Recovery at the Plant Hospital

A patient arrives with severe burn marks. The attending staff clears a space, but already vital extremities are showing signs of irreparable damage. They know their patient may never recover. This, everyone, is why you shouldn't go recklessly emptying hot coffee into flowerpots.

Thankfully, injured and ill plants have an on-site facility specifically designed to help them recover from their afflictions. The space is officially called Room 110, although it's probably better known (to those who know of it at all) as the plant hospital.

But erase from your mind any images of tulips on tiny stretchers, shrubs hooked to beeping monitors or IV drips of chlorophyll. The plant hospital is a simple series of shelves and a few humming grow lights, offering weary campus plants an opportunity for some extra attention. The facility is located directly across from the Den in the basement of the Student Union, making it, quite literally, a secret underground lair.

Thousands of plants surround UAA's wild campus, but hundreds more live amid the tinted windows, varied temperatures and students in UAA's campus buildings.

Look anywhere on campus-from the Spine to the library to the Fine Arts lobby-and you'll see an unbelievable variety of plant life. The indoor plants decking the halls of campus come from all over the world, with many hailing from warmer latitudes like Hawaii and South and Central America. All these sun-loving warm-weather plants naturally need a little extra love in Alaska.

Being an indoor plant can be a tough life. Thankfully, Catherine Shenk -a horticulture specialist on UAA's grounds crew-knows the intricate needs of campus plants and the challenges of growing them in our Northern climate.

Patient intake

Patients arrive at the plant hospital for a variety of reasons. Many are simply donations from departments and employees across campus. "When people donate things to us, we can't always tell right away if there's a disease or insect or some other issue that could spread to the rest of the plants on campus," Catherine explained. A disease outbreak or infestation would be both florally and fiscally devastating, and the horticulture crew does their best to limit disease outbreaks among the plants with thorough surveillance.

Next to the donations are another batch of new arrivals-the "newborns" recently separated from a mother plant elsewhere on campus. Certain species are incredibly easy to propagate-like the memorably named Mother of Millions. When possible, the horticulture crew scales back a plant and cultivates the trimmings into a new specimen. Once separated, the baby plant rests in the plant hospital until it takes root and is ready to debut in the hallways, adding to UAA's botanical bounty.

Lastly, some plants just grow weary out there in the high-traffic low-light corridors and staircases. When Catherine and her horticulture crew identify a wilting, troubled plant, they'll bring it back for a little R&R under the grow light and some extra TLC on the small shelves of the facility.

The attending physicians

Plant rehab is just one of the tasks overseen by the UAA grounds crew. Catherine and her team also prune and water the existing army of indoor plants, ready the outdoor beds for summer, as well as shovel the snow and deice the sidewalks.

The warm winter has bummed out many Alaskans, but it's provided a small silver lining for the grounds team. "Some years we're just plowing like crazy," Catherine said. "This year we've been able to spend a bit more time doing things on interior plants." She plans to start planting seeds in the campus greenhouse within the next few weeks, and begin growing 5,000 annuals in time for what could be an early summer.

Public service plant announcement

As the primary "doctor" for thousands of plants, Catherine has a message for students-only you can prevent plant damage. "They're living things and they do respond to their environment," she said. "It's amazing-coffee gets dumped on them, they often get used as trash cans, all kinds of stuff."

For those inquiring minds, no, coffee is not good for plants-creamer is especially hazardous and hot coffee can quickly burn the roots. Catherine has said goodbye to several plants doomed by human recklessness and caffeine addictions. She encourages students to think twice about the greenery gracing our campus.

"They are real and they will have a reaction to what happens to them," she said.

Medical quarantine

The plant hospital may lack the fast-paced frenzy of a TV medical drama-the ferns aren't exactly flat-lining, for example-but similarities exist. Currently, the facility is on lockdown. A recent donation arrived showing signs of a particularly nasty microscopic insect infestation, one that's nearly impossible to eradicate. Every plant is now under quarantine to make sure the bugs didn't travel.

True, the plants aren't attempting to escape. The quarantine, though, is a strong example of the efforts needed to keep our campus green and thriving, whatever the weather.

Written by J. Besl, UAA Office of University Advancement