An elegant plant with a remarkable story
In this article
Part of the charm of Pilea peperomioides lies in the story of its unusual and mysterious journey from its native Yunnan in China to Europe and beyond—a journey made possible by cuttings passed from one person to another.
Cuttings passed from hand to hand.
A journey from China to Europe
The plant was first collected by George Forrest in 1906 and 1910, in the Cang mountain range in Yunnan, southern China.
In 1945, the species was rediscovered by Norwegian explorer Agnar Espegren, who was living with his family in Hunan.
During a week-long visit to Kunming in Yunnan, he acquired a plant, probably from a local shop. He took it with him when he and his family travelled to Calcutta, where they stayed for about a year.
The Espegren family returned to Norway in March 1946, with the plant still alive. As Espegren travelled around Norway, he gave friends the small offsets that had grown around the base of the original plant. This was how it spread through Norway and Sweden.
Yet until relatively recently, botanists knew nothing of this story.
A familiar plant with a mysterious identity
Pilea became quite well known during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly around London, where it was grown at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and RHS Garden Wisley, as well as in Edinburgh.
Amateur gardeners kept propagating it, while botanists were still puzzling over its identity.
A breakthrough came in 1978, when D. Walport sent some leaves and a male inflorescence to Kew. The leaves resembled those of certain Peperomia species in the Piperaceae family, but the male flowers pointed to Urticaceae.
Research by botanist Wessel Marais eventually identified it as a Chinese species of Pilea that German botanist Friedrich Diels had named Pilea peperomioides in 1912.
Over the following years, more specimens arrived in Edinburgh for identification from different parts of Britain. It became clear that many people were growing the plant at home, sharing cuttings with friends or selling plants at markets.
Tracing its roots
To help establish how and when the plant had travelled from Yunnan to Europe, Robert Pearson published an article in the Sunday Telegraph in January 1983, asking through Kew Gardens whether anyone had information about its introduction to Britain.
Among the replies, one provided the missing clue.
The Sidebottom family from Cornwall described a plant they had received twenty years earlier. The young daughter of their Norwegian housekeeper had visited Norway on a family holiday, been given a small plant and brought it back to Britain.
And that was how Pilea made its way from Scandinavia to England.
One plant. Three stops.
Open steps 1–3 below to follow the journey.
Stops in the story · lines do not show the exact travel route.
1 · China, 1945
Agnar Espegren acquires a Pilea in Kunming. The plant travels with his family to Calcutta.
2 · Norway, 1946
The family returns with the plant still alive. Offsets growing around its base are shared with friends.
3 · England
A young girl brings a small plant home from a holiday in Norway. Years later, her story helps piece together the puzzle.
Around this time, several Scandinavian botanists visited the Kew Herbarium and examined specimens of Pilea peperomioides, but none had seen the plant before.
Word eventually reached Dr Lars Kers at Stockholm’s botanical garden. He realised that the unidentified plant he had at home, a gift from a relative in Sweden in 1976, was Pilea peperomioides. He then arranged for it to be featured on a popular Swedish television programme.
More than 10,000 letters followed the broadcast, revealing just how widespread the plant was in Swedish homes. Among those letters, the connection to Agnar Espegren finally came to light.
Pilea’s true identity was finally established in 1984, when its first published image appeared in Kew magazine.