PASSIONATE ABOUT PEPEROMIA

Former dentist Sally Williams collects Peperomia, and has more than 1,500 plants in the Peak District farmhouse she shares with her husband and son.

From the moment I first saw a Peperomia, aged about 12, I was fascinated by these little plants that didn’t look like anything else I had ever seen, and begged my parents to buy me one. The more I collected, the more I wanted to find out more about them. I’ve recently completed a Master’s in research about Peperomia at the University of Sheffield.

Dating from the time of the dinosaurs, and growing in tropical regions, they evolved variations in their leaves so they could grow in a range of habitats. Captain Bligh (of HMS Bounty) brought some back from his travels, and they’ve been grown as houseplants for a couple of hundred years now. They were known as stove plants, as they needed a heated room.

Peperomia are sold in supermarkets, but I concentrate on the rarer ones, which I get from specialist nurseries. Some of them need special conditions, like extra lighting or cold spells over winter. Fortunately, they aren’t as popular as some plants, so I don’t spend much adding to my collection. Having all these plants indoors does take up a lot of space – I have one room filled with them floor to ceiling, and when my boys were younger, there was barely room for their plates on the kitchen table.

Now that my family are growing up, I have been able to travel to see Peperomia growing in the wild, from the Amazon rainforest to hiking up to Machu Picchu. I’m still always looking for new varieties, though the first one I got is still one of my favourites.