What purposes do plants serve in your home? Other than filling space, generating a small amount of oxygen, and possibly a reserve litter box for a cat, (the reason we have no plants), what do they do for you? How do they affect your life, your identity, and your space?

These are questions that are being addressed by a group dissertation from Umeå University in Sweden, called “Life, Mood, and Meaning“. Ethnologist Clas Bergvall says,

It is indeed a challenge to reflect upon them in terms of how we shape our homes. The challenge is all the greater since potted plants belong to the small, everyday things that are often overlooked in relation to the truly important items on the agenda.

And yet, most homes have them. We infuse our plants with identity, we care for them without resentment (excepting, of course, for the ones that die despite our best efforts), and we consider them when we are to be absent, as we do for our pets and our children. They are living symbols of our ability to extend care to things outside of ourselves. And in return, they provide us with what? You don’t cuddle a plant. You can’t teach a plant tricks. A plant won’t give you love.

All a plant does is simply coexist, peacefully. That, right there, is the crux; how may other animate objects can make the same boast?

Empty and strange without plants [idw-online.de]