Friday, December 15, 2006

Generation Plant

(Originally posted on Friday, December 15, 2006 by Tim)

Scandal! Two posts in a row without a picture of Dalton. To put you at ease, Dalton is doing well and we do still take pictures of him. This post is even about Dalton-- sort of. Well, maybe this post is more about me, but he is still in it.

My sister in law's husband Larry was telling me about a friend of his who has an interesting tradition in her family. The family has a bamboo tree that is passed down from generation to generation. By passed down, I don?t mean that someone hands the plant off. Each child gets a clipping from the bamboo that they grow and then pass on clippings to their children.

If you know me or you?ve read many of my posts, you know that I enjoy growing plants. When Larry told me about this tradition, I thought it was a really great idea. I thought I would pick out a suitable plant and start this tradition with Dalton. I started thinking about what kind of plant would be best for this process. It would need to be something easy to care for and also a plant that is interesting. Interesting is important. While I?m told they are good in salads, passing dandelions down from generation to generation lacks something. Besides, all dandelions are to be killed on sight in our household.

As fate would have it, I didn?t have to make a decision on the plant at all. While I was talking to my Mom, she mentioned that she had saved some cuttings from her fathers Christmas Cactus. Even better, he had grown those plants from cuttings from his mother. Mom has now given me a cactus (pictured above) grown her cuttings so that is four generations.

I tried to find the official term for plants passed down generation to generation and I haven?t been successful. I?m probably not using the correct search terms. I?ve never been very good at finding things on the internet (at least compared to my peers). Hence, I?ve decided to call the cactus our ?generation plant?.

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