Artwork courtesy of Megan Broussard Maughan, designed by Blake Lagneaux.
I'm a sensitive person, always have been—in fact, annoyingly so. I do think living in New York for the past fifteen years has toughened me up some, if only on the outside. On the inside, though, I’m couche-couche. All cornmeal and cold milk mushed together. Which is why when I have a big feeling—or you know, feel something big big—I have to make or do something with it. If I’m sad, mad, or elated, I have to write it, draw it, or run it out with an early aughts summer pop playlist.
Lately, I’ve been feeling (big big) something I’m sure lots of Louisiana transplants will relate to: guilt.
I’m feeling guilt for being away for family birthdays, guilt for missing dance recitals for the mini-versions of my oldest friends, guilt for loving bagels almost as much as beignets.
But after journaling a bit on this feeling (read: dumping thoughts onto my notes app), I think it’s all mostly about missing my roots, an indicator of my need to keep one foot planted in Louisiana while still schlepping around the concrete jungle. I needed a tangible way to bring home here.
So, obviously, I decided to grow a mamou plant in my Brooklyn apartment.
Now, I’m not from Mamou, but I figured, what plant is more Louisiana than that? Perhaps okra—which was my first choice—but the fact is that I don’t have enough light in my 650 square ft. one-bedroom. But like c’mon, MAMOU overlooking MANHATTAN! It just doesn’t get more poetic than that.
I waited six business days for the packets of coco bean, sachets of the Erythrina herbacea if you will, to arrive off of Etsy.
After welcoming them into my humble urban abode, to increase my chances of success, I planted two seeds per 4.3" x 4" pot—with a total of four pots. I was so proud, I texted my editor with a picture from the Internet of what my baby mamou plant will one day grow to be, and waited for her words of affirmation.
[Read this next: "Louisiana Sounds, Translated—Decoding the language of aiyee and aht aht!"]
“Ah ok,” she said. “I don’t think that’s what it looks like though lol.”
What? Quoi? That can’t be. I typed letter-for-letter what was on the back of the seeds packet into ChatGPT: “Mimosa pudica.”
Wait … did I order the wrong seeds?
Damnit!
Well, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s convincing myself massive mistakes are happy little accidents.
So, I ran back to ChatGPT for reassurance. Please tell me that this Mimosa pudica wasn’t planted in vain … that it is also a great natural symbol of the state of Louisiana that contributes invaluably to its intricate ecosystem….
“The Mimosa pudica is considered an invasive species—”
Godda—
Fine. What else could I plant that comes from the swamp and will revel in what little light fractures through the window of the takeout place next door, Taste of China?
I consulted ChatGPT again, which suggested what looked like a witches brew grocery list, and ended up ordering frog fruit cuttings and inland sea oat seeds from a new Etsy vendor.
It was time to get serious.
After hitting a very particular time of the month when I tell Rick the apartment is getting entirely too cluttered and we need to pare down immediately, my boxes full of planters, water meters, seedling soil, water spritzers, and active charcoal arrived.
For a total of thirty-nine days, I turned our living room (which, in terms of the rest of America, is the size of a spare office room) into a full-fledged nursery.
Planters were on book shelves, a side table, the TV stand, a desk and a coffee table which, you know, doubles as our kitchen table.
We spritzed, we spooned, we dribbled water every which way experts recommended on blogs and Reddit. We spoke softly to our plants, then sang to them, then even tried wind simulation. Well, I did, anyway, by blowing gently, but not too gently, imitating the breeze as it moves near the Atchafalaya.
I even kept trying to grow the Mimosa pudica. I couldn’t let it go. Something with leaves in Louisiana, invasive or not, was going to grow in this stupid New York shoebox even if it caused me a death rattle.
But nothing was happening. There were no new sprouts poking from the surfaces of the sea oats planters or the Mimosa pudica, and the frog fruit cuttings just looked like they were days away from meeting Jesus.
That’s when I decided heat was the answer. Well, Instagram decided. I was targeted with ads looking to profit from my plant doomscrolling, I can assume, because warming pads to promote seed germination kept popping up between reels about Beckham family drama.
Within twenty-four hours, I had all seedlings coddled by heating pads, convinced a chill in the air was the culprit and something thermal was the missing ingredient. I worried briefly about starting a fire in the apartment, sure, but then decided fires couldn’t possibly happen with Rick in the house, so screw it.
I learned that moss doesn’t root the way most plants do. It has what are called “rhizoids.” They are its own version of roots that spread outward instead of downward, and without getting too Carrie Bradshaw on you, they do so in a similar way my fellow Louisiana expats and I have moved out and away.
Still, nothing.
That’s when I found something from the bayou that was virtually fool-proof: Hypnum moss.
I set up my terrarium with the conviction of Queer Eye’s Bobby Berk. But, in truth, at this point I was no longer hopeful. The packet of moss I ordered à la Jeff Bezos was as flat as a flapjack and smelled like barn.
Still, I followed the care instructions to a tee, even including a special layer of coffee filter between soil and gravel to help with drainage.
And to my surprise, the moss, within hours, had awakened! Its feather-like fingers stretched out and up in the same way you and I would find them on the base of a tree near the neighborhood coulée.
So what made moss so much easier to grow?
That night, by the blue light of my iPhone, I learned that moss doesn’t root the way most plants do. It has what are called “rhizoids.” They are its own version of roots that spread outward instead of downward, and without getting too Carrie Bradshaw on you, they do so in a similar way my fellow Louisiana expats and I have moved out and away.
It doesn’t mean we’re any less rooted for having relocated, just that we’ve had to adapt, attaching lightly the way rhizoids do, to make a life somewhere else.
But we’re still the same moss, and in my case, my terrarium for now is a Brooklyn apartment.
Read more entries of Megan Broussard Maughan's column, “In Search of the Lost Tongue” at countryroadsmag.com.
