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- Welcome to "After Dark Online." Thanks for joining us again as we continue to explore our world through science, art and conversation. My name is Sam and I'm a Program Developer as part of the team that produces "After Dark." And though this program is virtual, the Exploratorium is located on Pier 15 in San Francisco on unseated territory of the Ramaytush Ohlone. We recognize that we are guests on this land and we honor the conservation and stewardship the Ohlone have offered the ecology we inhabit past, present and continuing into the future. Tonight on "After Dark Online," we're looking at the wild trend of house plants. Though bringing a plant into the home is not a new phenomenon, we've noticed that during lockdown, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of people who are collecting, cultivating, propagating and photographing their photosynthetic friends has risen. In order to investigate this a little bit further, we have two guests to share with you tonight. One, a horticulturist who works at the UC Berkeley Botanical Gardens and another, a sociologist, who's doing research into how people connect with their non-human plant friends. So if you are just curious about house plants, or want to learn a little bit more about the connection you may have with yours, this is the program for you. We'll start with Eric Hupperts, who is a horticulturist, to talk a little bit about plant basics and some things to look out for for pest management and best ways to tend to your house plant. Eric is a horticulturist at the University of California Botanical Garden at Berkeley, where he cares for the Asian collection. This diverse and historic collection includes 1,900 unique accessions of plants, including some dating to 1932. Eric's work focuses on managing living collections in a museum setting and creating moments for visitors to explore and learn about the natural world. I had a lot of fun talking with Eric and his passion for plants, I hope you enjoy this conversation. Hey Eric, thanks so much for joining us for "After Dark Online: House Plants" tonight. Tell us where you are right now.

- Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I'm beaming from the University of California Botanic Garden in Berkeley up in the Berkeley Hills and specifically, I'm beaming from the Orchid, Fern and Carnivorous Plant House, which is a big name for a small greenhouse that has some really fun curiosities.

- Yeah, it looks lush and gorgeous. And of course, plants as we know, mostly grow outside, but tonight's topic is about house plants and where you are right now is something of a hybrid, isn't it? Can you talk a little bit about what a greenhouse does and how it can serve some of your purposes?

- Yeah, here at the garden, we utilize the greenhouses for plants that aren't quite adapted to the outdoor environment here, Bay area. So we have things, species like the Nepenthes, the pitcher plants. There's a chocolate tree, a cacao and the way the greenhouse functions is being glass, it gets that solar radiation, that solar heat and holds it in. And actually, this one is working really well today. It's very sunny and I have to open the fence to make it a little more comfortable for me.

- And so you have the opportunity to visit this greenhouse as part of your job, but I'm curious, do you also keep house plants at home?

- Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's hard to say no to plants. My house is just a ton of house plants and you know, the whole gamut, like from really easy species and accessible species and fun species, like a phalaenopsis orchid, to things that are a little bit more challenging. It's, for me having house plants, it creates this avenue to have nature in the home and I love caring and nurturing things so that's another aspect to it, but just having a living creature or organism in the home, to me, it means a lot.

- And when we spoke earlier, we also talked about it being an opportunity for science. Can you say a little bit about how bringing the outside into your home kind of creates those chances to experiment?

- Oh, absolutely, yeah. Any time you bring a new a plant home, you have to go through the process of figuring out what this individual plant needs to flourish. So you could bring two different individuals of the same species home, put them in totally different parts of your house and have completely different results. So the way that I bring science into it is we think about the native range of where these species come from, what is their habitat like in the wild? What's their growth pattern? What kind of soil do they grow in? Do they even grow up in soil? Did they grow up in a tree? Do they need warmth, warm temperatures, do they cooler temperatures? What's their watering regimen? All these variables that feed into maintaining that healthy plant. And the best way, really the foundation for taking care of house plants is just to have that eye to like observe, right? So not just putting the plant in your room, walking away, coming back a week later, see what happened, but every day, as you're just going through your house, just take a peak at that plant and once you kinda understand what the normal is for that plant, then you can really pick up on the cues when something goes either aright or really good. It's really easy to just to jump in right then.

- And so what are some of the biggest environmental concerns that one would wanna look out for a house plant that they're taken care of? What do plants need in general and specifically what do plants need once they're kind of inside this controlled space?

- Yeah. Taking care of plants in the home is very different from taking care of plants outside and one of the biggest things is its container cultured. You're growing these plants in a container very different from growing plants in the ground where they have opportunities for other resources. When you're growing things in the container there's a finite amount of inputs going into that so the plant is really dependent upon what you can offer it. And those things are water, the quantity of water, the type of watering, the frequency of your watering, the quality of the water and then the light as well. That's another huge aspect is the aspect of light. Is this plant adapted to full sun? Does it want a little bit of sun, but not too much? You start to get into those nuances and kind of makes some plants a little bit more of a challenge than others.

- But those are the foundation or basics for any kind of plant survival and ways to thrive, the light and water. Can you talk a little bit just to science out for a second about what that cycle is for a plant and how it uses those resources?

- Yeah. So light specifically, plants utilize light to make food, photosynthesize. So having an access to light is critically important. A lot of house plants species chosen were ones that do really well in low light oftentimes. So there's a little bit of wiggle room which is why researching the species is so important. The light, plants will utilize their light to create food but too much light can also burn the plants. So when you bring home a new plant, oftentimes what I do is put it in kind of a medium zone of lights and kind of gauge to see how the plant reacts and slowly move it maybe into higher light. When you have a plant that wants higher light, but it is in a low light situation, it just can't hold enough sunlight in to create food to really flourish. So it's almost like not giving the plants or having a low calorie diet because the plant just can't produce enough food to really have full big leaves. It might grow weird looking for light. So being able to judge the aspect of light is really important.

- And even though each plant has its own kind of needs, can you talk about in general how that practice of observation, what you might notice in a plant as you tweak those variables as a plant parent between amount of light and water, what are some general signs that people who might be new to house plant caring could look out for? What do you look for in your plants?

- Yeah, the biggest one is know what the foliage looks like and then observe the changes in the foliage. So there's really two that jump to mind right now. One is, you bring this plant home, it's lovely and green. You read up that it likes full lights so you put it in the sunniest Southern facing corner of your window and you look at it again a week later and all of a sudden you realize there's like a big yellow spot with maybe even some darks and necrosis. Oftentimes, that's sunburn. Plants that are grown in certain light conditions that are suddenly exposed to a really bright light, can burn just like humans. So that is one of the reasons that I slowly bring them into the higher light because you don't know exactly where these plants were grown. Maybe they were grown in the greenhouse that had some shade structure at the commercial nursery. The other one is a little bit more tricky and that's when plants droop their leaves. 'Cause that really can indicate two different things. The first initial thought is, Oh, it's leaves are drooping, it needs water. Let me give it a ton of water and I'll spend the next week every day giving it more water. Well, one way to check to see if it actually does need more water is to get down into the soil and get your finger into the substrate. Maybe even an inch deep and just gauge the moisture level of the soil itself. Because while a lot of times the drooping can indicate that it needs water, you might check the soil and realize the soil is not dry it's actually very wet even over-saturated and that could be what's causing the leaves to droop. So in that specific case, you wanna step back and let the roots utilize the water that's in the pot or in the soil level already. So there's a big balance between, it's like the trifecta balance, figuring out the light, the type of soil you have and the amount of water you're giving it and figuring out the nuances between those three variables, that's the biggest aspect of taking care of house plants.

- Yeah, it sounds like there's a lot of care at least direct observation that it's not just a scenic in the background is that when you take on the responsibility of a plant that there's some intimacy there. Getting your hands dirty, literally and spending that time with the plants as well.

- Absolutely. There's this term called "plant blindness" and it kind of is what the term suggest which is as humans, we're kind of conditioned to look for certain things at a very deep core level and one of those is things that move, right? So like watching a animal running across the road. In the background along that road could be tons of orchids and if you're not cued into them, you're kind of just blind to the fact that they're there and that kind of applies at home too. You get this little phalaenopsis orchid and you look at it for a while and then all of a sudden it becomes a little bit like the scenery and just kind of blends in and after awhile you can go a little plant blind and not even notice that it's there. You know what? That happens a lot actually is tillandsias, air plants. and I'm sorry, I forgot to bring one, but they're so innocuous looking, right? And you can set them just on a counter. They're air plants. They do fine for a while on a counter but they're still living creatures and they need the same exact thing, the light, the water and in their case, they don't really need soil.

- But soil is essential to a lot of the plants that we'll have in our house in the pots and I think you mentioned reading up on plants that you get specifically to learn specific instructions but plants also have their own growth stages, right? So there's gonna be a lot of paying attention you're gonna need to do beyond the regular care. Can you talk a little bit about how much care 'cause I know it sounds like maybe a little intimidating where we talk about it that you have to develop this intimate relationship but plants are also quite resilient, aren't they? In terms of how they'll respond to the experiments that you use them with in terms of watching them thrive?

- Yeah, absolutely and one of the fun things with the commercially available houseplants is some of that research has already been done for us. The species that were selected and are sold as kind of more traditional houseplants are species that are very resilient taking care of and the wide range of care that they could receive. I'm thinking maybe like a pothos or a Monstera, the Swiss cheese plant, in the wild, they grow often as vines or as epiphytes and so they're adapted to this huge range of conditions from incredibly dark, little bit wet moist corners at the base of a rainforest tree to when they start growing up in statuary, all of a sudden they're exposed to this really bright tropical light, wind that dries them out. So the species that are available to us are already just so and they're really quite amazing that they can live in our homes which usually are not ideal conditions for plants. Sorry, I lost my train of thought. Can you repeat the question?

- No. You answered that perfectly. It's that it's worth the experiment 'cause plants can adapt in really incredible ways that we might not expect and so it's worth experimenting with many different conditions with your house plants just to see what's to allow it to thrive the most. You might not perfect it the right time but there's always a chance to bring your plant back to life or from the brink, right?

- Oh, absolutely. And as folks are getting into house plants, this is the time of year and time in our lives where houseplants add a lot of value. There is no reason to be intimidated. Plants are really accessible and with a little research, they're very resilient and with a little research, it's fairly easy to take care of certain plants. And that said, I've definitely failed as a plant parent. And each time you fail, you learn a little bit and you learn well, which variable did I maybe not pay enough attention to? Which variable did I totally forget about? And come back a couple of weeks later and look at that plant and kind of learn from that process. And you learn that even if the plant makes it and pulls through, you kind of, after observing this plant for a while and it's going downhill and you take a step back and you think about the light conditions, the water conditions, you think about all these variables and eventually you learn exactly what that plant needs.

- So this is great. I hope that we're inspiring some people to take up plant parenting. But for those who have some experience, you also obviously work very closely with plants and have a lot of knowledge. I want to dive into some deeper topics about plant care and some of the nuances that you might find. And in addition to water and light, essential for the growth cycle, soil is also important too, isn't it?

- Yeah, absolutely. And I have a few examples of different soils that are used for houseplants. The big one, the primary one of course is just a lot of organic concern and purchasing the appropriate soil for your plant if you're gonna repot it, really is kind of a foundational thing. A lot of the super cheap potting soils might not have all the variables in the soil that you're really looking for. A lot of them are mostly wood chips so it's worth it to invest in some good soil. In this example, it's a little hard to see in this light. This is mostly coir. It's a sustainable product from the coconut industry. So it's the coconut husks and such that are ground down and offer really good medium for the plant roots. Here at the garden, we mix a little bit of sand in it and really small lava rocks. And what that does is it just provides a little bit of weight to the soil because coir, the coconut mix, it's very lightweight by itself. So we add a little bit of sand to get a little bit of weight to hold the plant in place. At home I do not add sand. What I add is perlite. And perlite is a really wonderful product. It's very lightweight and it allows a lot of gas exchange. And one thing that can be a little bit surprising is that we think about plants needing to exchange carbon dioxide, putting out oxygen as part of their photosynthesis. So they utilize gases in leaves but they also need to have gases working through the soil level. So if you have a plant that isn't pure coir mix or for example, pure clay, the roots have a hard time breathing, they have a hard time exchanging gases. So that's one of the reasons that I add this perlite is it's just a wonderful material to mix in with the coir mix. And what I'll do at home is maybe you get your coir mix, you put a little bit on a pan and you add a little bit of perlite. It's pretty much just like baking. It is making a mix and you get to the point where you have the perlite mixed in with the main organic material and what you would do is you would kind of do your ratio of perlite to a coir mix based on the type of plant you're focusing on. If you're focusing on like a Monstera, the Swiss cheese plant, you kind of want maybe like a 25% perlite to 75% coir mix. That gives a lot of organic material for the Monstera to grow into. For different species, there would be different things. Houseplants, one thing I forgot to mention is house plants kind of fall into two categories. There's the tropicals and then there's more desert plants. So depending on where your winds take you with selecting your house plant, you could go in either of those directions and their care can be similar, but there's a lot of resilience when you have a desert plant that can sit and I really strong like window. It doesn't grow quite as much, but it also needs less care. So when you're kind of working with that soil media and you're observing your plants, one thing to keep thinking about is the quality of water that you're giving that plant. If you have your plant and you put like a little cup of water in there. Water always finds the easiest route to get through and so sometimes you're soil might actually be hydrophobic and it's dried out so much that it's not gonna absorb that water. So the water that you give it, which you think, oh, I water that plant once a week, what's going on? Why is it maybe not behaving the way you want it to. Maybe the water that you're giving it found a tiny little root to get out and it's actually not penetrating the entire soil top. So one way to keep track of that is to do a really strong watering now and then where you take the plant and you put it in your shower tub, or your kitchen sink and you spend some time making sure the entire perimeter of the pot is getting water all the way down and then you check the pot afterwards and check the bottom where the drain hole is just make sure that the entire soil is getting lots of quality water that it wants.

- So that's interesting news to me as someone who isn't a plant parent that when it comes to soil, in addition to what it offers to the roots, the density and material and texture of the soil is also important to the plant. But can you also talk about what other nutrients the plant needs or is getting from that soil? We talked about gas exchange and carbon dioxide, what else do indoor plants get from the soil and maybe even in comparison to outdoor plants?

- Well, all plants, they photosynthesize, create food and they also pull nutrients from the soil to help build themselves. So some of the biggest ones are nitrogen and phosphorous and for most houseplants, what they need is generally available in the soil that you would provide for them. If you have a plant that's living in the soil for a very long time, it might be worthwhile to fertilize. And because you're growing this plant in a container with container culture, the access that plant has to minerals is of course, limited to what is in that soil already, right? Like a plant outside has the ability to move its roots around and look for nutrients or nutrients might migrate towards that plant naturally. But when you're growing a in the container, it's stuck with what you're gonna provide. So making sure that the plant has access to some nutrients is important but it's also really easy to over fertilize. So that's a careful one to make sure that you're reading the label and doing it at the concentration and schedule that is recommended.

- So it sounds like with house plants, it's worth the research and investment to get getting the right soil for the job because it's really gonna make a difference as to where the plant can go because it's in a contained system as you said which makes me think of another problem that people have with plants, very specific to it, which is pests, right? That when you have these kind of monoculture environments, even if it's just one plant that they are kind of susceptible outside of the ecosystem and you have some tips about pests as well, don't you?

- Yeah, absolutely. That's one of the things that once you get all your main variables kind of locked away and are comfortable with, with the soil, the water and the light, you have these really healthy, happy plants, right? And then all of a sudden, you notice, because you're observing on a regular basis, you notice that there is a little bit of chlorosis to the leaf. There's a little bit of loss of the green color, a little bit more yellow. And the patterning of that chlorosis can really inform you. We talked about how sometimes it could indicate a sunburn. Sometimes it could indicate maybe change the watering pattern. It can indicate a loss of nutrients or not enough access to the right nutrients, but what it can also indicate is a pest. And because your houseplants, like you mentioned, they're kind of this isolated situation, right? In your home, you probably don't have a ton of entomology happening. You don't have a ton of predatory bugs coming in and looking for little tiny bugs that are sitting on plants. So you become that predator of plant pests. There's a couple of common ones that have really evolved nicely with house plants. You gotta give these pests props because they'll affect survival with their evolution. They have really harness the fact that people like to grow these plants in a monoculture in a protected green house or in your home where there's not a ton of competition or predators. So these species are pretty admirable for what they do. But that said, you wanna keep your plants healthy and happy. So what we do is we utilize this thing called IPM. I use that both here at the garden at the University but also at home. And IPM stands for Integrated Pest Management and what you're doing is you're really thinking this big picture approach to what are all these variables going into plant care that could help you deal with pests. So the four main ones on this slide are, there's cultural care and that references the type of the ways you grow the plants, so the watering, the soil, the light. There's mechanical, there's biological and chemical. So let's just run through that list. For cultural care, if you have a lot of plant pests, a lot of times that's an indication that the species you're growing, your lovely little house plants might not be getting the exact care of light, watering and soil that it wants so it's a little bit stressed. And once that house plant gets stressed, it creates an avenue for those plant pests to jump on board. Mechanical, oh, so let me backtrack, so with these different options in your toolbox, for the cultural care, if you notice there's pests and you notice that maybe the plant isn't getting quite the care it needs, maybe the water, maybe it's too much watering. So having too much water could indicate that or could result in the pests really taking over because the plant is stressed by not enough or by too much water. So you kind of slow down on the watering and really focus on that at the same time while maybe taking a mechanical approach. A lot of times plant pests will kind of congregate on the veins of plants or the underside of plants and the mechanical approach should be to take a water bottle or some sort of water pressure, or even just your fingers and just physically removing those pests. And you know what you ended up doing is you're removing the adults and those adults are the ones that are having the immediate effect on the plant but you have to think also long term because those adults have already produced eggs. Maybe there's already another life cycle of the pupa or the larva so you're hitting the adults part of that life cycle with the mechanical removal. Biological removal or biological aspects to that would be in a situation more like a greenhouse where you can buy for example, tiny little wasps that are parasitoids and it's pretty rad. What they do is they'll find their specific species that evolved with and they catch maybe that aphid or a scale insect and those parasitoid wasps will lay their eggs inside that adult aphid and those eggs will hatch and excuse me, the larva will eat that adult aphid from the inside and then they'll emerge from that. It's pretty gruesome, but it's anomaly interesting aspect. So biological, around here in the Bay area, a lot of the garden shops they will sell ladybugs or maybe green lacewings and those are good on kind of a background level. They'll eat the adult aphids, for example. And then chemical is, it's an important aspect in your toolbox and that might be one that you choose not to use but it definitely has some value too. And what I do at home with my chemical aspect of the toolbox is, isopropyl alcohol, which is very easily accessible these days, right? Isopropyl alcohol at 70% is wonderful for removing plant pests. So what I'll do is I'll have like a Q-tip and I'll spray some isopropyl alcohol on the Q-tip and I'll find exactly where those plant pests are, those little insects and I'll dab and try to physically remove and also chemically treat the plant pests. And the isopropyl alcohol doesn't negatively affect the plants at all but it does help you remove both the adults and maybe larva that you can't even see 'cause they're so small. One thing to add with the chemical aspect of that toolbox is that there are chemicals, neonicotinoids, that goes systemic and that is a choice that you need to make on a personal level if that's something that you'd wished to use. Those chemicals go, they're systemic in the plant, they're usually maybe agranular or a water-soluble addition to the soil and being systemic, they can be prevalent in the flower parts including the pollen of the plants. So if you are at all worried about pollinators being exposed to the flowers, I would suggest maybe not using systemics. But in the home environment, if you don't have any kids or pets that might eat the plants, it might be an appropriate use because it really does maintain the plants without the plant pests.

- And it looks like this toolbox the way you have it organized is maybe the order of operations you should consider your pest management. Is that right that one box should be checked before the next one?

- Yeah, totally. Good observation. So yeah, the first one is the easiest one, right? Is to take a moment and make sure that the plant is getting all the cultural care that it needs to be happy and healthy. And you could do mechanical removal and not address the cultural care and you, within another cycle of those plant pests, you're back to square one. So yeah, absolutely. Good observation. That's kind of the order of going through your toolbox.

- Great. Thank you so much, Eric, for showing us and sharing some of your knowledge, inspiring us to take care of our own house plants and revealing some of the science behind how these organisms thrive. Is there anything else that you'd like to share with the plant community novice or expert?

- Thank you for having me. Definitely do not be intimidated by houseplants. They are so much fun. They bring a lot of reward. They are just a really nice aspect to living in the current era we're living in. And visiting the University Botanic Garden here at Berkeley, is a great way to get inspiration for the world of plants and the diversity that there are in plant world.

- Thanks so much for your time, Eric.

- Thank you.

- Thank you, Eric once more for your expertise and your time. Eric will be back in the final segment of this program to do a special demonstration on re-potting your orchid. Stick around for that. But now we turn to a fascinating conversation with a researcher who is studying how people relate to their plants. Dr. Giulia Carabelli is a cultural and urban sociologist interested in the politics of everyday life. She is currently a lecturer in Sociology at Queen's University Belfast. For over a decade, she has been researching the roles of grassroots movements and contested societies and especially in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Although she continues to study political developments in Bosnia, her research interests have expanded to include work on more than human politics. Her most recent research is on the roles of houseplants during the COVID-19 pandemic and the possibility of more than human solidarity. Giulia's favorite methods are creative and collaborative especially using art practice. Overall, her aim is to produce scholarly work that can initiate and intervene in public debates in support of demands for social justice, social care and the production of a more equal and inclusive society. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Giulia and you can also participate in her study as you'll find out by following her Instagram page CareForPlants. Enjoy. Thanks so much, Giulia, for joining us to talk about some of your research about houseplants.

- Thank you for having me.

- Yeah. So I came across an article you wrote about the relationship between people on houseplants and you're a sociologist, can you tell me a little bit about how that works? Because when I think of sociology I think of people interacting with people but this is a slightly different focus on your research.

- Yeah, well, I think you're correct. Like sociology has been historically about studying societies and so people, but I think there is emerging research looking at what is "more than humans." So looking at the relationship that people develop with not other humans, but rather with plants or animals or infrastructures and so this project sort of like develops within this academic conversation. And yeah, the project started also from a very personal reasons. So there is the academic interest in more than human conversation but there is also my love for houseplants and the fact that I have lots of houseplants and I change countries and place of residence very often because of work and every time I arrive in a new house, the first thing I do is to sort of understand where are the shops where I can get plants and then go and get plants. So I am very attached to my house plants and I think that's the real reason for this project and how I started.

- And so it came from some of your personal interest and curiosity but as we know now, we're in the middle of a pandemic. Many people are required to stay at home and so there's been trends of people collecting house plants. Can you tell me what you are noticing out there in the world and that made you think about making this a research project?

- Absolutely. As I said, I had this interest in houseplant from before, but when the first lockdown started here in Northern Ireland, I found myself alone in this flat because I live on my own and all I had were all these house plants and these house houseplants became so important to my daily routines and daily lives and there were there and they were there for me and they sort of like helped me building your routines as I was staying at home and I couldn't go out and I couldn't see anyone. And so I started to thinking from there and I started then observing that I was not the only one who felt that plants were becoming more and more important. So for example, I saw that on social media starting from Instagram, there were more and more people posting about their houseplants and there were some hashtags such as, plant's mom or plant dads or quarantine plants that started trending because more and more people were posting about plants. And I also started noticing how my conversations with friends or colleagues all of a sudden moved from work or, "Where have you been this weekend?" To, "How are you houseplants?" Because like our lives, these houseplants were taking up so much space and so much time and they really became a topic of conversation. Really joyful topic of conversation, something that was also providing a distraction from all the misery and anxiety we were facing. And so this is where really the project started. The project started from my curiosity and then it expanded to look at how and realize actually that other people were experiencing the same as I was and then my curiosity became that of understanding like what is the role of these plants in people's life and do they really have a role in creating also a coping mechanism during the pandemic and during isolation? And I wanted to talk to people who are caring for plants and trying to understand their perspectives and see if there were certain common themes or interesting facts that could help me analyzing this phenomenon that I was observing.

- And as a scientist, you're familiar with research so what are some of the pieces of research you've found to confirm what you were noticing for yourself and for others in the way that they were talking about plants as being something that was anxiety reducing or made them feel comfortable?

- Well, there is another sociologist, a sociologist based in the Philippines who was doing a research very very similar to mine. So he also published a few articles that sort of, they were talking about how he knows this is the same that's and it was more mostly about how people were posting pictures of plants on social media and for example, how these plants were part of the backdrop for example, for photographing family members or loved ones and so like these plants were in fact becoming part of the family as we spend more and more time together and so they needed to be photographed and so this was something that interests him. There is research and there is a lots of research emerging in this sort of "more than human" field, which is very interdisciplinary so it's across the humanities and the social sciences. And I think that's where I was looking mostly to find sort of like the concepts that I could use for my research and the overall theoretical background for my work. So this notion that when many conversation about, also about like decolonizing the curriculum or decentering the human from the study of society, there is a great emphasis put on research that puts the non-human in the center in order to learn but also in order to understand the relationality that we create, we human create with non-humans and sort of trying to understand and also represent the world as a world of connections, as the world of relations, rather than a world where the human is standard and he's exploiting what is, for example, the environment. So this is where like my project finds grounding like academically and where I want to sort of merge the conversations I'm having with people about having relationships or effective relationships that bonds with plants, which marks my broader conversations about the relationship between humans and the environment.

- And your research method is a little bit unique because you're not starting this in a lab, but like you say, you're starting it with conversations and taking advantage of technologies that are proliferated around the world. Can you talk about your Instagram and how that is serving your research?

- Yeah. I work a lot using virtual methods so using photography, but also working with artists and when I started this project, I wanted to be virtual and I asked people to share with me photos that represented their life with plants under isolation. And I decided to create a page on Instagram for this project where I would share the photos that I received of course like with permission of the authors. And the idea was to try to understand like if people had to represent their relationship with plants without words so without creating narratives that are already digested and linear and consistent often, what would they send me? And yeah, I received a lots of photographs, a lots of houseplants, but also gardens so and at very different stages. So gardens that were like not really cared for but there were refound during the isolation and then the process of building the garden. Or house plants and they were like either beautiful plants that were showing the sense of pride that people have for their plants and how well the care for them, but also much later plants or something very interesting that people were sharing with me where plants that were rescued from supermarkets because supermarkets always have some plants and usually they're not really well cared for. They're in some corner and they're not really well-watered and then they start like having all yellowish leaf and I met virtually so many people who actually were going to the supermarkets to rescue these plants because they couldn't bear the idea that those plants were dying there in the supermarket. So I also have like these pictures of rescued plants and like the moment where the plant was rescued and then like months after, like and the plant is again like flourishing and beautiful. So a very wide arrays of photographs. And then, those who wanted, could share some words with the photographs, say what meant to them or if there was like a story behind that specific plant or the moment they where picturing. But then I also decided to do some sort of more standard like one-to-one interviews with a sample of the people who shared the photographs and these was to actually get in much deeper understanding of the relationship that people built with plants. These interviews happened, of course, virtually and then they were transcribed and then from those interviews, I sort of tried to understand if there were emerging themes. So like similarities across different stories, things that people, even if there were living in very different geographies or there were a very different age, they all felt the same and they experienced the same and that's where then my concentration went to understand if there is some sort of pattern across society, then what does it tell me as a sociologist about this relationship I am exploring.

- And so that is a great question. What is it telling you or what are the general patterns that you've noticed and as the research project continues, what other questions do you still have that might flesh out some of your initial findings?

- Yeah. Well, there are there are patterns for sure. There is some, I think that what really, I dunno, stayed with me the most was how people started telling me about plants and very different background stories. So we have those who were already plant cares and then the isolation started and they just put more emphasis or they put more attention in these plants. But there are still those people who had plants and they usually died or they had plants that they were not really a big part of their life or they didn't have plants at all and they started actually buying plants during the lockdown. So very different background story. But then this sort of very intense relationship that was built with plants during isolation meant that all of them at a certain point felt and said with almost the same words they say things like, "I really came to appreciate my plants and to understand how important they are for me. And now for me, it's really important that they know how much I appreciate them." And this for me became very, very important because I'm arguing that these relationship that humans are building or built with plants is transformative. And it's the relationship that changes the way in which people look at their house plants which is perhaps leading to a different ways of looking and understanding the environment and the role we as humans have in society in protecting the environment, in not destroying the environment, et cetera, et cetera. So this was, I think, something that emerged very very strongly from all the interviews and that's also where my attention went because I really thought it was such a concrete way to explain how this relationship was transformative. So to come to your second question where I see this actually progressing the future is that I think, because of these relationship is transformative, I think we can argue that this relationship with plants is leading us to rethink the ways in which we approach the environment and so my current and future research or the areas that want to work more on is to think at the concept of solidarity and whether we can think about solidarity, not just in between humans, but solidarities with plants and what is the politics of being in solidarity with plants and yeah, what it means if we build this solidarity with plants for the future of the world.

- And it sounds like it starts with a particular intimacy and identification. When I hear you talking about asking people to photograph the plants in their house, it almost feels like they might be sharing family photos with you. Do people explicitly talk about that? Or do they implicitly talk about this relationship? Is it something that they feel that's easy to admit that they have the solidarity? Or is that more a subtextual?

- Yeah, I think about the families also like another reason why I was so interested in plants at the very beginning before this project started because there is very interesting research about pets and how pets acquire the family norms, because pets are already treated as children or parts of the family, some sort of relationship with the human members of the family and I kind of think that plants are getting there. They're like also slowly gaining their place into family infrastructures. And I was definitely like finding this in the interviews. So I had respondents who were addressing their plants as children, or they were calling themselves plant mama or "I'm a plant dad" which was interesting for me because of course like this is something that's it's everywhere on Instagram so it's not something new, but it was interesting because my respondents would say that sometimes making a joke, but sometimes very seriously saying, "Oh my baby's not feeling very well" and then they would immediately correct themselves or say, "Oh, I was just joking. I don't think plants are really like children," which kind of made me think about how like we still, even though like for pets it's more kind of acceptable to talk about pets as family members, for plant is not yet. And so even though people feel like plants are parts of their family, they still feel a bit weird about admitting it or saying it out loud. So that was definitely something interesting as well.

- And this kind of brings us back to where we started the conversation. But I'm curious what you think if people can feel greater empathy or greater identification with non-human plants, how might that circle back to how they relate to humans? Or do you have any conjectures about that?

- Yeah, that's super interesting question actually. On the one hand, something that actually emerged from the interviews is how plants helped not only individuals who were isolating, so who were without human contacts in order to sort of find some sort of comfort in the home, but also to create new relationships with humans. So for example, there were respondents who started gardening and they didn't have their own private garden but perhaps there was a shared garden in an apartment block or a community garden in neighborhood community center and so gardening became a way for people to be together with other humans, even in a moment where that was not that easy because gardening is in the open air and there were measures in place for people to be distanced. So gardening was possible and it was an opportunity available to people to be together with other humans and this brought lots of people together around gardening, so definitely. There is something else which is people exchanging seeds or small cuttings for plants during isolation as a means to keep relationship with families and friends. So I collected many stories of people who have families in different countries and usually the summertime is the time where they will reunite somewhere to spend time together and this was not possible so they decided to exchange seeds and plant the same plants in wherever they were so they would see growing the same plants and that is something that will bring them together or people who were in isolation and they were propagating plants and then sort of gifting new plants to their friends and it was a means to tell them, "I'm still here, we're still friends, I'm thinking about you and this is a gift that I can give to you." So definitely plants were very important in also creating new networks between human or maintaining a friendship and family connections that's for sure.

- And I feel remiss. I haven't asked you yet about your wonderful array of houseplants. Since you started with your interests, do you mind sharing what you have there in the background and if you have a favorite plant or what, yeah, any stories about your house plants?

- Yeah. I don't think I can tell you what's the favorite plant because they are all here.

- Yeah, they are all listening.

- They are listening. Yes, these are all plants that, actually all those plants were bought during the lockdown. This one, Stella was here before and some of the plants, the bigger one are my landlord's plants. He left the plants with me so I'm taking care of his plants as well. But the plants I bought during the lockdown were both at the very beginning of the lockdown and I was joking like with a friend and we were saying, oh, we should definitely buy plants to help some small business survive and so we both bought a lot of plants and but they're all doing very well, yeah. I don't have a favorite plants. I think perhaps like, I am very attached to that, at the top there is a spider plant or and that plant was not doing super well the beginning of summer and I really thought I would lose her and then all of a sudden she came back to life and now she's beautiful and I'm so proud of her.

- Even hearing your stories, I'm hearing what you've heard in your research, where you address the plant personally and also gain that relationship where you get to be in relationship with the plant and aid it back to health. Can you tell me, is the Instagram still available, are you still collecting stories?

- Absolutely. So the Instagram page is called CareForPlants and I am always collecting stories so if you want to share photographs or stories of your relationship with plants, please get in touch either via Instagram or you can send me an email as well and we can start from there.

- Thank you. Is there anything else that you'd like to say to plant lovers or plant community out there about your work or research?

- I don't know. I just wish they can get in touch with me because I'm really eager to listen to as many stories as I can collect and yes, plants are our friends.

- Thank you so much for your time and sharing your research Giulia. Good luck with the project.

- Thank you for having me. Thank you.

- Thank you, Dr. Carabelli for sharing some of your findings with us. Good luck on your continued research around house plants. And thank you the audience for continuing to learn with us. Be sure to tune in next week for another "After Dark Online." We'll end tonight's show with our final segment bringing Eric back to show us how to repot an orchid. Take care.

- I love phalaenopsis orchids. I think they're pretty fascinating. They're the orchid that you see at all the big box stores, at the grocery store checkout, they come in a range of colors. They've been hybridized and it's cultivators have been selected and they're super resilient plants. I have these all over my home and I usually buy them totally at impulse and I see a color of a blue that just appeals to me. So I bring it home, it goes through its blue process and then you have this plant and it's still a very healthy plant and it doesn't have any flowers but there's future potential in this plant. So what I like to do is, this is a good stage to repot that plant to set it up for its future blooms, for some future success. With phalaenopsis orchid specifically, on a commercial level, they're often grown in sphagnum moss and a cheap little plastic pot. And these orchids do really well once you remove them from the sphagnum moss. So I wet this one down before. You can see the sphagnum moss, it's really just compact and the roots are growing on the exterior. They don't really wanna grow in the sphagnum moss. So what you do is you kind of gently because orchid roots are really breakable, pull away some of that excess sphagnum moss as much as you can without too much damage to the roots. On this specific orchid, the roots are really healthy actually. If you look at this guy, his roots are green, they're active, there's good growth right there. A lot of times you might get some root die back like right here, here's a good example. This guy right here, you can see the different quality between the super healthy new growth and those kind of senescence older growth. So those you can remove, with phalaenopsis there's kind of like the fleshy part and then there's a really strong string connecting the center of that root. So getting a lot of this excess stuff out of here where you can kind of wiggle the roots around so they're not gonna keep growing in that shape and then, you pot it up. So what I do is, my favorite kind of pot for a phalaenopsis is one of these glazed pots that has some opportunities for gas exchange. Phalaenopsis are epiphytes so they definitely need a lot of access to air in their roots. And how I'm gonna provide that is with pine bark. So pine bark is really great for phalaenopsis. That's very dark, isn't it? It's really good for phalaenopsis. It's chunky and we'll hold a little bit of water but not too much water and allows a lot of gas to move around. So I still add a little bit of sphagnum moss. So I break that up into smaller pieces and I'll mix it together with my bark and I'm gonna use a smaller clay pot because the glaze pot is just a little too big for the specific orchid I'm using today. So what I'll do is I'll put a layer of bark at the bottom, kind of to the depth that I want to plant the orchid. So I did a little too much, remove a little bit. And then I remove a little bit more. And what I'm looking for here is I really want the soil level to be slightly below the rim of the pot. And I want the soil level to be at the root crown. This is a very important concept for re-potting is the root crown is that perfect little spot where the plant is separated between it's above ground and below ground aspects. So you kind of look for that as your guide for the soil level. If you plant too low or you put the root crown below the soil level, it could kind of start some rocks to happen. If you plant the root crown above the soil level, the plant will always struggle a little bit. So I got it at the soil level I want. I mix my bark with my sphagnum moss and then I just gently kind of backfill. And you wanna make sure that there's no air pockets throughout the perimeter of the existing roots angle and once you feel comfortable that you kind of dealt with most of the air pockets. One nice way to double-check is a gardener's secret tool which is a chopstick and just kind of gently poke down. You don't wanna damage the roots while you're doing this. And then once I'm comfortable with the soil, I'm gonna put a little bit more on this side, prop it up a little bit. I feel pretty confident with that but the plant is still very easy to knock over at this point. It hasn't really grown into its space. So to make sure the plant doesn't flop over, I'm just gonna add a chopstick to hold it in place for a couple of weeks until it grows in the place. And then what I would do is put this plant in the exact same spot in your house that you had it before 'cause clearly it's probably pretty happy in that spot. Give it a really good thorough watering and then enjoy the new growth as it really starts to come into its own in it's new spot.