The Papyrus Story

Pictured here is a silver pepperomia and a papyrus. But not just any old papyrus. This papyrus is part of a legacy.

The story begins decades ago when I was a little girl in Wisconsin. My father had a garden and numerous houseplants. I, too, loved plants, but I especially loved my father's papyrus. They seemed exotic, the plants behind which Moses had been hidden as he floated in a basket in the Nile River. My father had gotten his papyrus after WWII when he lived in Florida and opened a florist shop. This, and his stint in the military, were the only two times in his life when he was not under the control of his mother and/or tied down in a hopeless marriage. Sure, after he and my mother split up, he remarried, and he seemed happier with Lyndall, but I didn't really see or hear much from him during those two decades or so before his death, so I can't be sure. But he always spoke of Florida as if it were a wonderful place. (Whenever I have been in Florida, I haven't found it wonderful, but then different places hold different messages for different people.)

So, I started raising my own payrus plants as a little girl. I do not know if papyrus are the only plants that propogate the way that they do, but I find their ways fascinating and I am always ready to tell someone the wonders of the papyrus. So, here goes.

Papyrus grow in water, and so, in contrast with any other plant I've ever known, when you take a cutting of a papyrus, you do not put the end that is closest to the roots in the water to grow new roots. Rather, you cut the stem and place the crown of the plant in the water. Of course this makes sense once you consider the life of the papyrus. When its stems, or stalks grow tall enough, they become wobbly and top-heavy. As this happens, the stem bends toward the water and eventually the crown rests on the water. From the crown, then, grow the new roots and a new shoot--the makings of a new plant.

Every time I have moved--and I have moved many times--I have taken cuttings from the mother plant and started new plants at my new location. The only break in this pattern was the summer of 2005 when I spent three months camping and traveling the back roads across the continent to Nova Scotia and back. Before I left, I placed a few cuttings in a large container of water in a section of the shed on the property I was renting to a tenant in Yucca Valley. By the time I returned, the hot desert air had zapped all the water from the container. The cuttings were crispy.

I called my former landlord and asked him if I might take a cutting from the papyrus I had planted in front of that apartment. That's how I started the plant that I have now on my back step. It is the great-great-great-however-many-times-great-granddaughter of the plant I had as a little girl.

At my 50th birthday bash, I asked friends to take cuttings of my papyrus, as a way of sharing my love of this plant and as a way of safeguarding the legacy. This way, if my cuttings ever get fried or I am on the road without a place where I can care for a plant, I will know that the papyrus pageant continues at someone else's home.