A stylish plant - A unique story

Part of the charm of the Pilea peperomioides is also its story of the unusual and mysterious journey from its place of origin, Yunnan, China, to Europe and beyond, which is due to the cuttings that were passed from hand to hand.

The plant was first collected by the George Forrest in 1906 and 1910, at 'Cang Mountain range of the Yunnan area in southern China.

In 1945 this species was rediscovered by the Norwegian explorer Agnar Espegren where he lived with his family in the Hunan area.

At one point, he traveled to Kumming in the Yunnan region where he stayed for a week. There get such a plant (probably from some local shop) and brought it along with his family to Kolkata where they stayed for about a year.

The Espegren family returned back to Norway in March 1946 together with the plant that was still alive. There Espegren traveled to various places in Norway and distributed small such plants that had developed at the base of the original plant, to friends. In this way, the plant spread in Norway and Sweden.

However, the whole story was unknown to botanists until recently.

 

The cap has been made quite well-known in the 1960s and 1970s, especially in the London area (it was present in the royal garden 'Kew Gardens' and in the botanical garden 'RHS Garden of Wisley', as well as in Edinburgh. 

Amateur gardeners continued to propagate it but the expert scientists did not have a clear picture of this plant.

Progress in its recognition was made in 1978 when D. Walport sent some leaves and a male inflorescence to Kew. The leaves referred to specific species of Peperomia in the family Piperaceae, while the male flowers belonged to the family Urticaceae.

At the end and after research by the botanist Wessel Marais, it was discovered that the plant was a Chinese species of Pilea that It was named in 1912 by the German botanist Friedrich Diels as 'Pilea peperomioides'.  

In the following years, new samples of the plant from various areas of Great Britain were sent for identification in Edinburgh. It became known that many people had this plant in their homes, giving cuttings of it to friends or selling it in the markets.

 
In an effort to explain how and when this plant arrived from Yunnan to Europe, Robert Pearson published an article in the 'Sunday Telegraph' in January 1983, asking Kew Gardens if anyone had information about the introduction of the species to Great Britain.

From the responses received, one led to the answer.

A family, the Sidebottoms from Cornwall, spoke about a plant they received 20 years ago. The little daughter of their Norwegian housekeeper traveled with her family to Norway for a holiday, where she received a small plant like that and brought it back to Great Britain. 

And so the Pilea arrived from Scandinavia to England.

At that point, many botanists from Scandinavia visited the 'Kew Herbarium' and examined species of Pilea peperomioides, but none of them had seen such a plant.

This topic reached Dr. Lars Kers of the botanical garden in Stockholm, where he realized that the unknown plant he had at home, which he had received from a relative in Sweden in 1976, was a Pilea peperomioides. Following this, he organized a presentation of this plant on a famous Swedish television show. 

More than 10,000 letters were sent after the end of the show, making it clear that this plant was very popular in Swedish homes. Among these letters, the connection with Agnan Espegren eventually came to light.