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Plant stories we love
You talk to your plants, right?
You鈥檙e not the only one鈥48% of Americans do, according to a recent survey. We might have said a word or three to our stinky "three-headed" corpse flower when it bloomed in 2020鈥
but to be fair, we live and breathe plants every day at the 91短视频. And we still love hearing stories about plants in pop culture.
Here are just a few of our favorites from 2022.


Chatting up your plants is in vogue
Of the people who talk to their plants, one in five say they do so every day, according to The plant talkers mostly chat with their houseplants, but 62 percent also talk to their garden flowers and other outdoor plants. Why? Because they believe the chatter helps plants grow, said 65 percent of the respondents.

Photo by Tyler Jones, Arabidopis plants sprouting from lunar soil. UF/IFAS.
Maybe Martian soil is next?
Soil is a big deal at the Garden. So we were thrilled to hear that, for the first time, University of Florida researchers The scientists used seeds from Arabidopsis thaliana鈥攁 small, flowering plant鈥攊n the lunar soil from NASA. Lunar soil, they noted, is radically different from soil on earth.
Once, at the Garden, we tried to grow plants in Martian 鈥渟oil鈥 that we made ourselves. Nothing happened. But, oh, the possibilities鈥
鈥淗ello, pitcher plant. What鈥檚 for lunch?鈥
Carnivorous pitcher plants, like Nepenthes 鈥楳补谤颈补鈥 in our Tropical Greenhouse, are cool. Insects slide right down the plant鈥檚 slippery 鈥減itcher,鈥 which is filled with tissue-dissolving acids and the like.
This fall, biologists for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources opened up a native pitcher plant to show a group of elementary students what was inside. They got a surprise鈥攊nsects, sure, along with...a lizard called a green anole. The lizard was probably chasing a bug on the plant and slipped. The department鈥檚 social media team didn鈥檛 miss a beat. 鈥淢ake the plant posts meatier?鈥 鈥淲e thought you said 鈥榤eat eater鈥︹ 鈥


Photo courtesy of Georgia DNR, Wildlife Resources Division
Who wore it best?
We love that the LEGO Group added a to its Botanical Collection. The bark mix 鈥渕ade from LEGO elements鈥 is a nice detail, along with the two 鈥渨andering air roots.鈥 Our orchids have wayward aerial roots, too, but ours are stragglier, and we embrace the imperfection.
You be the judge: LEGO orchid鈥攏o watering or pesky replantings鈥攐r bloom from our Orchid Show?

Photo used with permission. 漏2022 The LEGO Group.

Orchid Show bloom
A plant named鈥?
Plants are sometimes named after someone famous. At the Garden, we鈥檝e had blooms including and the Ingrid Bergman庐 hybrid tea rose (Rosa 'Poulman').
Quick quiz:
The first new-to-science plant species in 2022 was named after鈥
Leonardo DiCaprio to honor the actor鈥檚 environmental activism. DiCaprio had campaigned to help where the evergreen tree was discovered.

A: Queen Elizabeth II

B. Michael Jordan

C. Leonardo DiCaprio