A Change in Understanding

 One night last week, my porch was filled with spectators, community members who were there to witness the opening of a bud on my night-blooming-cereus plant. We sat around talking, checking on the status of the bloom and enjoying the evening air. One 7-year-old even brought her sleeping bag and sat sketching the stages of the bud opening. It always feels magical when this unlovely gangly plant shows off its spectacular flower, a bloom that opens after dark and is finished by morning. It's a once-a-year event, and that makes it special. I had been sure it would happen while I was on my trip, but it waited until I got back. My good luck...

I did a bit of research on the plant. Mine is one of four main kinds of night blooming cereus. It's Latin name is Epiphyllum exipelalum, Queen of the Night. The other three varieties bear fruit, but apparently this one doesn't. I wondered why. Is it not near enough to its rightful pollinators? Too far north, too far from its native home? I started to feel sorry for it. Isn't bearing fruit the purpose of plants? The night blooming cereus goes through this huge preparation, growing long, slowly-expanding buds for weeks, finally opening its incredible petals, exposing the intricate inner flower, emitting a fragrance to attract its pollinators, and then nothing? This really bothered me. We are so carefully taught in school about the purpose of flowers and of pollinators. There are the petals which lure the pollinators in, the stamen with the pollen to rub off on the visitors, the tube to the ovary, and once fertilized the seed develops. The fruit protects the seeds until through one process or another the seeds arrive at a place to germinate and grow. And so the mother plant has passed on young ones for the next generation. But my night blooming cereus has never had fruit or seeds, never managed to produce young.

I was talking to my daughter about this today. She has much experience in horticulture and landscape design, much more than I do. And when I told her that I was feeling sorry for my plant because it never had a chance to make seeds for the future, I found out that many, many of our "ornamental" plants are sterile. They have been bred for attractiveness, and they have lost their ability to reproduce by themselves. This was new information to me. Even fruit trees are in this category. Many (or most?) of the fruit trees we purchase to plant cannot be reproduced by planting their seeds. Instead, we take sprigs off the mother tree and root them. I did notice that of all the pictures of the different kinds of night blooming cereus, my variety had by far the most exquisite and largest blooms. With this new information, I realize it probably has been bred to be this way, and lost its ability to reproduce during that process.

It seems a little strange that I never knew so many of our familiar plants are sterile. That was a big learning for me. But the biggest learning was yet to come. My daughter Heidi also pushed me about my assumption that a plant's only purpose is reproducing. She sternly pointed out that she has not borne a child, and yet she has purpose in her life. So true. This made me take a big pause in my thinking. I may have been narrow-minded in my perception of plants. I may have been wrong. 

I let myself imagine a world of plants where just unfolding leaves to the sun and rain is purpose enough, growing, reaching up and out, stretching their roots down, perhaps communicating with others through the mycillium network below the ground, being part of the tribe of green covering the earth. Maybe a plant can feel its own brand of plant joy just to be alive and part of it all. I like this image, this wider view. It feels right. And it helps me see the world in a new way. I have just had an old stereotype, instilled in me by my education, destroyed. And it frees my thinking, opens up my mind just a little more. I realize that I would hate for someone to say that the purpose of humans is to reproduce. At this moment, it feels like my purpose is to let my consciousness open bit by bit so that I have more understanding of my world and myself, and like the plants, experience the joy of being part of it all.