Go
stand next to your houseplants, the ones on
the wooden stand next to the dining room
windows. (Go on...) Now put your
ear down next to the spider
plant. Get in nice and close.
Just lean over a little and listen
closely. (Go ahead...) Do you
hear a soft, whooshing sound? (Try
harder...) Now do you hear it?
That's your house plants filtering toxic
gases from the air.
It's
true. House plants can help you tidy
up the place. Common, ordinary,
everyday, potted greenery, it has been
found, can purify the air in our
homes. Even those of us who live out
most of our lives in slovenly bliss are
seized now and again with the desire to
exert control over our domestic
environments, usually when we find out Mom
is coming to visit. Now, along with Mr.
Clean and Mary Ellen, we have a new
ally in the battle against filth.
Formaldehyde
gas, the most common indoor pollutant, is
emitted by some modern building materials
and, like almost everything else, is
suspected of causing cancer. Well, put
some plants into the room and within six
hours they'll reduce the level of gas by at
least half. Spider plants were found
to be the most efficient, removing more than
90 percent of the formaldehyde within one
day. Banana plants, peace lilies and
peperomias (peperomiae?) also did a pretty
good job.
You
think I'm making this up, don't you?
Well, this discovery comes to us from the
nifty folks at NASA. Microbes found in
the potting soil are responsible for part of
the air-cleaning effect. The plants'
stomata - those are the little holes in
their leaves that they breathe through - do
the rest.
Of
course, for significant air cleaning, you
need to scatter at 
least
15 medium-to-large spider plants around your
house, which makes for a lot of
greenery. Three times as many peace
lilies and four times as many peperomias
(peperomiae? I'm still not sure) are
required to achieve the same pollution
control as the lower number of spider plants.
But if you decide to go that route, you
won't need to worry about cleaning
anything. Everything in your house
will be covered with plants.
If
we can get spider plants to clean the air,
why can't we train the wax begonia to do
floors? Perhaps the coleus could learn
to clean the oven, or at least scrub out the
sink. Maybe the asparagus fern would
defrost the refrigerator, and the chenille
plant is a natural to make the beds.
The
rat-tail cactus could be assigned to pest
control duty. The grape ivy, with its
climbing capabilities, might be just the
thing for washing walls, and the pygmy palm
could dust with ease in small spaces and
tight corners. As for the Chinese
evergreen, provided with the proper
equipment it might do an okay job on the
living room carpet, but chances are an hour
later it would just need vacuuming again.
Perhaps
the usefulness of indoor plants isn't
limited to housework. Might the aurora
borealis plant serve as a night light?
How about assigning the aloe plant to answer
the phone? (Get it? "Aloe?
Aloe?") And while I admit I don't
know what a sedge is, it sounds like
something that could really come in handy if
the plumbing backs up.
Of
course, this whole concept is not without
problems. Once it becomes known that
house plants can serve as domestic servants,
will it be considered racist to grow African
violets? Is it anti-Semitic to hang a
Wandering Jew on
your porch? Maybe we're just asking
for trouble. You'll have to get a
Green Card for your Mexican snowball.
Dennis Kucinich will introduce a bill making
it illegal to take cuttings without paying
workers' compensation, and the next thing
you know the inch plants will unionize and
refuse to propagate.
Still,
it would all be worth it if we could develop
a geranium that'll do windows.
