With people paying upwards of £40,000, the rise of the ‘It plant’ has sparked a speculative frenzy not seen since tulipmania – and with it a green-fingered crimewave
Last month, a Reddit member posted on the popular forum “Am I The Asshole?” to report a falling out with her 14-year-old niece, whom she was refusing to ever see again, and had told to burn in hell. The niece’s crime: plant theft.
The Redditor had gone away for a fortnight, and asked her niece to plant-sit her prized collection of 35 tropical indoor plants. As payment, she’d give the niece some cuttings to grow her own. She returned to the scene of a botanical bloodbath. Everything in a pot had been given a drastic haircut; some were half the plants they used to be. Her ‘Cebu Blue’ Pothos, her String of Pearls, her Ruby Necklace, her ‘Silver Stripe’ Philodendron, the Golden Pothos she’d trained up her stairwell… all decimated. The niece had taken her cuttings in advance – and hadn’t spared the secateurs.
