Indoor Plants are Racist

In what looks like an absurdity, Vienna's Weltmuseum is now considering 'Colonialism on the Window Sill'

I suppose it’s time for something ‘lighter’ today, hence this posting about the Weltmuseum—Vienna’s ethnographic collection, which are marketed under the header ‘A World Museum for a Global City’—caught my eye the other day.

From 28 Feb. 2025 through 25 May 2026, it is possible to visit the Hofburg palace in the very heart of Vienna, Austria, and check out the exhibition (this is from their English-language website, I’ve merely added emphases and [snark] here):

Colonialism on the Window Sill

This exhibition shines a spotlight on ten plants that have been favourites of European living rooms and balconies for centuries, though their natural habitats are outside the continent. These plants share a history with our ethnographic collections; some of them joined the objects on long naval voyages to reach Europe and the museums.

Beyond the demand for medicinal plants and crops (nowadays ‘cash crops’ that are cultivated on a grand scale for export), the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw a new hunger, even a quest for foreign flora amid deliberations about the potential benefits of plant imports to Europe.

You’ve read this correctly: it’s an exhibition about plants in your living rooms, as if setting up flower pots would be a troubling colonialist practice (that is the link to Marxists.org’s glossary, which, tellingly, does not include the term ‘colonialism’, but I digress).

While I confess to not having visited the exhibition (but I just might until next spring), below follows a glowing kind of review by a legacy media journo™ I found over at the website of Austrian state broadcaster ORF. That one I translated, added some emphases and [a whole lot of snark].

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Monstera & Co.: Trendy Plants with Colonial Roots

Since the pandemic, houseplants have been trending again, celebrated on Instagram under hashtags such as ‘#monsteramonday’, ‘#plantsofinstagram’ or ‘#plantporn’. What is less well known is that living room greenery is closely interwoven with the history of colonialism. An exhibition at the Weltmuseum Vienna now tells the story of how pelargonium, green lily, and indoor fir became a status symbol of the upper middle classes—and how a mini-greenhouse brought about a breakthrough in plant transport.

By Paula Pfoser, ORF Topos, 27 May 2025 [source; archived]

An airtight [orig. luftdicht] glass box, about the size of a table, partly encased in wood—the triumph of houseplants in European living rooms is due to a box like this [see the image below]. In 1833, the English doctor and amateur botanist Nathaniel Ward sent ferns, mosses, and grasses on a month-long voyage, initially from London to remote Sydney [that’s my added link—to his English Wikipedia entry; note that his German Wikipedia entry holds that ‘Ward is often referred to as the “greenhouse inventor”, but the Scotsman Alan Maconochie had already discovered the greenhouse phenomenon in 1825 using a wooden box with a glass lid, but remained modestly silent about it after Ward's publications’, citing Jane Tresidder and Stafford Cliff’s Living Under Glass (Thames & Hudson, 1986), p. 8]

Ward only watered the plants a little before setting off, then the box was sealed [it was, as Ms. Pfoser noted before, ‘airtight’, but remember: this is the 1830s and the box was made of wood and glass]—and this moisture was enough to make the mini-greenhouse a ‘complete success’, as Ward was told in a letter from Sydney. A replica of Ward’s box can now be seen in the Weltmuseum. The invention was a ‘real breakthrough’, said Weltmuseum curator Bettina Zorn about the box, which revolutionised the entire transport of plants and all associated economic sectors, from tea to rubber trees.

A Museum is Not a Garden

The exhibition ‘Colonialism on the Windowsill’ at the Weltmuseum Vienna uses ten non-European house and balcony plants to tell the story of global interdependence and cultural affinity, but also of exploitation. The exhibition will run for a whole year. Zorn has collected dried and pressed plants, historical plant drawings, and pictures of natural habitats, but has also brought fresh plants into the show.

‘As you can see, we are a museum, not a garden or a greenhouse,’ said Zorn during the Topos tour, alluding to the challenge of caring for plants in a museum [it would otherwise render the museum itself colonialist, as well as its staffers colonialist exploiters, isn’t it?]. According to the curator, there are many specimens in reserve. The Usambara violet [African violet, for US-based readers], which is closely interwoven with German colonialism [it’s native to Tanzania (which itself is funny as the German East Africa existed merely from 1885-1918, and if that violet existed before the mid-1880s, Ms. Pfoser made a stupid argument™)], looks sad even before the exhibition begins [I suppose meant is that it needed some more attention/care].

Orangeries as Forerunners

The problem is historically known: for a long time, living rooms were too dark for houseplants, and even spot heating in winter did not suit the tropical flora. The well-off nobility therefore kept the well-travelled plants in light-flooded orangeries from as early as the 16th century, cultivating citrus trees, pineapples, and rosemary bushes that originally came from China [oh dear, what if a non-European ever did the same to stuff from Europe? Would that be colonialist, too, or cultural appropriation?].

In addition to colonial expansion and the greed for new marketable plants, the improved living conditions made possible by industrialisation were ultimately responsible for the plant boom from the second half of the 19th century onwards [so, one could, theoretically, make this colonialist argument™ one about class antagonism, with the ‘well-off nobilities’ and their non-noble enablers (the ‘merchants and manufacturers’, as Adam Smith called them) being the villains here—but, no, that’s not the spin here]. And then there was Ward’s box: previously, gardeners had often cursed sailors and their lack of sense for plant care. Out of hundreds of tender plants, often only one or two arrived at London’s Kew Gardens, the global centre of the colonial plant trade, showing any signs of life.

Even stopovers to nurture them, such as on the island of St Helena, were of little help, which is why the surviving exotics were long considered a precious commodity. The rarities are said to have been traded for an average of 300 pounds, three times the annual salary of a well-paid gardener, according to a Spiegel article [I’ll have more to say about that one below; we note, in passing, that instead of, say, reading books or referring to scholarly work, Ms. Pfoser read™—at least one Spiegel piece].

‘Era of ornamental foliage plants’

It was only in the second half of the 19th century that exotic greenery became established in European living rooms. ‘The 19th century was the great era of ornamental foliage plants’, according to Munich botanist Andreas Gröger [he’s the deputy director of the Botanical Gardens in Nymphenburg, Munich], who has been studying the history of colonial plants for some time.

Tropical lushness is also currently in vogue. Since the pandemic, the ‘urban jungle’ is back in fashion. It is no longer only sold in discounters [here’s a dig at, among others, Ikea], but in shops that celebrate Monstera and co. as lifestyle objects. However, there are hardly any new plant species, says Gröger: ‘What you see on offer today was all imported in the second half of the 19th century.’ Back then, the growing middle classes wanted to show off their plant collections, and the thirst for novelty encouraged the import of more and more new plant species. Not all of them became long-lasting export hits.

This is what Ward’s greenhouse looked like: to the left, the reconstruction at the Weltmuseum, on the right, an original in the Desert House in the botanical garden section of Schönbrunn palace [all hail the top-shelf genius who did the reconstruction (/sarcasm)].

Warning Against ‘Fern Fever’

As the ‘epitome of tropical exoticism’, palm trees were very popular in the 19th century [I may only recommend Ben Schmidt’s awesome Inventing Exoticism (UPenn Press, 2015), if you’re interested in a scholarly, if eminently readable, account]. Because most of them need a lot of light and high humidity, there were many setbacks in their cultivation. Only a few specimens managed to establish themselves.

There have always been trends, said Gröger, referring to the classic office plants such as Ficus Benjamina, green lilies, and the hemp plant, which is now regarded as staid. In the 19th century, ferns were also a big hit alongside monstera, and leafy begonias. From the 1830s, England in particular was in ‘fern fever’, with tropical specimens joining the native ones. The plant mania apparently went so far that the British clergyman Charles Kingsley felt compelled to warn against the bad influence on young girls.

In the reduced Bauhaus architecture of the 1920s, greenery was also reduced—succulents and cacti went well with this.

Patented Pelargonia

Some plants, such as the pelargonium, known as the classic ‘balcony flower’, were only imported to Europe once and then bred further. This did not harm the plant population. The Weltmuseum, however, is also tracing another problem for the indigenous communities of South Africa: a German pharmaceutical company applied for a patent on the plant, which was used as a traditional remedy for respiratory infections—jeopardising its licence-free use. An objection was successfully lodged in 2013 [since it’s always good to note stuff without sources or linked content, I’m unsure which company this alludes to; best I could find was US Patent US PP24,133 P3].

The aloe plant, which once came from northern Oman and was used for medicinal and cosmetic purposes 6,000 years ago, is not patented but a Western cash crop with an enormous profit margin [do non-Westerners also profit?]. It is also the case that ‘the countries of origin do not profit’, said Zorn [same with oil and gas, like in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or Brunei, right? Why wouldn’t Ms. Zorn be a bit more specific about who, exactly, benefits?]. In view of the plant boom, it is not a bad time to raise awareness of this—the exhibition’s downer is that the view of ten plants remains very cursory: for example, the chapter on orchids, the genus that was collected by ‘plant hunters’ in the tropics worldwide, with disastrous consequences for biodiversity, is missing: rare specimens were almost wiped out, Gröger told us in the interview.

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Bottom Lines

You’ve gotta admit it—that was quite…something. Let’s add some more commentary, shall we?

As regards the journo™, one Paula Pfoser, she’s a rather undistinguished (in terms of her focus) writer over at ORF whose pieces range widely from pro-immigration pieces to book reviews to (of course) Russia! Russia! Russia! (e.g., ‘Cultural Life Behind Bars’, 8 Nov. 2024, cowritten with a few others) or commentary on Gillian Anderson’s musings about sex and Taylor Swift.

As regards the subject at-hand, well, Ms. Pfoser mentioned a Spiegel piece, entitled ‘Sailors Ain’t Gardeners’ (orig. Matrosen sind keine Gärtner, by Hansjörg Gadient, 12 Sept. 2010 [source; archived]), which had a very different tone—here follow a few choice quotes to illustrate just how much polite society changed in the past 15 years:

Although Europe was extremely interested in importing exotic plants, the transport meant that hardly any plants survived. This changed abruptly with the ingenious invention of an Englishman…

Gardeners are tender people. They live and suffer with their plants. The head gardener must have been delighted when his eyes flew over the packing list. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, south-west London, had been waiting for such rarities from China for years. When the crates were opened, horror spread and the gardeners once again cursed captains and sailors, these ruffians with no sense for their living cargo…

The voyage of the ‘Bounty’ was not an expedition to collect plants for the royal garden, but had economic reasons. It was intended to bring breadfruit plants from Tahiti to the Caribbean because the sugar cane planters hoped that the breadfruit would provide a cheap staple food for their slaves. As is well known, the ‘Bounty’ failed, but Bligh survived and started the second expedition with the same goal on the ‘Providence’ just two years later. On 5 March 1793, he landed on Jamaica with 2,126 live breadfruit seedlings. His mission was successfully completed, but the mission still failed: the slaves didn’t like the taste of the stuff…

Indeed, this ‘simple but beautiful’ invention [Ward’s case] was of the greatest consequence to the botanical world, both for ornamental and useful plants. Ward offered his invention to the most important import and commercial nursery, Loddiges Nurseries in Hackney. They used it to bring all the sought-after but delicate plants from Asia, America, Africa and Australia to Europe.

George Loddiges wrote enthusiastically to Ward in 1842 that he had had over 500 Ward boxes of plants from all over the world brought to London in the last six years and that all the shipments had arrived in good health…

[T]his idea revolutionised plant transport. Even the most delicate plants reached Europe undamaged. There were practically no more losses and the prices for exclusive imports fell. Broad sections of the population could afford plants that had previously only been the preserve of the royal botanical gardens and a few collectors.

As an aside, having read Mr. Gadient’s piece, too, I surmise that Ms. Pfoser more or less plagiarised that article, although she added a few quotes by the Weltmuseum’s curator and the deputy director of the Nymphenburg botanical garden.

Be that as it may, we note the very positive tone of Mr. Gadient’s piece from 2010, and the contrast to the 2025 exhibition couldn’t be greater: in the latter, there’s no real talk beyond virtue-signalling about either economic or democratising aspects. Everything European is now vile and deplorable.

What remains unspoken too, though, is the gigantic blind spot of Postcolonialism: the reverse transfer of ideas and institutions to non-European regions, ranging from classical music (a universal language now practised mostly in Southeast Asia, it would seem) to universities (which, if the postcolonial logic™ applied uniformly, no non-European should attend due to ‘cultural appropriation’) to Modernity itself (which I remain wary about in terms of benefits vs. disadvantages, but since I’m also benefitting from it, I suppose I can’t really point to this as being only bad).

None of this matters, though, to the Weltmuseum or Ms. Pfoser, which reveals, I submit, at-once, the true nature of both the exhibition and legacy media reporting™:

To further shame, subvert, demoralise, and render despondent, Westerners.

Here’s my ‘theory’ about as to why that might be:

Why 'They' Hate 'Us' ('White' Peoples) With a Vengeance: Towards a Theory of Anti-'White' Sentiment

Have a good one, though, dear readers, and don’t forget to take care of your colonialist-racist indoor plants.