from being in the wild, are they cuttings and propagations and propagations down the line? Oh, yeah. You can go into Home Depot or your local plant shop or nursery. There's almost a 0% chance you'll find a poached plant. The real question is, if you ever want to get into the weeds of it, all plants that you could buy were poached at some point. They were. Now, there's different parts of the world where

different indigenous groups should have access to those plants. But it's when we colonize these plants, whenever you find out what were the origins, did some wealthy monarch or some oligarchy, did they send a bunch of explorers

to somewhere to gather them their favorite orchids or rare orchids or rare cacti. And then who were the people that were harmed on the path toward procuring and stealing those plants? But every plant you're going to buy it, you know, plant shop was taken from habitat. And that's like where tissue culture comes into play. Like there's some questions on say, you know,

like the philodendron spiritus sancti. That was one of those rare, rare plants, $20,000 a plant. And very few people have them. But there's a small colony and there's only a few specimens left. And there was some conversation on like, when you come across this, should you take a sample and tissue culture it? You can tissue culture a plant? What does that even mean? And that's essentially where you can take even the smallest amount of

plants like tissue sample and you put it in a controlled environment with all the hormones it needs and you can grow entire plants from like just cells from just a sliver of the plant. Yeah. And then you can grow,

essentially an infinite number of plants. You can just keep taking cuttings and put them in the gel with all the hormones that are needed, and you can turn a few cells into an entire plant. And when you do that, you can save a species. You can save an entire endangered species if you can figure out the protocol and the exact balance of hormones needed to cultivate and tissue culture that plant. And then that always crashes the market because then

A million of these things flood the market. And that's better. That is better than someone bragging about a $20,000 plant when there's only five left in habitat. Fuck that person. Congratulate the scientists that have saved an entire species. And yeah, okay, the growing media for plant tissue culture is kind of a super nutrient-rich goo like the vats in The Matrix.

And it has compounds called auxins and cytokinins that help promote cell division and they stimulate root growth and they help regulate dropping of old leaves. Just cloning babies as much as you want with the right recipe. It's so interesting to think of like baseball cards that you could just cut off a tiny bit of the baseball card and have the same baseball card.

grow and then the part that you clipped off would just grow back in terms of investment-wise? It only works for the first people that have the baseball card. I have a sport monstera. And a sport is when a plant produces a random mutation and then you separate it and make a new plant. So like a quick example, nectarines are a sport of peaches. Nectarines are essentially just a hairless peach, a fuzzless peach. The thornless blackberry is

that you can buy and plant in your garden is a sport of blackberries. Blackberries have thorns. They're delicious, but they're a pain in the ass to gather and forage. But then one day, you know, a grower has blackberries and they see one branch that doesn't have thorns. And they go, Oh,

Well, that's convenient. So they cut that off and they root it out and they make an entire plant that's thornless. And then they cut that plant and make more that are thornless. And once you stabilize it and you can say this thing will always be thornless, you have a new cultivar that's also a sport. So this is just like we learned in the palmology episode all about apples and how all your favorite apples were cultivated by grafting branches onto hardier rootstock. Apple

Apple growing is a wild business. Also, when you eat an apple and it turns brown, that's not rust in their terminology. Apple rust is a disease that causes these little orange circles on the leaf, and it's a plant fungus. And a plant fungus is also called a real bitch. But you mentioned fungus, which I'm glad you did. Never a bad time to talk fungus. Sarah Filo, Tristan Vaughn, Rachel Guthrie, Tiger Yodi wanted to know, how do we...

avoid mold. Sarah wanted to know, some of my houseplants, looking at you, Dracaena and Pothos, why can't I pronounce any of these? Pothos? Pothos, yeah. Pothos. Sprout mushrooms and other fungi. Is this bad for my plants? How can I tell the good type or the bad type of fungus? And John Ginter wanted to know,

Is it bad to grow mushrooms near your houseplants? Because I did, and I swear my soil is infested. So fungus and houseplants, let's talk. Okay. I'm not a mushroom fungus expert, but you see these yellow mushrooms come up, and that's the one I get all the time. And they're mostly harmless. Now, there's different fungi that you'll find growing on the plant. And you can differentiate which ones are beneficial or harmless and which ones are harmful.

based on how the plant responds. The telltale sign that you have a fungus that is going to kill your plant is when it grows on the leaves. So you'll have leaves that will have like yellow circles that look like burn marks almost, or they'll be orange. And there's also a fungus called rust that,

that literally it looks like powdery rust on your leaves. Some succulents get it when there's poor air circulation and a lot of humidity. And so when your leaves start wilting, they're turning yellow, and sometimes you'll see like maybe not a repeating pattern, but like a repeating shape on various leaves. That's a sign that it's a fungus. And at that point, it's all hands on deck. You will need to pull the plant out, repot it, rinse it off. Like

Soapy water, dunk the roots, clean it, toss the soil. Do not reuse the soil. Or if you need to, sometimes people, if they have really good soil, they'll put it in the oven and bake it. Yeah, it's like people sterilize their soil for that reason. Like to kill any fungi, any spores or any bacteria. Like for seedlings too. The seedlings are very susceptible to fungus and algae because you grow them in such humid, damp environments. So you can sterilize your soil. But...

When you see that, those rings and the burn-looking marks on your leaves, you need to toss the soil completely, rinse the roots, repot it, and probably get a fungicide. Fungicide? Fungicide? Both?

Fungicide, whatever. Someone's going to care. Fungicide. Someone's going to care and get nervous about saying it. So let's go back in time to 2019 when I interviewed the late but eternally loved mycologist, Dr. Tom Volk, and I had to clarify it for myself off mic. But more importantly, how do you pronounce fungi? Because Tom said fungi, and I think I said fungi. Okay, so I asked my good friend, Wikipedia, and they said, this is how you pronounce it in the US. Okay, defunct.

definitively this way. Got it. Okay. Oh wait, there's another audio clip or you can pronounce it this way. Okay. Oh, there's a third way. Okay. Or? Oh my God. Okay. So just say however your mouth wants to say it. Now, if your plant's yellow leaves have you keening and planning its funeral, take a beat,

Take a breath. Because apparently yellow leaves are just like coughing in humans. Could mean a lot, could mean not much. But the signs of a fungal infection on your plant could be tan to reddish brown to black spots on the leaves, large irregular lesions or blighting of the entire leaf with big brown areas, the newest leaves being the most affected, dropping leaves, or a dead plant.

this could be a fungus problem. However, John. The times you see mushrooms sprouting, I've never seen that and it was harmless. They usually just kind of die out. And very rarely do you have like a super controlled environment where there's mushrooms like in all your plants. But air circulation is a big one that usually helps with the mold. You don't want a stale, humid environment. So circulating fan around your plants is always good.

Well, we had two questions. It's so funny. Every time you answer something, I'm like, oh, that makes me want to ask about this, this, this, this, this. Okay. On kind of that topic, Rachel Guthrie and Jade Buckham Randall wanted to know if you should quarantine a new house plant before setting it near other ones. Should we quarantine plants? Every time. Really? How far away? A whole separate room. There's a lot of things that kill plants. There's bacteria, there's

there's pests, a big one are pests, mealybugs, spider mites, fungus gnats, aphids. And sometimes those eggs can take a few weeks to hatch. And so yes, maybe you get a plant and it looks fine.

The nursery probably sprayed the foliage, the upper part of the plant, so it looks good. And you're like, cool, I'll bring this home. But under the soil or on the nooks and crannies of the leaves or on the tips of the fresh stems where mealybugs love to live and thrive, you bring it into your collection. Three weeks pass, and those eggs start to hatch. And you get the larvae and then the pupa, and then they all form the adult pupa.

insect or pest, and then they start hopping from plant to plant. And I'm going to share a quick horror story that might put everyone into gear here. Please do. The one time I didn't quarantine.

One time, I had this guy, an acquaintance, a peer, who was like, I'm selling my collection. I'm moving on in life. And I said, I would love to buy your collection. And he was serious, very serious. And I bought his collection. And I met up with him. He was like, everything's good. There's no pests. All is well. And I was like, okay, cool. I trust you. And I brought his collection into my greenhouse. And I have a very extensive, rare, aeroid, variegated Monstera collection. And I let my guard down. Wow.

And then I hit a very severe depressive episode, which mental health and plants go hand in hand. I had a depressive episode for a couple of months and came out to my garage greenhouse one day and all my plants were covered in mealybugs. And I had to toss half of my collection. No. And the other half I'm still treating. And all was well until I brought the wrong plant and I didn't quarantine it. And if I had quarantined it for just one month,

I would have seen that plant covered in mealybugs and I would have just tossed it. I would have just tossed it and saved what was years of collecting. So yes, always quarantine your plants for maybe a minimum of three weeks to a month. Put it somewhere where it'll grow. Don't put it in your closet. Put it somewhere where it'll be fine. But that's enough time for things to hatch. And that's what you're looking for. And then after a month, yeah. What if you get a couple of plants at once? Do you quarantine them in different places?

It depends on what you have access to, but if I get a couple of plants from the same grower or same source, I'll quarantine them together because...

chances are they have the same thing. If it's like two different plants from two different people and I have 80 plants in my main collection, I'll quarantine those two together. I can handle those two separate rather than trying to treat 80 plants at once, which I would not wish on my worst enemy. Well, okay. A lot of people, Tom catches sea days.

In Danny First Time Question Askers words, how do I get rid of the little flying black bugs that hang out in the soil and are everywhere in my house? I already killed one of my plants trying to get rid of them and I don't ever want to do that again. And I will say I had a therapist once myself.

This is an Allie Ward story. I had a therapist once who had beautiful plants and fungus gnats, and I would spend most of the session going, where is it? Where is it? There it is. I should have brought him some sort of fungus gnat aside, but what's going on with fungus gnats? How do you get rid of them? So fungus gnats, I think the concern with them is a little like...

They're horrible. They fly up your nose. They, oh my fucking God. Yeah. A stray fungus gnat will send me to therapy. So fungus gnats love a damp environment where there's decay, rot, fungus. They eat whatever's in the soil. And a lot of people say like, oh, just dry out the soil. That's how you get rid of your fungus gnats. Sure. Sure.

but the eggs will be there for a couple of weeks. So say you're like, I'll dry it out for a week and the adults, they just starve. Well, there's still eggs. And the second you water it, boom, they come back. Drying it out won't work. And then people sell those stupid little like sticky fly paper. Oh,

Uh-huh. Thanks. Yeah. So if you listen to our carnivorous phytology episode on meat-eating plants, you could get a sundew, which is sticky. And yes, it loves to eat alive creatures, but they too can be hard to cultivate for a newbie. You can hop online. You can buy these little cute-shaped sundews.

fungus gnat traps to stick in the plant soil, kind of like a garden tag. But Tyler says that while those adorable traps are technically tacky, he has a tackier, uglier, but more effective solution. The issue is when they become adults and they rise up out of soil, most of them are going to miss the flypaper. And you can

water your plant with some sort of insecticide, but you don't always get the eggs. You'll kill the adults, but sometimes you won't kill the eggs. So this is the one thing I've done that has always worked. Everything else is, I'm just going to say it with the utmost confidence. Everything else is bullshit. You're going to buy that yellow sticky paper that comes with a little stupid blue tube and you get your hand stuck on it and it's sticky. Oh, yeah.

like the fly trap, the vertical fly trap that you hang from your ceiling. It looks like apricot fruit by the foot rolled into a 35 millimeter film canister. And you may have seen them in movies about like a gross diner with a squeaky screen door and a waitress who looks like she smokes Marlboros. You're going to get

Depending on how many fungus gnats, how many pots you have, you're going to get like two of those. And you are going to coil it around the surface of the soil on your pot. And you're going to do this with a mixture of drying out your soil if your plant can handle it. You're going to wrap it around and then let your soil dry. And when you water it and you disturb it, all the adults will fly up and most of them will get stuck. Not all of them.

Most of them will get stuck on the flypaper that you wrapped around. Don't hang it vertically because you're going to miss most of the flies. They'll get stuck.

And then just wait, dry it out again, let those eggs hatch, and bam, do it again. And every time you do that, you're removing huge quantities of the adults, which means there are fewer adults laying eggs, which means the onslaught of fungus gnats will dwindle over time. On top of drying it out and giving them very little to eat, I have eradicated fungus gnats, entire fungus.

swarms of fungus gnats in as little as a month just by coiling the surface with that paper and then dry out water, get them to come up and trap them. Oh, bless you for that. That is going to change everything.

That's going to save a lot of people therapy pills in the first place, which moving on to that, Megan Walker, Megan Walker, Anastasia Press, Addie Capello, Mariana Alvarez, and Nicole Kleiman wanted to know, in Nicole's words, is there a good...

plant to help with depression. Anastasia wanted to know, do dead houseplants negatively impact mental health? And Megan wanted to know, what are the mental health benefits of plants so that I may justify another?

Okay. Oh, man. I mean, the mental health talk. Okay, let's get into it. Yeah. Mental health. I'm going to just say it. Your mental health is priority before plants. It is. You're not going to care for plants if you don't have the capacity to care for yourself. So you're going to double bum yourself out.

You find, not everyone does, if you find plants are beneficial to your mental health, yes, get enough that you can care for. Now, you can overwhelm yourself. I got my first houseplant during the quarantine of 2020, like millions of other scared, confused people who had nothing but time and a yearning for something to love. A lot of people were isolated, a lot of anxiety, depression, loneliness with people.

substituted for plants. People were like, these plants are like enhancing my quality of life. So they kept buying more and more and more. And what you saw across the board a couple of years after people are like, I can't do it anymore. I'm overwhelmed. And that is impacting my mental health because you did this heavy investment into these plants that you don't have the capacity to care for. And so you can overdo it. So the first question is like, what's your capacity?

Can you care for five really kick-ass big plants that will make your home feel alive where you can watch something grow? And I believe that seeing something grow and believing something can grow is to believe in the future. And there is very little that helps someone with depression more than fighting loneliness,

And believing in the future. If you can hold out for the future, that gives you something to live for. Coming from someone who has had a lot of hopelessness in his life, I've lost people to suicide. It's not a taboo conversation for me.

Very much agree with this. And please see our wonderful recent suicidology episode, which we'll link in the show notes. It is imperative that you believe that there is a future. And so caring for plants is big. You care for a plant, you say, this plant's going to flower and I can see it getting this big, you know, it can reach my ceiling. Those tiny little things, they add up. It's tiny, but they add up. So if it's going to help you and not overwhelm you, yes, it helps your depression or your mental health, thousand percent.

Low entry costs there. Are there plants that help with depression? Again, something you can see the results of. If it grows and it's vigorous, yeah. Hell yeah. You see that new leaf unfurling? It's going to cheer you up. Yeah. Growth, growth, growth. That is important. I have a hack.

that I've picked up where a lot of plants kind of slow down during the winter. A lot of houseplants will with less daylight, temperature changes. So my main collection is divided between aeroids that thrive in spring, a lot of sunlight, and then succulents that are dormant during the summer but

actively and vigorously grow during the winter. And this helps me immensely. When I'm feeling down, alone, I struggle during the holidays, I'll go out in my greenhouse and most of my succulents flower and grow during winter. And I will just sit out there for a couple of hours, smell the flowers, and it gives me something to look forward to during the cold, isolated months of winter. And they conify them flowers and

I have a thing where my conifitum flower and I invite all my friends over because most people never get to smell conifitum flower. Most humans don't even know what a fucking conifitum is. I don't. You should look them up. They're the coolest succulents in the world. Some of them have cube-shaped leaves. Some of them have like little lips that look like they're wearing lipstick. Conifitum are fucking cool.

And I love them. They flower during the fall. I get to cross-pollinate them, make hybrids. And it gives me something to do. And cross-pollinating and growing plants from seeds, again, is believing in the future. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to stick around and look at these seedlings or see if I made a hybrid. So get you some winter-growing succulents if you struggle with seasonal depression, things that will grow during the summer, and things that will grow during the winter. Yeah, that's my two cents. Oh, that's great.

That's such good advice. And especially if you maybe can't have a pet too. Although there are a lot of people who wanted to know what kind of plants are good that are pet safe. And several people wanted to know what to do about cats eating

Eating your plants, digging in your pots, RitaMNX04, tips, tricks for thwarting asshole cats, digging in pots, please. So a lot of you have plants and cats, such as Casey Cat, Lori Pemberton, Gail Lane, Jacob Morvay, Ploy Keener, Oscar Couchchain, Abigail Riggle, Betsy B, Liz, Tasha Downey, Wynn Constantini, Olivia Lester, Amanda Reagan, Baz Pugmire, Sylvia Treverio, Kathleen Sachs, Hope J, and Edward McGregor.

That was on a few people's minds, but plants and pets, which ones, maybe which ones to like avoid so that you just, you know, like any that are toxic or just do not mix well.

There's a lot of plants that are toxic. I don't have, like, that's not a concern for me. So that's not information I hold on to. But a lot of aeroids have salicylic acid that tastes really bad. And if you've ever eaten Monstera fruit that wasn't ripe, it

burns. There's these tiny little needle-like crystals that will burn and they sting. Those are harmful for pets. Lilies are really toxic for cats and pets. In terms of keeping cats, and I've had this issue with my work. I've had a few clients go, I have this crystallized cicada and my cat knocked it off the wall and broke it. I don't know what to tell you. My dad had this trick

He would get those little like spiky, we call them gumballs, little spiky seeds that like seed pods. And he would litter them on the surface of his soil, like his pod and house plants. And that kept our cat out of them. They wouldn't mess with the soil because it was like these like pokey seed pods. It's not aesthetic. Like it doesn't look good. But if your concern is caring for plants over like your like Instagrammable house or whatever, whatever. Yeah.

So if you have a sweet gum tree near you, you may have noticed, well, first you'd notice a buckling sidewalk. And for more on that, we have an episode about street trees called Carobology. But you may have also seen so many little Horton, here's a who seed pods. They look kind of like a tree.

cherry mixed with a medieval mace ball. So grab some of those. I don't know, probably heat them up to kill bugs. I don't know. And then put them in your plants and watch your cats defeat when it decides not to leave a turd in your Monstera. Oh, speaking of plants that are toxic to pets, you can Google the plant you're thinking of getting, but in general, some popular plants on the no list are Monstera's, rhododendron, sago palm, typhoon,

tiger lily, and jade plants. And I cannot read this miles long list from the ASPA, but I will link it on our website. But I do want you to know that in reading this list, I found plants with names like naked lady, lady of the night, and mother-in-law's tongue. Just in case you're wondering if botany has been historically a male dominated field.

But luckily, we found a good one. And he's not just a plant guy. Tyler also does some pretty wacky chemistry with living but now deceased things, including teaching people how to transform dried flowers into luminescent glow-in-the-dark spooky ghost bouquets and making cicadas that glimmer with these crusts of what looks like rock candy but is not.

And he describes his crystallized collections as, quote, "...work that delves into the art of synthesizing crystals, specifically on dead shit."

Many of you already knew this. Okay, a few people, you mentioned crystallization and Grace, first time questioner, wanted to know, I would love him to talk more about his science and what inspired you to work to create the first opalized flower and if you could talk more about that. And Rebecca Morrison said, hi, Tyler, we took your moonbeam flora class at the Denver Botanical Gardens. I'm so excited that you're going to be on. Awesome.

Also, I'm wondering if you name your plants like that's Judy and that's Greg, like Greg prefers to have less water and Judy wants a lot. That's my first question, interrupting the others. But Grace wanted to know, yeah, how did you create the first opalized flower? You ask a lot of questions. Okay, opalized flower and then

Naming plants. Okay. So the opalized flower, I'm running into some terminology, which maybe your listeners can help me with. I called it an opalized flower because I make crystallized insects. And so my terminology is thing covered in thing is like thing. But in science and geology, for something to be opalized, it has to be completely or partially replaced with opal or like silica or

making potch, which is not precious opal. The opalized flower that I had shared was a flower encased in synthetic opal I grew in my lab in an experiment to see, like, can you get silicon nanoparticles to bind to different objects? And I had this idea because I fell in love with opal a few years ago when someone sent me an image of an opalized crab claw, and it was really cool. And they said, hey, this reminds me of your work.

do you think you could ever make something opalized someday? And I was like, I want to. And that little seed got in my head. And I don't know who that person was. Maybe they'll remember, but I obsessed over it. And I spent years learning about opals, synthetic opals, growing opals. And then that turned into, I want to make opalized insects. I want to make opalized flowers. And I have dedicated this year toward making some of the world's first

I'm learning that I should probably call them opal encased because I've had a couple of geologists say, well, that's not really opalized. I'm like, I don't fucking care. I am growing opals adjacent to flowers, and I'm exploring this.

He, of course, documented the science of it, filming from his lab in a white smock and gloves holding a vial of preserved material. So what I think is happening is that there are oils or something being sapped from the flowers because of the ethanol in my opal solution.

That's altering the pH and the structure of how the silica particles form or how they settle to form that cubic lattice that diffracts light. So oligites, oligists, what's a better name for a flower that's covered in opal, but it hasn't become an opal because they're weird and pretty and not technically opalized, but not not opalized sort of? And it's a prototype. It's not like the final vision. But for me, I was like, this is fucking cool. Like opal and flora.

I'm just tinkering and it's just the beginning. I don't know where this will take me or if I'll finish it, but I'm having fun now and that's genuinely, that's fucking all I care about. Well, I was going to say it's a cicada year coming up. Yes. I think so. Yeah. And your cicada in a cicada is one of my favorite things you've made. Can you tell me a little bit about the inception of that? It's a plush cicada that unzips to have an emergence, which is genius and gorgeous.

And of course, we have a cicadology episode about periodical and annual cicadas, and we will link that for you. But heads up, in May 2025, brood 14 will be emerging like loud, horny sleeping beauties from their 17-year slumber in 12 states nationwide.

including Georgia and Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, West Virginia. You can see cicadamania.com for more on this if you love them like I do. I love cicadas. It was one of the first things I crystallized. To me, when you look at the narrative of alchemy and transformation, cicadas, they nail it.

I'm the crystallized insect guy. I never thought about doing a plushie. And then it just hit me. I was like, what if I did like a molting insect plushie? I was like, a cicada, like a cicada nymph that you unzip and pull an adult cicada out of.

And these were manufactured by DTFBA, which is Hank and John Green's wonderful Don't Forget to Be Awesome merch store. I sent them some sketches and I said, I don't know if this is something you guys can do, but let's try it. They said, oh, we can do this. And then they sent me a sample. I posted it online. I was like, I made a plushie? Like, you guys don't, I'm not a plushie guy, but I made one. And we sold 6,000 of them like immediately. I was like, oh.

Oh, I can do plushies. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. I don't want to forget the naming the plant question. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Thank you. I had brought a few of my neglected houseplants into the studio to show Tyler, but I was ready to be hurt as badly as I had hurt the plants. I don't name my plants. Okay.

I think my first instinct is to say something really. Bring it on. If you have to name your plants to care for them, it's a skill issue. Yeah, that's a good point. No, I'm kidding. I don't name them. Maybe that might help you. Yeah, you got to look at like Jezebel or look at Carl and be like, fuck, I killed you, Carl. If I had named this...

Do you think I could take better care of it? One was a tall succulent with woody stems and teardrop-shaped leaves, and it had been thriving recently. It had grown so much taller.

So what you're holding is a Crassula ovata. So it's also known as the jade plant. One of my favorite genera. Yeah, the long stems with the droopy leaves, that is called etiolation or etiolated, which means it's stretched out. So the plant is trying to get as much contact with sunlight as possible, which is what causes them to stretch. And when they twist like that,

The back of the stems are trying to also get access to sunlight, so they stretch and contort to get access to sunlight. Succulents will do this readily. They will grow very quick and stretch out to reach the light. You want them compact. You want them tight and compact. You want them to grow slow. You don't want them to grow long and leggy. That's unideal.

Tyler, I thought I was doing a great job on that one because it was growing so much. Three out of ten. Yeah, three out of ten. This guy. I held up another. It was a spiky three-inch little baby planted in a small pink brontosaurus pot.

with a hole where the saddle might be for the plant sticking up. I got it as a gift in 2019. And it was not dead dead, but I could see the mushy, pale yellow suffering with my eyes, and I could sense it in my soul. I don't know about this guy. Yeah, a little cactus. This is a little cactus. Again, a gift. Dead, halfway up, and then got a little...

little sprouty phallus at the top. I was like, oh my God, it's still alive. Is there a drainage hole under that very decorative dinosaur pot? No, there is not. Okay. Yeah. There we go. Okay. Drainage is very important for succulents. Now, cacti are a little hardier. Some are more hardy. The hat,

that people say is like just put big rocks on the bottom of the pot for drainage what you end up with is a swamp at the bottom of the pot and then that causes bacterial growth mold fungus gnats oh my god fungus gnats love that shit the best thing you could do for your succulents is drainage drainage drainage you want a drainage hole that's like the size of a quarter minimum you don't want tiny drainage hole you want like a decent size drainage hole preferably multiple of them

And the reason is, is you don't want excess moisture sitting in there. Succulents will pull up all

up all the water they can get and then they will burst and rot or it's a safe haven for fungus and bacteria that will eat away at the roots and those roots take longer they take longer so the plant can't keep up gets overwhelmed and dies essentially my rule of thumb for succulents succulent soil is you want to be able to take the entire succulent the entire pot dunk it in a bucket of water pull it up and you want the water to run out as quick as it hit the pot so like

If you water the succulent, you want like no more than one second before that water is coming out the bottom of the pot. That's when you have great drainage. And in that case, there's very little risk of you overwatering a succulent if it can like empty out excess water quick enough. Ah, I got it. So it's just, it doesn't stick around. That swamp at the bottom is painful. My final one is, this is Hylia? Mm-hmm.

So it's a 10-inch plant. It's got round leaves, kind of like a bouquet of green silver dollar pancakes on stems. And this plant was apparently very popular a few years back, which is weird that living things can be popular, like when Jake Gyllenhaal has one, but when was the last time you saw a puggle? But...

At the base of this plant, rising up from its parched soil, are a half a dozen smaller clones. It's got a lot of babies in the bottom, and I'm so afraid to replant the babies because I'm afraid I'm going to hurt the roots by breaking them up, by tickling the roots too vigorously. And so I'm just procrastinating on it, and I don't know what to do. And so it's just been in here being like, please repot me, and I haven't.

Yeah. Pylea peperomioides. That's one of my favorite plant names to say. Peperomioides. Oh, fancy, fancy. That's an easy one. And yes, they readily pup. Here's what I would say. I would say fucking get in there and rip them open.

little bastards out. You're not going to hurt it. You can take a knife, take a fucking butter knife and go down there and just fucking just cut. Really? Oh my God. You should see how I treat my plants. Yeah. And they're okay with that? Oh my God. Yeah. Oh yeah. Okay. Last two questions, I always ask you what you love and hate about your work the most, but if you don't mind, because this has been so requested.

overrated underrated most overrated house plant most underrated house plant oh yeah let's roast a plant which one do you what plant do you want to say most overrated house plant oh my gosh someone asked me this like a few months ago and i was very definitive in my answer oh what was it i fucking hate this plant what was it uh play some jeopardy music calathea

Really? Calathea. Fuck a Calathea. Let's shit talk. What's up? Okay. First off, not that great. Not that showy. Like, they do too much. They are weak, thin, papery fucking husks. And, oh my god.

Every fucking calathea you buy. And I don't even have to say it. Here's how fucking bad this is. I don't have to finish the sentence for every plant person that listens to your podcast to know what I'm about to fucking say. Every calathea.

Comes with spider mites. Every fucking one. And they love those worthless, fucking papery, thin, susceptible leaves. They can just eat right through them. And you know you got spider mites when there's this thin, dusty web that goes across it. I swear to God, there is not a single person that has bought a Calathea that did not have to fight spider mites. I don't believe them.

I have bought Calathea. I'm like, I checked them. I'm like, no spider mites. Oh my God. The day has come that I can have a Calathea. The nurseries, they spray them. They treat them.

Because they know. And you get it, and those eggs hatch, and two weeks later, webs covering your calathea, and that's it. They are made to die. They are made to be thrown away. You want to burn some money? You want an excuse to throw away a plant? Buy a calathea. And then risk spreading spider mites. There's no...

fucking reason we should be cultivating calathea they're not worth it they're not fun to look at they're not fun to grow they are pain in the ass they are a burden to society she's the least exciting to look at i don't want to have coffee with the person it's like i love calathea

No friend of yours. No, I'm being an asshole. No, this is good. Are you kidding? I want to look up a calathea now. Okay, wait. I'm going to look up a calathea. Okay, so calathea plants, they have long stems with these broad, maybe palm-sized leaves that can be one color or sometimes have a lighter color.

tiger striped pattern and yes if you hop on plant forums for calathea you will encounter a lot of sorrow over tiny white specks with legs oh for that yeah yeah no that not worth it i hate calathea now i hate calathea i'm gonna start a club i didn't know about them until five minutes ago and now i hate them okay underrated plant which one are people sleeping on

Okay. There's a lot. I think one that is accessible. What's one that people are sleeping on? This one's accessible. Okay. Drosanthemum.

I love a Drosanthemum. So it's in the mesm family. They are winter-growing South African dew-loving succulents. They collect a lot of moisture from dew, and they're sparkly. They look kind of crystallized because they have something called epidermal bladder cells, which are these little glass-like bubbles on the outside of the plant that store water. So when sunlight hits them, you know, sunlight—

and they sparkle. When you twist them around, they look like sour candy. Yeah, and they're easy to care for.

Yeah, I would say, I guess you know, there's just Santham. They're weird. And if you got like a macro lens or like a microscope, they're really cool to like look up close. And for more on macro photography and another Oklahomologist, you can see a periology with insect photographer Joseph Saunders, aka ReelsOnWheels on Instagram, if I may plug his work here. Also, turning back to Tyler and plugging, what do you want to plug?

Tell me, what's something exciting coming up? What's coming up in the world of Thrasher? I got a lot going on. So, you know, I'm on Instagram, TylerThrasherArt, TylerThrasher.com. I have a Patreon where I share my experiments. I'm turning my Patreon into a live science creative journal where I detail all my experiments from start to finish and the results. Even if they're failures, that's a part of the science. It's going to be my open journal. Mm-hmm.

And we're doing a lot of things this year. We're going to be out in San Diego at the Curiosity and Oddities Flea Market. San Diego is March 29th and March 30th. So we'll link the Oddities Flea Market right in the show notes in case you're taking a road trip to San Diego this weekend. I am jet lagged, but I am tempted. This has been...

So many years in the making. You went so easy on me and it's too nice. If I were an anonymous person on Instagram, I would be crying right now. And I'm going to be honest with you. I'm going to name my plants because guilt is what works best on me.

guilt and personal responsibility. I'm not saying that it's healthy. I'm saying it's effective. Okay. So here's the science. Okay. You name your plants, give them little name tags. And a year from now, hit me up and we'll see. We'll see. We're going to check on back. Bulletproof. Okay. Thank you for having me. Oh, the pleasure is all mine. It's an honor. You're the best.

So ask smart people, not smart questions, because this really the best way to bloom and to not kill another living thing that you love. So thank you so much to Tyler Thrasher for being on. You can find him at Tyler Thrasher Art on Instagram and all over the place. We will link him in the show notes. His website and his books, including Grow a Damn Plant Journal and The Universe in 100 Colors are linked in the show notes as well, as is the Loveland Foundation. We also have so many other links. I

at the show page on our website at allyward.com slash ologies slash domestic phytology. We are at ologies on Instagram and blue sky. I'm at allyward with one L on both. We have t-shirts and hats and totes at ologiesmerch.com. You can ask questions before we record at patreon.com slash ologies. If you did not like the uses of fuck and shit and asshole, we have made you shorter kid-friendly episodes called Smologies for free wherever you get podcasts.

They are available in their own G-rated feed just for you. You're welcome. Thank you to Sunshiny Scheduling Producer Noelle Dilworth, the lovely Erin Talbert manages the All Edges Podcast Facebook group, Kelly R. Dwyer makes the website, Aveline Malick is our professional transcriptionist, Susan Hale managing directs the whole shebang so we don't rot, and

Editors Jake Chafee and lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio are the nutrient-rich dirt to our blooms. Nick Thorburn grew the theme music. And if you stick around to the end of the episode, I tell you a secret. And this week it's that I had this house plant that was a gift in 2019 as a housewarming gift. And I was weirdly superstitious about it. My brain decided that the health of that plant totally determined my future. Oh.

Like, if I didn't take care of that plant, my career would absolutely tank. It's completely illogical. So that was one plant that I really paid attention to, tried to water it, tried to make sure I didn't kill it. And then I got really, really sick a couple years ago with pneumonia. Like, I went to the hospital twice. I was a bit of a mess. So I took some time off and I even went out of town. And I had a very kind, sweet friend who, to surprise me when I came back, had repotted all of my plants yesterday.

including that one, which she put for some reason into a tray of succulents in the backyard in the August heat. This was an indoor house plant. Needless to say, RIP that plant. And I had superstitiously made sure that plant was okay for like five years and it was dead. And I was like, you know what? It's fine. It's just a plant. I'm being weird. And then two weeks later,

Apple changed its iOS. Any podcaster, you say the words iOS 17 to a podcaster and you will see their soul die a little bit. It just changed the way that subscriptions and downloads worked. And so it meant that there was a dip for a little bit, but now it's fine. It literally happened right at the same time. And I guess the moral of this story is...

that maybe plants are magic, maybe superstitions are real, maybe they're just plants. And yes, I'm going to name mine, but no, I'm not going to have some weird obsession that any plant has the power to determine my future. Either way, they're just plants. It's going to be fine. We're fine. Okay, bye-bye.

The fuck? I'm gonna educate you and cuss your ass out at the same time. Let's learn some shit.

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