The Unusual Story of Pilea Peperomioides

Part of the charm of Pilea peperomioides lies in its story — the unusual and mysterious journey it made from its native home in Yunnan, China, all the way to Europe and beyond, thanks to cuttings passed hand to hand.

A Journey from China to Europe

The plant was first collected by George Forrest between 1906 and 1910, in the Cang Mountain range of Yunnan province in southern China. In 1945, the species was rediscovered by Norwegian explorer Agnar Espegren, who was living with his family in the Hunan region. At some point, he traveled to Kunming in Yunnan, where he stayed for a week. There, he acquired such a plant (likely from a local shop) and brought it with him and his family to Calcutta, where they stayed for about a year. The Espegren family returned to Norway in March 1946 with the plant still alive. There, Espegren traveled to various places in Norway and shared small plants grown from the base of the original, with friends. This way, the plant spread throughout Norway and Sweden.

However, the full story remained unknown to botanists until recently.

A famous but mysterious plant

The Pilea became fairly well known during the 1960s and 70s, especially around London (it was in the Royal Kew Gardens, the RHS Garden at Wisley, and Edinburgh Botanical Garden). Amateur gardeners continued to propagate it, but expert scientists did not have a clear understanding of the plant.

Progress in its identification came in 1978 when D. Walport sent some leaves and a male inflorescence to Kew. The leaves resembled certain Peperomia species from the Piperaceae family, while the male flowers resembled those in the Urticaceae family. Eventually, after research by botanist Wessel Marais, it was discovered that the plant was a Chinese species of Pilea first named in 1912 by German botanist Friedrich Diels as Pilea peperomioides.

In subsequent years, new specimens of the plant from various parts of Great Britain were sent for identification in Edinburgh. It became known that many people had this plant in their homes, sharing cuttings with friends or selling them at markets. 

Discovering its roots

Trying to explain how and when the 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. Among the responses, one led to the answer.

A family, the Sidebottoms from Cornwall, recalled receiving a plant 20 years earlier. The young daughter of their Norwegian housekeeper traveled with her family to Norway on vacation, where she received a small plant and brought it back to Great Britain. This is how Pilea traveled from Scandinavia to England.

At that time, many botanists from Scandinavia visited the Kew Herbarium and examined Pilea peperomioides specimens, but none of them had ever seen such a plant before.

The matter reached Dr. Lars Kers of the Stockholm Botanical Garden, who realized that the unknown plant he had at home—received from a relative in Sweden in 1976—was a Pilea peperomioides. Following this, he arranged a presentation of the plant on a famous Swedish TV show. After the broadcast, more than 10,000 letters were received, showing that the plant was very popular in Swedish homes. Among those letters, the connection to Agnar Espegren finally came to light.

The True Identity of the Pilea

The real identity of Pilea was finally confirmed in 1984 when its first image appeared in the journal Kew.