Man arrives and takes the humble plant into captivity, constraining her in pots which are never the right size, sticking individuals into the corners of cafeterias, foyers, staircases, lobbies, offices, sitting rooms and then treating them as pieces of furniture, giving them no food, no water, no care. Our neglected hero magically exists - growing would be too strong a word - for ever reaching out to any light and following nature's instinct to reach for the sky. As she grows we tie her to a stake and wrap her tendrils around a dead branch to prevent her reaching out too far. Another escape foiled.
If plants ever do come alive it will not be triffids but the humble cheeseplant, or its companion ficus or ivy, that we torture as we do, reaching out to return to those jungle homes so far away. What is the mysterious attraction of such plants and was this really what evolution was all for?
