Bite my shiny metal aspidistra

I’m planning on doing a series of houseplant posts at work but I feel like if I don’t get Aspidistra eliator a little bit out of my system here, I might be inclined to say inappropriate things about it there – like “bite my shiny metal aspidistra”. (Are there any other Futurama fans out there?)

I have a pretty big aspidistra (yup) that I have ignored for years.  Ignorance is bliss.  This thing never even had pests before the kittens came along.  I didn’t really know about Cast Iron plants before I had to water the ones at work but it turns out that they are a Victorian cult classic and now I and the kiddens would be bereft without one in some dark corner somewhere.  My Cast Iron plant spends the summer outside in as much shade as I can find for it (see evidence of sun scorch on a few of the leaves – I haven’t groomed the plant for the sake of the kittehs.  I figure the more leaves it has, the less likely they’ll damage all of the new pretty ones.  Twisted Aspidistra Logic from a lazy indoor gardener.)  It’s made of tough enough stuff (cast iron perhaps) to live out in the frigid plantry during the winter  – it did last year – but without even knowing how entertaining it could be, this year I put it in my studio where now I watch it like TV.  — Incidentally, an aspidistra was a character named Uncle Rangdo (the ruler of Arg) played by Kenny Baker (R2-D2) on a British gameshow called The Adventure Game.  Audrey and Pigeon use my Uncle as one of their Jungle Jims and it is faring better than anyone else in the plant family that they have chosen to abuse.  More on those guys later.

I have posted an entire aspidistra vs. kitteh vs. kitteh  fight on my flickr…  Do you have a Cast Iron plant?  Do you remember to water it every once in a while?