IntraGalactic Plant Exchange

The plant in the photo is my wild asparagus. I found it growing in one of the containers a few years ago, and at first didn’t know what it was. So I stuck it in a pot to see what happened.

At first – absolutely nothing. For the first couple of years, the original four or five three-inch spikes just sat there looking boring and taking up space, so that last year I was on the point of throwing it out. And then it suddenly exploded and grew at a rate of knots. It’s still not the most interesting of plants, but I love the bright green of the leaves, and it’s very useful for providing foliage in vases of cut flowers.

Where did it come from? It must have just drifted in on the wind. Plants do seem to be fairly good at finding themselves new homes. Watching Star Trek : Deep Space Nine the other night I was amazed to see that Bromeliads are well established on the planet Bajor, at least 50 light years from Earth. In fact, one of the characters Vedek Bareil explained that he had studied to be a gardener, and that Bromeliads were his passion. Now how did they get there? I can take teletransportation and holodecks without blinking, but the idea that identical vegetation evolved on two such distant planets is stretching it too far. Seeds thrown into space after an asteroid impact and left to boldly go where no plant has gone before ? Unlikely. 50 light years is a long way without Warp Drive …

No, as any self-respecting Vulcan would tell you, such solutions are just illogical. I suspect that it’s the result of an Interplanetary Seed Sharing scheme, or something of the sort. If you were visiting Vulcan, Bajor or somewhere, wouldn’t you want to bring a few samples back? So next time someone knocks on your door and asks if they could take some seeds from your Schizanthus or cuttings from your Chrysanthemums, just look for the tell-tale signs. Pointy ears, odd ridges on the nose or forehead, attractive blotchy patterning around the hairline – you could be taking part in Intra-Galactic Plant Exchange.

The Worst of All Jobs

It’s no good – I can’t put it off any longer. I have to wash the tree.

If you have a garden, you probably don’t think about washing your trees very often, but when you keep one on a balcony which doesn’t get any rain to wash the leaves naturally, you have no choice. After a couple of months in a pollution-ridden city, the tree is so dirty that it can’t breathe any longer. Mine’s an 8 ft Weeping Fig (Ficus Benjamina), and also prone to attacks of scale insects if it’s ignored for too long.

So at least twice a year, spring and autumn, I give it a thorough wash – as soon as it goes out on the balcony in the spring, and just before it comes back into the house in the autumn. In between it gets “dusted” and sprayed with water occasionally. But it’s a job I hate - there are an awful lot of leaves on an 8 ft tree, and they all need cleaning individually. I have tried cheating and just dunking the leaves in a bucket of water branch by branch, but the dirt sticks, so they still need wiping down one by one. I usually end up with more water over me than over the plant too.

The tree will have to come inside within the next month or so, and it’s too messy a job for indoors. So I shall do a few branches a day for the next week. I’d love to prune at the same time, but it should really be done in spring. The pruning is going to have to be quite drastic, as it’s getting far too big for the sitting room, so I’ll wait till the recommended time. It also needs repotting, as it’s leaning over at about 60° from the vertical – the result of always having to stand it in a corner. Its branches now grow out in a triangular shape with nothing at the back. The shape suits me fine, but it means that it’s top heavy and is being pulled over. However, with the limited space on the balcony the task of repotting is a bit daunting.

I’ve had the tree for about thirteen years, and apart from the first few years while I was trying to find out what position suited it best in the house (our flat is quite dark), it’s thrived. It tends to lose a few leaves in the autumn when I bring it in, but then settles down again. It needs surprisingly little water, given its size, and nothing special in the way of feeding. I change the top layer of soil in the pot once a year, and use a liquid houseplant fertiliser during the summer.

In natural conditions Ficus benjamina can grow to 20 or 30 metres. It’s one of a group known as Strangler Figs because they often start life sitting on the branch of another tree. They send down aerial roots which, when they penetrate the ground, crowd out and strangle the roots of the original tree. And mine seemed such a nice type of plant ....