Six Cool Plants I Would Find A Way To Kill

by Stacy Conradt - October 6, 2007 - 9:05 AM

When we bought our first house last year, funny things started happening to me. I found myself subscribing to every Martha Stewart-esque magazine I could get my hands on (and the anti-Martha…I highly recommend ReadyMade).

A part of this new, domesticated me included a completely newfound urge to garden. Guess what? My thumb didn’t get any greener when we acquired a mortgage. I’ve killed pumpkins, grown a tomato-free tomato plant, and demolished not one, not two, but three hanging baskets of different varieties. I’m working on a fourth.

Despite killing everything I touch, I’m still determined to get some cool plants. Below are a few that I look forward to brutally massacring sometime in the near future.

Plant: The Sensitive Plant

What Makes it Cool: When the plant is touched, its leaves immediately fold together. They do the same thing at night due to the absence of light.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: Probably by letting it stay out on our porch too late in the season. The Sensitive Plant suffers when temperatures drop below 65 degrees.

(Also known as the TickleMe Plant, the Shame Plant and the Prayer Plant)

Plant: The Bladderwort

What Makes it Cool: It’s carnivorous. Any organism that gets too close to the tiny hairs on the bladderwort will trigger the trap and thus be sucked into the bladder chamber of the plant, where it starts to be digested. Although it sounds like something out of Little Shop of Horrors, the trap is so tiny that it can only catch small insects like mosquito larvae.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: It’s mainly aquatic, so chances are pretty good that I will try to plant it in soil.

Plant: The Corpse Lily

What Makes it Cool: It smells like decaying flesh or rotting meat. And it’s actually kind of ugly. And it has no leaves or stems. And it only blooms for a week every year. OK, it’s just a really strange plant.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: I will never get a shot at this one, actually, because it’s endangered and only grows in the rain forests of Sumatra and in the Malay Archipelago in Borneo.

Plant: The Walking Iris

What Makes it Cool: New plantlets develop where the previous flowers were on the Iris. The stalk keeps growing, though, so as the plantlet grows, its weight draws the stalk down to the ground. When the plantlet finally rests on the ground, it roots there. This makes it look like the Iris is “walking” across the yard.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: It grows in clumps up to five feet wide, so I imagine I will mow over it at some point.

Plant: The Money Plant, AKA the Honesty Plant

What Makes it Cool: It grows flattened pods that look like silver dollars and make cool rustling noises in a breeze.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: It’s listed as a “beginner” plant, which means it should be easy to grow. “Easy to grow” is pretty much the kiss of death for me. I killed a philodendron.

Plant: Resurrection Fern

What Makes It Cool: It knows how to play dead. During drought periods, the fern goes grey and curls up, appearing to be completely dead. When it receives even a tiny bit of water, it turns lush and green again. Some have estimated that it could be resurrected after up to 100 years.

How I Will Eventually Kill it: I think even I can’t fully kill something that can resurrect itself.