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