Irrelevant Cheetah

We recently bought a philodendron.

As I was repotting it, I pulled out the plastic tag sticking out of the dirt that tells you what sort of plant it is, how much water to give it, and how much light it likes. Seemed typical, until I saw the last thing printed on the plastic, invisible until the tag was removed from the dirt:

Asexual Propagation Prohibited.

Excuse me?

The first thing that came to mind is that the plant sellers were attempting to tell me that I could not make cuttings of my plant, even after I bought it. The fact that I now owned the plant was irrelevant; plant-sharing is a sinister practice, and though the RIAA is not involved, many honest plant companies suffer from people spreading plant cuttings willy-nilly with no regard for copyright issues or seed purchases.

But after ruminating over the ramifications of plant piracy, I thought of something else. Perhaps, I thought, the plant sellers are involved in something much more insidious. They are attempting to prohibit the act of asexual propagation completely.

Why do they care? If I want to split off a piece of myself, like an arm or a big toe, and use it to grow another Wolf, isn’t that my prerogative? Who are they to tell me that I must create offspring the old-fashioned way?

Not that I have any issues with the old-fashioned way, mind you. No, I’m quite fond of the usual ways to create offspring.

But it’s none of their business, is it? Are they against cloning? How about artificial insemination? What if I want to plant my toenail clippings and see what sprouts? All of those are “asexual,” and thus prohibited, according to my plant’s plastic tag.

I never would have pegged the potted plant companies to be among those bent on world domination. And to think that all this time I had my eye on BP, Chevron and Microsoft.