The Tropical Origins of Everyday Houseplants

This week, a bit of a diversion, but it’s still about your tropical and “exotic” houseplants.

When I was in my early 20s I began a plant collection. I was living in my parents’ house on the second floor and had taken over part of a spare room that soon became filled with tables made of 4-foot-by-8-foot sheets of plywood with fluorescent grow lights hanging above them. I can’t remember how many plants I had, but there were as many as I could fit on a surface that was two tables of 32 square feet each. Hundreds.

Plant shops were popping up in all areas of Long Island, and several large plant stores became established in Manhattan where city dwellers clamored for the tropical foliage that made their apartments jungle-like. My mother always had a few plants around, and I remember her Dieffenbachia in a large white plastic pot maybe 18 inches wide. She was not a gardener, but she loved her plant. As it grew toward the ceiling my father would cut a cane periodically to shorten it, causing the cane to sprout new shoots that would again reach for the ceiling. That one plant taught me many lessons and probably led me to the point where many years later I ended up selling “houseplants” to earn a living.

I would take my Toyota Corona, a small four-door sedan, to wholesale growers in Islip and Brookhaven where German and Dutch family-owned greenhouses were numerous. The greenhouses were formerly used for growing cut roses and orchids. The growers added inexpensive plastic hoop houses where they propagated tropical foliage (houseplants) selling them to the plant shops on Long Island and beyond.

The demand for these plants got so wild that growers in Florida and North Carolina began shipping them up by the tractor trailer load to local garden centers, and there was even a chain of retail greenhouses on Long Island (Flower Time for those who remember) with several locations each with numerous greenhouses where they sold only potting soil, houseplants, pots and supplies.

Fast forward a few years and I’m getting off an Air France jet in Guadeloupe in the French West Indies. It was my first trip south of Florida, and I remember exiting the plane and taking my first glorious deep breath of pure tropical air. It filled my lungs but also made my brain spin. Everywhere in Guadeloupe were these magnificent plants that had more than a passing resemblance to my houseplants. But my Dracaena marginata at home was in a 12-inch pot and 3 feet tall. The ones at the hotel were planted in the ground and 20 feet tall. The Dieffenbachia in my parents’ living room was dwarfed by the Dieffenbachia in a natural environment where the canes were 4 inches thick and 15 feet tall.

Strelitzia (the bird of paradise) which many indoor gardeners up here struggle with and often have to wait several years to get flowers on were everywhere with multiple flowers on each plant, and some were in 36-inch pots with a dozen or more stems in full bloom. What a dramatic and incredible site. But there was more to come.

After a week on Guadeloupe I took a quick flight to the nearby island of Dominica, my ultimate destination. I had been befriended by a gentleman who was a mechanic at Hull Chevrolet, which was near the corner of Hill Street and Windmill Lane in Southampton. Vivian Walsh worked there, and someone told me I had to meet him. Actually, I already knew him and was a big fan of his steel band the Merry Makers. But what I didn’t know was that Vivian was a native of Dominica, and he urged me to visit the island. Dominica was known as one of the least developed of the Caribbean islands and still in a pristine state.

Landing at Melville Hall airport was quite an experience. Just a single runway on an island known for its mountainous terrain and known as the island that had a river for every day of the year. The island was also famous for its mountain chickens. No, not the kind of chickens that you’re thinking, but actually very large frogs whose legs were eaten like we’d eat chicken. Dominica was also known for having the last descendants of native Carib indigenous peoples.

Off the plane and into a classic open Land Rover of the time, we headed off the airport, where there were signs of the recent revolution highlighted by the burned-out airport buildings. We had to cross our first river but a very, very long snake, maybe a dozen or so feet long, was sunning on the dirt road and we stopped. The driver said he had to wait for the snake to move on its own because he didn’t want to have a confrontation with it: a 12-foot-long boa constrictor maybe 8 inches in diameter. Seemed like a good move.

The sounds, the scents and yes, the plants were simply amazing. I was indeed in a larger tropical jungle, and it was like heaven to me. Philodendrons that grow in our homes with leaves a few inches across were everywhere, but instead of hanging from pots or tied to a vertical piece of bark in a pot, these were growing up trees on vines 60 feet tall. And instead of foliage 2 inches across, the leaves were a foot across. It was indeed one eureka moment of many that changed how I saw and began to better understand houseplants. Here they were, in nature, in the wild and it was simply magnificent.

The trip gave me a whole new understanding of why we fail with our indoor tropicals, and it made me realize that to really grow these plants well in our homes we need to have even the most basic understanding of the origins of our tropical foliage because in those origins are many lessons. These include water, lighting, potting and lastly, tempered expectations.

One of the first things I did after returning was to buy a copy of Alfred Bird Graf’s “Exotic Plant Manual.” At the time it was the holy bible of houseplants because Graf filled this nearly 900-page book with descriptions of plants from the tropics that had become our house and greenhouse tropical plants. The key point here is that if you understand where a plant grows in its native habitat — how big it grows, where it grows and what it looks like in nature — then you can do much, much more to help the struggling plant in your living room thrive and survive.

You can still find copies of Graf’s book on Amazon and eBay. There are several editions, and the later ones had a few color pictures with coverage of nearly 4,000 plants. There are surely more recent books on houseplants, but if you want the original bible of house plants you should try to find one of these.

If Graf’s “Exotic Plan Manual” isn’t enough for you then look for a copy of his 1976 book “Exotica.” It’s 1,800 pages and weighs 11 pounds, but you may be able to find a copy at your local library or through the Suffolk County library system. He also published “Exotic House Plants,” which is only 176 pages but just a mini reference compared to the others. Graf’s books are clearly dated, but while they may not contain the latest hybrids and cultivars of their rain forest (and desert) cousins the information is still relevant.

One thing that should always be in the back of your mind when you become the caretaker for the wonderful plants is their genetic origin. Most have their roots in tropical origins, where they get a good deal of their moisture and nutrients from their tentacle roots, which will happily cling to anything, but they have a preference for towering tree trunks and stumps in the tropics.

Next week back to what I promised: a look at some of the best and worst houseplants. Where to buy them, what to do with them and a few that even flower and a couple that bear fruit. Keep growing.