390,900
If I were to ask you what a plant needs to survive - what might you say?
Water…
Sun…
Dirt…
Nutrients…
Imagine what a plant looks like right now. I bet an image of something sitting in a pot, or in the ground, comes to mind. This is likely because most plants, while they may look different in nature, are roughly the same. They need soil. They need water. They need Sun. This is also the image we are given when we are very young: potted plant, maybe with a flower growing out of it.
For those of you that have a green thumb, you may already be disagreeing with me, which is good because you know that all plants don't actually need dirt. While most plants can also grow in a hydroponics system, a system designed to replace the soil with nutrient-supplied water, there are some plants that don't need the system at all.
A few months ago, Andrew and I were sitting in a Café in New Hope, a small town on the Delaware River between New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Having breakfast and enjoying the nothing-to-do morning ahead of us, I glanced around my surroundings. It was then that I noticed, hanging in front of the tall window behind the counter, a plant. This plant was hanging in the air with no soil or water supply to speak of.
I had heard of plants like this, but I had never really stopped to think about them. These air plants don't even need hydroponics, they just need sun and air because they are capable of pulling the water and nutrients they need right from the air around it. It got me thinking just how many different plants there are with so many different needs. If you've ever tried to grow anything you'll learn this very quickly; I’ve killed many plants by overwatering or underwatering. While a lot of plants need water, sun, dirt, and nutrients, they need drastically different amounts of these things to thrive. Then we have other plants like Orchids or Paperwhites which just need water and some pebbles. Or there's the marimo moss balls, which are spherical algae which only need water and a little light.
My point is, our mind tries to simplify things. Our mind wants the world to be neat and tidy and so when we think of a plant, we are likely to go to the simplest most common version of a plant. We tend to forget about the variety of needs which lead to the 390,900 different species of plants known to science worldwide. There's such beauty in the world, beauty in variety, yet we unknowingly try to simplify, compact, and put everything into a familiar box. Maybe it's time we stop doing that? With plants, and with people.
People in this world will try to tell you what you need and when they do remember that their advice may not apply to you. Their intentions may be good, after all they see you sitting there without dirt or water and they are certain they know what you need, but in the end, they don’t. Only you know what you need to flourish and so sometimes it’s okay to smile, thank someone for trying to be helpful, then move on and do your own thing.
390,900 species of plants. Wow. What a beautiful world we live in, it would be a shame to miss out on all that.
