Speaker 1: Guess what mango was that well, so obviously we both
Speaker 1: heard that a bouquet of roses means love and yellow
Speaker 1: flowers means friendship. But there was one I had not
Speaker 1: heard about. Have you ever heard that sending a basil
Speaker 1: plant to someone apparently means I hate you? No, I mean,
Speaker 1: my wife actually gets me a new basil plant every spring.
Speaker 1: I thought it was because I like it on pizza.
Speaker 1: And uh, actually, you know, my my daughter actually named
Speaker 1: the last plant basie and oh bazy the basil plant.
Speaker 1: That's great. Well, if you were more skilled in the
Speaker 1: art of floriography, you might second guess that gift. And
Speaker 1: supposedly the secret language started in the seventeen hundreds and
Speaker 1: it was a way for women and harems to communicate
Speaker 1: under the guards noses. And while that origin story might
Speaker 1: be a little bit murky, the system did become really
Speaker 1: popular in the eighteen hundreds, and so between eighteen twenty
Speaker 1: seven and nineteen twenty three there were at least nine
Speaker 1: different flower dictionaries published in the US alone five That's
Speaker 1: that's crazy. But obviously now I know to watch out
Speaker 1: for people bearing basil gifts. What what other flowers should
Speaker 1: I be wary of, especially when you're married to them. Well,
Speaker 1: there are lots of things. So according to Alice, obscura
Speaker 1: hydranges mean you're heartless. Striped carnations mean a strong no
Speaker 1: to any question you've just asked. I like just the
Speaker 1: idea of having one on hand as your way of
Speaker 1: saying no. And then let me see here, we've got
Speaker 1: some others in a bouquet of oleander and bird's foot.
Speaker 1: Trefoil means beware my revenge. And also don't pin any
Speaker 1: white cartomines to your kid's clothing because that means paternal
Speaker 1: error apparently. But anyway, this is just the first of
Speaker 1: nine facts will be covering on today's show on flowers
Speaker 1: and house plants, So let's dig in AI. Their podcast listeners,
Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as
Speaker 1: always I'm joined by my good friend Manues Ticketer and
Speaker 1: sitting behind the soundproof class talking to his house plant, Robert.
Speaker 1: Why did you name it Robert again, Mango? I think
Speaker 1: for Robert plant. Uh, he's so clever. Well, that's our
Speaker 1: Palin producer Tristan McNeil Nomengo. I know you mentioned that
Speaker 1: you get a new basil plant every year or not?
Speaker 1: Is that because you're bad with plants or what? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Pretty much. I mean, my grandfather was a botanist and
Speaker 1: my mom has like a wonderful green thumb, but somehow
Speaker 1: it's skipped a generation. I'm just really forgetful about plants,
Speaker 1: and I kill off the basil everything a year. But man,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't done this yet, but I know they
Speaker 1: are all these apps and smart phases that sort of
Speaker 1: remind you to check soil moisture and whatever and and
Speaker 1: feed the plants and water them. But um, one thing
Speaker 1: I did find online was this Reddit site called take
Speaker 1: care of My Plant? Have you actually heard of this? No?
Speaker 1: What is it? Well? This is great because it's gonna
Speaker 1: be my first fact. So basically, in two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: this renator named Tyler J would decide he was bad
Speaker 1: at taking care of plants, and he decided to harness
Speaker 1: the collective force of the Internet to help. Wow. Actually
Speaker 1: that kind of reminds me of that little guy who
Speaker 1: sold shares of himself online. You know, so you could
Speaker 1: be a stockholder in him if he wanted to, and
Speaker 1: he called himself a publicly owned company, you'd actually be
Speaker 1: allowed to vote on things like whether he should get
Speaker 1: a vasectum or not. Do you remember this? It's crazy
Speaker 1: and actually his girlfriend was so infuriated by that. But
Speaker 1: I mean this is kind of similar. Every day the
Speaker 1: thread would post like today's October eighteenth or whatever, and
Speaker 1: then ask do you want to water the plant? And
Speaker 1: there was this elaborate set up, but basically, if more
Speaker 1: people voted yes than no, the plant who was named
Speaker 1: Jeff would get a shot of water. And it was
Speaker 1: kind of brilliant, like people who wake up check the
Speaker 1: threat every day places their vote. And then there was
Speaker 1: a video camera on it as well. So has Jeff survived?
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many trolls I can't imagine, and
Speaker 1: it has well, apparently it's undetermined. As of January two eighteen,
Speaker 1: it was still alive, but barely, and uh, it wasn't
Speaker 1: exactly the Internet's fault, and friendly Tyler had gone on
Speaker 1: vacation and the pot of water that was like feeding
Speaker 1: the supply had run dry, and uh, now he's actually moving,
Speaker 1: so he's taken the project offline. But it's kind of sweet,
Speaker 1: like the community is waiting for updates like anxiously, and
Speaker 1: and uh, someone even tried to hijack the thread to
Speaker 1: keep other plants alive appriendly. There's this plant named Gordon
Speaker 1: that might be getting some internet love next, but it's
Speaker 1: kind of a contentious issue. But what sort of fact
Speaker 1: do you have next? I love that we've talked about
Speaker 1: plants named Robert and Jeff and Gordon. This is pretty good,
Speaker 1: But I've got a pretty simple in here. But it
Speaker 1: kind of highlights why we should all have house plants,
Speaker 1: and that's the fact that indoor plants can actually help
Speaker 1: fight loneliness and depression. There was a two thousand fourteen
Speaker 1: study that showed that the presence of plants in the
Speaker 1: office actually increased workplace satisfaction, self reported levels of concentration,
Speaker 1: and perceived air quality. And actually, on a related note,
Speaker 1: Amazon recently unveiled an indoor rainforest of sorts in their
Speaker 1: new building in downtown Seattle. It contains more than forty
Speaker 1: thousand plants of four hundred different species for extra happiness.
Speaker 1: I guess I love then I'd love to visit maybe
Speaker 1: you know, whenever they picked their second location. But uh here,
Speaker 1: here's what I think you might like. So you know
Speaker 1: how terrariums are kind of all the rage. Now, well,
Speaker 1: our our researcher, Eaves, told me this. Apparently the first
Speaker 1: terrarium was just like penicillin and some other grade inventions,
Speaker 1: created accidentally. So it was by the scientist named Nathaniel
Speaker 1: Bagshaw Award. I've never heard of him before, but he'd
Speaker 1: originally built glass boxes for caterpillars, you know, to watch
Speaker 1: their metamorphosis. And this was way back in the eighteen twenties.
Speaker 1: But all of a sudden he noticed that this fern
Speaker 1: sport had started growing in the soil, and he was
Speaker 1: fascinated because no one was tending to it. So he
Speaker 1: started building larger glass cases in his house and y'all
Speaker 1: hard and on his roof apparently, and his largest was
Speaker 1: like two and a half meters long. And by eight
Speaker 1: thirty six he'd actually published a book on it, called
Speaker 1: on the Growth of Plants in Closely Glazed Cases title.
Speaker 1: But apparently one of his firms that he used to
Speaker 1: exhibit at shows hadn't been watered for eighteen years, and
Speaker 1: for years people used to refer to terraneans actually as
Speaker 1: Wardian cases. I had not heard that before. Well, I've
Speaker 1: got one here about one on the unintentional house plants.
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of that company called Lush. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they make those super fancy soaps, right, yeah, that's right. Well,
Speaker 1: in two thousand and sixteen, they made this bar called
Speaker 1: Wicked Magic Muscles Bar, which had these massaging seeds in
Speaker 1: it to fulliate your skin, I think, and there were
Speaker 1: some sort of being but to the surprise of some people,
Speaker 1: when the seeds got scraped off and lodged in little
Speaker 1: cracks in the shower, they started sprouting these little plants.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's the only sort of plant I
Speaker 1: could keep alive, like the kind you're not actually supposed
Speaker 1: to have. Okay, So so here's the story. I think
Speaker 1: it's funny. Have you heard about this album called Music
Speaker 1: to Grow Plants? I haven't, so I really want to
Speaker 1: hear it. Apparently, and this is from our friends of
Speaker 1: Atlas Obscure. The album was created by a dentist in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy and it kind of lends smooth cocktail party
Speaker 1: jazz with some really high pitched, irritating sounds between. It's
Speaker 1: mostly it's really terrible. And I also can't imagine that
Speaker 1: that actually works or does anything. Yeah, I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure it does either. I know plants do hear things.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've talked about this before on the show,
Speaker 1: that plants have been known to bend towards water sources,
Speaker 1: Like if they hear the drips of a leaky pipe
Speaker 1: and they're not getting fed, then they might wind towards that.
Speaker 1: Or if there's the sound of an insect chewing on them,
Speaker 1: it can alert them to turn on their defenses. But
Speaker 1: for the most part, scientists are pretty skeptical. I think
Speaker 1: the thing I really liked about this was that the
Speaker 1: dentist was insistent that this kept his plants lush and beautiful,
Speaker 1: and he really didn't want it to be turned into
Speaker 1: a novelty record, Like you didn't want this to be
Speaker 1: like created as some sort of jokes. So his record
Speaker 1: was only sold in flower shops and a few department stores.
Speaker 1: That's pretty good, all right. Well, here's a fact for
Speaker 1: you about venus fly traps. Because I know Mango that
Speaker 1: you love venus fly traps. Is it that you shouldn't
Speaker 1: feed them hamburger meat? Well, that's definitely true. And so
Speaker 1: while the greedy plant will gobble down the hamburger, its
Speaker 1: system is built for bugs, not beef. So the burger
Speaker 1: will actually harm the plant. But that wasn't my fact.
Speaker 1: Got me a little side track there. I didn't know
Speaker 1: this before this episode, but venus fly traps only grow
Speaker 1: in the wild in North and South Carolina. In fact,
Speaker 1: they're even the official state carnivorous plant in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Did you know there's the state carnivorous plants? Pretty great,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. I also love that there's probably
Speaker 1: some furious backup, right, like was the picture plant lobby
Speaker 1: is super upset about it or furious plant venus fly
Speaker 1: trops got the nod. Well, I don't know about that,
Speaker 1: but but here is what's crazy. So in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: the states started protecting their favorite meeting plant, so you
Speaker 1: actually have to get a permit if you want to
Speaker 1: collect them from the land. And in fact, it's lucrative
Speaker 1: enough that there's a whole world of families who poached
Speaker 1: the plants as their main business. But in two thousand fourteen,
Speaker 1: the state struck back and they upgraded the theft of
Speaker 1: a fly trap from a misdemeanor to a felony. I'm
Speaker 1: not kidding about this. And actually, in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: two men stole over a thousand plants and they were
Speaker 1: thrown in jail with the bond said at one million dollars.
Speaker 1: And apparently the Charlotte observers said they both had quote
Speaker 1: plant related priors. That's amazing. So I had no idea
Speaker 1: that they were so sought after, though I did know
Speaker 1: that Thomas Jefferson was a huge fan of venus fly
Speaker 1: traps and I had a lot of them around. But
Speaker 1: you know, just the idea of Thomas Jefferson feeding a
Speaker 1: little plant like kind of makes me happy. Yeah, me too.
Speaker 1: All right, well, let's take a quick break and come
Speaker 1: back with our final two facts. Welcome back to Parti'm genius.
Speaker 1: We we're talking about house plants. So well, your wife's
Speaker 1: a gardener and super into nature. Do you like the
Speaker 1: garden to I mean, I love that we have a garden,
Speaker 1: and I like being out there, and I like doing
Speaker 1: things like digging when I'm told to dig. But I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, I wouldn't consider myself a gardener,
Speaker 1: but I do like being out there, how about you.
Speaker 1: Every time my family used to garden together, I would
Speaker 1: find some excuse to come inside and make drinks like
Speaker 1: lemonade for everyone. I just hated it. Although I love plants,
Speaker 1: I gotta use that trick, all right, So what what
Speaker 1: fact do we have to close this out? Mango? So
Speaker 1: we talked a little about picture plants and venus fly
Speaker 1: traps being surprisingly valuable. But did you know how lucrative
Speaker 1: the bonds eye industry can be? No? Apparently, and this
Speaker 1: comes from cockkey dot org. There's a World bonds Eye
Speaker 1: Championship every year. I think this was the eighth year
Speaker 1: of it in two thousand seventeen, and uh it's considered
Speaker 1: the Olympics of Bonzai. But the top tree last year
Speaker 1: I went for nine thousand dollars. Can you imagine that?
Speaker 1: I mean, they are like little pieces of art, but
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine almost a million dollars for a single one.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a lot of money. But here's something
Speaker 1: else that blew my mind. So even though the trees
Speaker 1: are tiny, the fruit they grow is regular size. So
Speaker 1: there are actually pictures online of like a single apple
Speaker 1: growing from a six inch tall tree. It's insane. Wow,
Speaker 1: that is insane. All right. Well, here's my final fact,
Speaker 1: and I think you might like this. So have you
Speaker 1: heard of gilded fertilizer? Guilded fertilizer. Yeah, so this is
Speaker 1: a luxury product that comes from an organic goat farm
Speaker 1: in Switzerland, and it's basically golden manure nuggets or what
Speaker 1: they're marketing as they call it elegant manure. And it's
Speaker 1: super expensive. So for fifty dollars, you get a tiny
Speaker 1: vial of gold dusted nuggets stacked on a stick. Then
Speaker 1: you can just pop it into a house plant and
Speaker 1: it looks super modern and beautiful, but it actually also works,
Speaker 1: And if I'm being honest, I think they could probably
Speaker 1: sell really well. I mean, I thought I was going
Speaker 1: to clinch this with my big fruit, tiny tree fag.
Speaker 1: But you know the fact that people aren't just making
Speaker 1: golden manure but selling at it a high price, like
Speaker 1: it's just too good. It's really kind of genius. It's
Speaker 1: pretty smart. Well, thanks for the victory this week, and
Speaker 1: thank you guys for listening. We'll be back with a
Speaker 1: full length episode tomorrow