the danger of houseplants

Con­fes­sion time. I have this fix­a­tion on Antarctica.

Most peo­ple who go to spas and do time in hotels with pool bars don’t under­stand it. But, as with all other per­fectly hon­or­able fetishes, it’s sur­pris­ing and reas­sur­ing the num­ber of peo­ple I run into who actu­ally get it.

Some­time in the mid 1990s I was seri­ously plan­ning a trip there, though it’s a trip that I still haven’t taken. I was trawl­ing around what was then the inter­net, doing some ran­dom research, when I came across some memos from the National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion con­cern­ing house­plants in Antarc­tica that at the time I found a lit­tle bizarre:

In line with require­ments of the Antarc­tic Con­ser­va­tion Act
[Sec­tion 4. Pro­hib­ited Acts (a) ©], and its reg­u­la­tions
[Sub­part B, Sec­tion 670.4 (f)], the Senior U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive,
Antarc­tica issued a direc­tive remind­ing U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram
par­tic­i­pants of pro­hi­bi­tions against main­te­nance of house­hold
plants at U.S. Antarc­tic Pro­gram (USAP) sta­tions and facil­i­ties.
That direc­tive is attached to this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Memorandum.

To fur­ther imple­ment the direc­tive, this Envi­ron­men­tal Action
Mem­o­ran­dum details approved meth­ods for dis­po­si­tion of any
house­hold plants (and asso­ci­ated mate­ri­als) that cur­rently may be
at USAP sta­tions or facilities.

Dis­po­si­tion of House­hold Plants

Any house­hold plants, asso­ci­ated growth media (e.g., soil), and
asso­ci­ated growth con­tain­ers cur­rently at any USAP sta­tion or
facil­ity shall be turned over imme­di­ately to the NSF
Rep­re­sen­ta­tive (or designee). Such plants and growth media shall
be incin­er­ated in a suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel (non–
plas­tic growth con­tain­ers shall be incin­er­ated at the same time).
The resul­tant ash and debris shall be ret­ro­graded from Antarc­tica
fol­low­ing approved pro­ce­dures. No plas­tic growth con­tain­ers
shall be incin­er­ated (these shall be com­pacted and placed in a
suit­able metal waste col­lec­tion bar­rel for sub­se­quent retrograde

from Antarc­tica). Spe­cial han­dling or approvals may be required
for the ret­ro­grade of these soil “con­t­a­m­i­nated” plas­tic growth
containers.

Sid­ney Draggan

Back then I thought it was ridicu­lous that any­one would be wor­ried about creep­ing char­lies, spi­der­plants, philo­den­drons and dif­f­en­bachias tak­ing over the pack ice. Even today it does seem to lean a bit towards the over­pro­tec­tion­ist direc­tion, but not by much. Cau­tion is always good with frag­ile ecosys­tems like Antarc­tica. Even if the main house­plants wouldn’t become weeds and take over the con­ti­nent, who knows what dam­ag­ing viruses and other pathogens could be stow­aways in pot­ting soil, pathogens that might threaten the few plants that live there today.

Way back when, Antarc­tica wasn’t posi­tioned at the South Pole, and it was warm enough to host many plants, includ­ing forests of Antarc­tic beech trees. In this day and age of global warm­ing, who knows how long it’d be before pen­guins would end up hav­ing to roost in fields of someone’s escaped African violets?

May 20 2008 | Categories: gardening • places | Tags: • • • | 1 Comment »