CHENNAI: Have you ever been advised to hang an aloe vera plant at your doorstep to ward off the evil eye? Did you notice how in the last few years, tiny bunches of ‘Lucky Bamboo’, once obscure Chinese plants, went ‘viral’ on entrances of small businesses?
For the nurseryman, all plants that sell are lucky, but in the popular imagination, what makes some plants attract or repel Lady Luck? To unravel this mystery is no mean feat, for its threads go back to mythology, anthropology, botany and, of-course, hard-core business. But here is some food for thought.
PLANTS WITH ‘SPIRITS’
The idea that plants have ‘spirits’ is an age old one, speaking trees in Panchatantra being a case in point. The kind of spirit a plant had, can arguably be correlated to its physical properties. For instance, medicinal plants across cultures were revered, like Tulsi in the East, Sage in the West. Hallucinogenic plants, for obvious reasons, were seen as both spiritual guides and devil’s incarnations. Aphrodisiacs, like Jasmine, had powers of attracting love, needless to say why. To the aboriginal minds, these were not merely ‘chemical’ properties, but powers of nature manifested in living forms.
APPEARANCES MATTER
Amidst dense green jungle foliage, some plants ‘magically’ stood out, like plants with bright, red leaves, which were used by Native Americans to protect them from their White colonisers. Retrospectively, that did not turn out to be very effective, but the Hawaiian Ti plant, popular in drawing rooms today for its radiant pink foliage, is still considered to be ‘lucky’.
OLD HABITS DIE HARD?
While we may no longer use plants to chase out our colonisers or heal snake bites, the associations continue to linger. For many Indians, a wilting Tulsi is not just an unhealthy plant, but a bad omen. You could be warned against keeping an Arum Lily indoors, but not many suspect that it might be a hangover of our British past – the English used them as graveyard flowers. Interestingly, ethnobotanists have noted that plants associated with immortality are often ‘aroids’ — a family of plants with tuberous roots that can remain insulated from forest fires and so are among the first to regrow. Perhaps that gives a clue as to why some houseplants believed to attract life energy, like Philodendrons, are aroids.
NOT ALWAYS DEEP
Sometimes, the reasons behind a plant being ‘lucky’ are not half as deep. Take, for instance, the ubiquitous Money Plant, which was apparently named so because its Chinese variant had leaves that were round like a coin. Once so named, it came to be associated with financial luck. That seems to have turned into a successful formula, and other round-leafed plants, like Jade, were bestowed with the powers to attract moolah. What about the Lucky Bamboo? A skeptical nurseryman once answered that for me with, “The Chinese know how to market!”
Beliefs
■ You could be warned against keeping Arum Lily, might be due to a hangover of our British past — they used them as graveyard flowers.
■ For many Indians, a wilting Tulsi is not just an unhealthy plant, but a bad omen.
(The author is co-founder of greenopia.co)