Sharon's blog: Purple Passion

It was just a little plant, maybe 6 inches tall, and I'd been told to keep it inside. Mom said it wouldn't grow very big, but might vine a little and when it did, I should just trim it back.

It was the 70s. I had two very young children, babies really, and I was also teaching at that time. My husband traveled a lot for his job and sometimes he'd be gone a couple of weeks out of a month, maybe more. That left me alone with two children and a couple of hand me down houseplants, a teaching schedule and not a lot of time on my hands. Certainly not enough time to worry about houseplants.

I remembered to water the two plants occasionally. One of them was in a corner somewhere. It was a Snakeplant, known more formally as Sansevieria. Mom said it would just grow tall and I didn't have to worry much about it. It was an inside plant, too, she said.

I'd placed the vining plant, Mom called it Purple Passion, on my nightstand, just beneath an east facing window. She'd said it needed a little more light than the Snakeplant, in order to keep its deep purple velvety color. One morning I noticed that it had grown a little and was slightly dropped down behind the nightstand. I meant to trim it back as she'd told me but I was so very busy with growing children and a house to maintain I soon forgot about a growing vine.

I did manage to keep it watered. A couple of months passed. My husband would be home for a week here and there and the children were growing and I didn't have time for keeping an eye on houseplants.

Eventually I noticed a corner on my husband's side of the bed that needed straightening. He'd left papers and books and other assorted debris stacked there just beside his night stand. Ties, a sock or two. He was neat and never left clothes in a pile, but he was packing and unpacking often and quickly, so a sock or tie or a travel itinerary misplaced and left behind wasn't unusual.

I started cleaning that corner. I got to the papers, magazines, mail, and noticed smudges of purple on some of them. Purple ink? It wasn't likely that he would be using purple ink, but the purple stain was everywhere.

Purple Passion, Gynura aurantiaca, it had fallen to the floor behind the bed and had grown from my side of that king sized bed to his. I rescued what was unsmashed by books and papers, socks and ties, it must have been about 10 feet long, more green than purple. I remembered Mom telling me that it would root easily in water. I chopped that long vine into lots of small pieces and stuck them in water. They didn't even blink. They rooted and I had more Purple Passion than I knew what to do with. Every friend and neighbor anywhere near me got a beautifully potted purple plant that Christmas.

I told all of them it was a plant that grew very well if placed on a nightstand in the bedroom.

I don't have it anymore, and I can't remember what happened to it. Its descendants might still be in the neighborhood, but maybe not since most of those people I gave them to are no longer here. Now that I have more time and more space, I might take a look around and see if I can find another. It might enjoy life growing with my Pothos, Epipremnum aureum, on my nightstand.

 I wasn't into picture taking this morning, and I didn't have Purple Passion around here anyway, so I borrowed images from Wiki Commons.

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