Garden Detective: Plants to dress up cubicles
The pothos has long vining stems with glossy, heart-shaped leaves. Credit: Newsday / Audrey C. Tiernan
Air ferns are billed as plants that never require water or sunlight. It's true, they don't require any care. It's the "plant" part that isn't true. Air ferns actually are colonies of the skeletal remains of the Sertularia argentea, a sea creature related to the jellyfish and coral. The skeletons look like ferns with fine foliage, so someone with a macabre sense of entrepreneurial ingenuity thought it would be a good idea to preserve these corpses with chemicals, dye them green and pass them off as plants that don't need water.
They actually would look nice in your cubicle, now that I think about it, and they won't mind the lack of sunlight or care. And if you're not grossed out by, say, dried starfish or sea horses, then you won't be bothered by air fern. But if you want a real plant, I have a few other suggestions:
Garden club of the week
