Pilea peperomioides

Or the Missionary Plant (to do with its origins) or (according to meles) the spoon plant (because of its appearance). A lovely gift of a home-propagated plant from meles and DaveH, who were two out of our four lunchtime guests, along with C and J.

Another super relaxing Sunday lunch, this time with tapas by Mr A, including chorizo in cider, chicken in sherry vinegar with prunes, tortilla, cabbage with apples and apple cider vinegar, and carrots marinaded overnight in garam masala and various other spices. With homemade focaccia. And finished off with a brilliant Spanish cheesecake. All delicious. And of course washed down with plenty of wine, with the conversation flowing as freely as the drink.

Plenty of chat about the plant at the beginning, because it was at one time at least theoretically rare in the UK, having been brought to the UK by someone who was a missionary in China, and then passed hand to hand as cuttings, so came to be known as the “pass it along plant”. So my new plant finds its origins at least in meles’ home in Oxford in the 1980s… And I guess you could go further back than that. By sheer coincidence, C’s mother had sent them exactly the same house plant as a gift just weeks earlier (from a nursery selling online), so C and J were very interested in stories about Pilea peperomioides. Anyway, I think it is testimony to my better performance with houseplants these days that I’ve now got a Pilea peperomioides to look after. Indeed, meles was quite impressed by my burgeoning poinsettia, and gave me some advice on what I need to do in order to get it to go red again in the winter (namely avoid too much artificial light and let it experience the changing of the seasons au naturel). To that end, I’ve popped it on the kitchen windowsill, because there is definitely a more natural rhythm of light in the kitchen than in the living room.

Happy at my gift, I decided to make it my blip today.