Pass-along plants, passing on values
Nellie Neal caught up with Felder Rushing, co-author of "Passalong Plants," at his home in Jackson, Miss., and asked him about why increasing numbers of people such as Ralph Sowell (see story) are delving into family history through plants.
Why are people seeking out and growing plants that have been in their families for a long time?
For a combination of reasons that are all related to values. They are a living reminder of a person, or something else historic, like a place. Some are just beautiful and others taste better [or have qualities not available in modern plants]. They're also easy to grow.
What types of people are growing and passing along plants?
People who want to add some texture to the suburbs. These plants enrich your life, and passing them along changes people around you - whole neighborhoods get knit together.
Are pass-along plants more prevalent in one part of the country than another, and why?
Every region does it. In the Midwest, they've always had to deal with winter, so they pass along seeds of plants, like maybe corn, that keep well. Down South, we do it for more romantic reasons. But the more you value that plant, the more you want to share, and that puts you in contact with people who share that value. Black, white, old, young ... it doesn't matter. The appreciation of that plant may be the one commonality, and it matters.
Why are pass-along plants so popular now?
We were raised by Mr. Green Jeans and want to get back there. In the 1950s and '60s, we and our parents were too busy to garden, but our grandparents still did.... We want the memories. I read this quote from Miss Eudora Welty right after she died and it really applies to this. She wrote it of memory, but it could be about plants: "... during its moment, all that is remembered joins, and lives - the old and the young, the past and the present, the living and the dead."
What are the favorite plants to pass along?
They have three things in common: First, they have multiple values - the smell, the color, the association with a person or place, whatever you like about it. Second, .... these are really tough plants. And finally, they are really easy to propagate - just short of weedy. [It's] the kind of plant that can survive the trip home on an airplane after you get the cutting.
What role does fragrance play in remembering plants?
It makes me want to grow it - I don't care that Thomas Jefferson grew four o'clocks at Monticello, I like how they smell in the evening. People move to the suburbs, and they want to smell that gardenia that Aunt Mary had in her garden. Pass-along plants connect people to their memories, and fragrance plays a big part in that.
What impelled you to grow family plants and share them?
I had early success with a prickly pear cactus that a lady gave me from her nursery for a science project when I was about 10. I think it amazed me that someone would just give me a plant! 'Course now I know it was probably growing everywhere under her [greenhouse] benches, and she gave it to me just to get rid of me. Now, I like how they make me feel, like the old orange daylily my grandmother grew. I see it here in my yard, and I think of all the daylilies in the world. I think that these will grow here in Mississippi and from Alaska to Florida. What more could you want from a plant?
Tell us a story about your plants.
I love four o'clocks because they smell good, the hummingbirds love them, and they're in bloom when I get home from work. Right now, on my porch, there's a four o'clock blooming - it's 3 feet tall and still in the plastic bag I put it in when I dug it up from my mother's yard on July Fourth. There's no dirt, just tubers. That plant was grown by my great-grandmother, my grandmother, and my mother. I remember the four o'clocks from my grandmother's house. We stayed there while Daddy was in Korea.... The seeds look like little grenades, so we used them when we played war with our toy soldiers. When this plant makes seed, my daughter, Zoe, and I will scatter them around neighborhood telephone poles, and she'll be the fifth generation to grow this plant. That's a pass-along plant.
"I've always been interested in [old-fashioned, pass-along] plants," Ralph Sowell says, "but suddenly three years ago, I got really inspired after I took each of my aunts a copy of "Passalong Plants," by Felder Rushing and Steve Bender (University of North Carolina Press, $17.50.) See interview at left with Mr. Rushing.
"[My aunts] were the most excited people I've ever seen, because they exclaimed, 'We have all these plants!'
"Maybe they didn't have every single one," he says, "but they knew them, and did indeed have most of them. Their excitement at seeing all the familiar plants got me excited, too."
"Passalong Plants" is filled with stories about traditional plants, the ones that are available as a gift from a neighbor or cousin, but rarely found in the neighborhood garden center. "The most effective way to save the plants of your childhood," the authors write, "is to harbor them in your garden and distribute seeds, cuttings, or divisions to like-minded friends, relatives, and neighbors."
