It may be sad, but I think the way that all plants are heading is plastic. Humans are a species are becoming more and more lazy, with more of our jobs and tasks becoming automated. Eventually, on one very sad day, everyone’s just going to throw up their hands and say “look, we gave it a shot, but looking after plants is too much effort. Let’s just make plastic ones so they never die and always look nice.”
And that’s how we’ll end up with gross plastic flowers. If you were at my Futurist Club presentation, you would’ve found it very convincing, especially when I got to the part about the Star Jasmine Underground Black Market. I chose the star jasmine because it’s pretty, and has a very pretty name, but it sounds like the name of a hopeful rebellion.
“She’s a Star Jasmine! You will pay, rebel scum! Throw her out of the airlock!”
Except this rebellion won’t be like that. The people still looking after plants will be the most motivated people in society, so we can pretty much set up wherever we want, illegally buying and selling daffodils, rosemary plants, blue gingers, all of that live, fresh goodness. Occasionally the police will have to do their jobs, they’ll swagger in and make some half-hearted comments about shutting us down. All the plant lovers will roll their eyes, casually packing up and moving somewhere else while the unmotivated police say things like “Hey. No. You’d better stop that,” and “I think you should let me arrest you, because of the law, I think, maybe.”
So we’ll be keeping the flames of rebellion alive, but it’ll be extremely easy. It’ll be quite unfortunate that no one’s really interested in plants any more, but the people who are interested will be more motivated than ever, and they’ll keep the love of flowers alive. The power of the flower. The flower power.
-Daisy