Jos Vanden Abeele, Tanya Quintieri, and Kaylee Ellen are here to spill the plant communi-tea!
This is a show for houseplant lovers, collectors, breeders, and hobbyists who want the gossip, the drama, the science, and the real talk about the changing plant community. Get the unpotted secrets, follow the trending drama, and join the mission to build a more sustainable, connected plant community.
Email us at propculture@hortikult.com
Publisher
Hortikult Digital Solutions, s.r.o. & Nurture System
Brian Lagunas, aka Anthurium Papa, joins Tanya and Jos for an episode full of heart and a little chaos.
News: The Crop Trust’s report on edible aroids and why collectors might be part of the backup plan; Costa Rica paying landowners to keep forests standing, and measuring recovery by sound; and the Desert Botanical Garden’s rescue center for confiscated plants.
Interview: Brian’s path from a fateful Anthurium warocqueanum encounter at Ecuagenera to breeding within a year, his friendship with legendary grower Barry Schwarz, meeting Dr. Tom Croat at our Miami barbecue, why water quality is “crucial,” and how he set out to kick down the gates of a gatekept hobby.
Hot take: Should breeders give a whole seed batch one name? Brian says no. Jos disagrees, mostly.
Hot or Nah: A Hoya with fuzzy black new leaves, an inappropriately shaped Abelmoschus, and the $40,000 Monstera everyone side-eyed in Miami.
Rate That Weird Plant: Brunsvigia orientalis, Utricularia dunlopii, and Paronychia erecta.
Follow Brian: @anthuriumpapa (https://www.instagram.com/anthuriumpapa) on Instagram and YouTube.
Follow Prop Culture for new episodes every two weeks, and find us on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@prop.culture), Substack (https://propculture.substack.com/), and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/prop.culture.podcast/) for the full plant-nerd experience.
29 Sept 2026
S02E21: Miami Vice(s) — Our First IAS Tropical Plant Expo, Aroid Royalty, Doc Block, Silver Krome & Fairchild Botanical Garden
Tanya and Jos are home from Miami, cold, jet-lagged, and still on speaking terms. This week they spill the tea on their first-ever IAS Tropical Plant Expo.
In the news:
Hold My Bud: oaks that got eaten by caterpillars one year open their buds about three days later the next. That's enough to starve the hatchlings, and enough to cancel out a decade of climate-driven early spring. Published in Nature Ecology & Evolution.
Pilea does math: the vein loops on a Pilea peperomioides leaf form a near-perfect Voronoi diagram around its hydathodes. This could change how botanists think leaf veins form.
Who grew your houseplant? Grist reports on the WeCount! campaign asking Costa Farms and big retailers to sign a worker-written code of conduct on heat safety. Ethical sourcing shouldn't stop at the forest edge.
Miami:
Two visits to Bill Rotolante's Silver Krome Gardens
A barbecue that turned into a who's-who of the aroid world, with Dr. Tom Croat at the table
Booth lessons from a bootstrapped European startup
Jos's talk on intersectional hybridization in Anthurium
Aroids After Dark
A private tour of Dr. Jeff Block's garden
Fairchild's outdoor rainforest
Hot or Nah: Anthurium 'Titan Fingers', Hoya 'Parfum Pagode', Adenium socotranum
Rate That Weird Plant: Haworthia pumila 'Donuts', Verticordia staminosa subsp. cylindracea var. cylindracea, Pachypodium rosulatum subsp. gracilius
Follow Prop Culture for new episodes every two weeks, and find us on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@prop.culture), Substack (https://propculture.substack.com/), and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/prop.culture.podcast/) for the full plant-nerd experience.
9 Sept 2026
S02E20: Interview with Marco Cedeño-Fonseca, Fake Adansonii, Plastic Monsteras, and Tom Croat's Garden
Episode 20 and we finally have an aroid taxonomist in the room. Marco Cedeño Fonseca is a Costa Rican botanist who did his master's on Monstera at the University of Costa Rica and just finished his PhD at the Berlin Botanical Garden — as in, he got the title the day before we recorded and told us at the very end.
News: the Thomas B. Croat Aroid Garden was inaugurated in Tabasco, Mexico. A 5-meter plant gets a strong opinion out of Marco about plastic plants in Costa Rica. And a new Typhonium was named in Thailand, which sends us down a hole about why genera keep getting split.
Interview: How a forestry student ended up building a greenhouse in his apartment to germinate Monstera seeds; why juveniles are the taxonomic problem; the Monstera everyone calls esqueleto that has never been documented in the wild; what a Costa Rican field botanist does all day in a German DNA lab; and the one Monstera he's never seen.
Hot or Nah: Dendrobium Kirkland Nixon 'Bredren', Anthurium warocqueanum × veitchii, Dionaea muscipula 'Medusa'.Rate That Weird Plant: Gethyllis namaquensis, Tecticornia verrucosa, Ranunculus semiverticillatus.
Follow Marco on Instagram: @marco_vcf (https://www.instagram.com/marco_vcf/)Read about the Croat garden on the IAS Substack: substack.com/@aroidsociety
Next episode: Probably live from the IAS Tropical Plant Expo in Miami.
Prop Culture is brought to you by Hortikult's Plant Provenance, PlantCard.io, Plant My Event, Webaceae, and Gifts for Plant People.
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5.0 / 5
3 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
9 ratings
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