Last week, I talked about our “nature” of bringing nature indoors with us. I talked mostly about animals. But what about plants?

I’m not a botanist, but I do like plants…especially indoor plants during the winter. What is the value of having plants indoors? Well, first there is the aesthetic value of houseplants. They look good in your house. Secondly, there is the psychological effect of green growing plants during the dead of winter, and thirdly, houseplants filter the air!

Studies from NASA show that houseplants remove toxins like benzene, xylene, trichloroethylene, and formaldehyde from the air in your house. You might say you don’t have dead bodies in your house, so you don’t have any formaldehyde. You’d be wrong. There is formaldehyde in pressed wood, plywood, various glues, adhesives, paints, varnishes, and finishes, as well as cosmetics, cleaners, air fresheners, detergents, and by-products from a gas stove or fireplace. Houseplants remove those toxins from the air much the way that trees remove pollutants out in “nature”.

We have a few houseplants. Not as many as my wife’s friend Carmen; her house is a botanical garden. She has such a green thumb. Cindy and I, not so much, but if a plant is easy to grow and maintain we probably have one. I’ll start with the snake plant, of course. Snake plants are drought and heat resistant plants that originally came from central Africa. We have one that our son Alex propagated in his horticulture class at UNL 12 years ago. Of equal age is the peace lily that we received at Cindy’s father’s funeral. Peace lilies are rainforest plants originally from Central and South America. Our lily is our “barometer” for when to water plants. When the leaves begin to droop, its time to water.

Next on the “age of our plants list” is a companion of the peace lily from the rainforests of Central and South America. It is a philodendron that dates back to the birth of Reece, our first child, 38 years ago.

Then we have our Christmas cactus. Actually, technically it is a Thanksgiving cactus, though it did bloom in December this year. I got a starter plant from my mom 45 years ago. Cindy decided she didn’t want it so I took it to my classroom in the old school and set it on a window ledge. It thrived; so much so that one day, while visiting my classroom, Cindy saw it and wanted it back. It now lives in our box window and is doing quite well. We have a second cactus, and I do believe it is a true Christmas cactus, that not only bloomed in December, but it has a bloom now in mid-February. It came from a cutting from the plant on the table in the YMCA six years ago. That plant, to my knowledge, has never bloomed.

Christmas cacti are epiphytes. What that means is that in the wild, they grow on trees and other plants. A second epiphyte, and one that is the oldest plant in our house, is a hoya. These plants come from Southeast Asia and Polynesia. We got ours 50 years ago from my mom in Chadron. We were at a Christmas basketball tournament and Cindy carried the cutting between her feet all the way home. It and another hoya, an offspring of the first, hang in our box window. They bloom all the time. At Christmas time we move them to a spare bedroom to make room for decorations. They don’t like that and they “pout” afterward by not blooming for a couple of months.

Yep, plants and animals in the house. It’s just in our “nature”.