Grandpa's rubber tree
Hilal Alkan
This story is about a rubber plant. A ficus elastica robusta in Linnaean nomenclature and Kauçuk in Turkish. It is a native of South Asia but is now found in all humid tropical climate zones. But even more commonly it is found indoors all around the planet. While a mere miniature of its grandiose 30-metre self when outdoors in its native lands, the ficus as a potted plant brings beauty to the cramped indoors with its burly dark-green leaves.
This rubber plant, the one who is the protagonist of this essay, lives in my flat. As sturdy and beautiful as the other members of the species, my rubber plant is not just any ficus elastica. He is known to me and my children as ‘my grandpa’s rubber tree’. He is the plant that is dearest to my heart and the one that I most fiercely protect. Growing him has been an arduous journey, marked by failure and perseverance. Now, tender new leaves, fresh and lemon-green, emerge wrapped in delicate, pinkish white sacs, like silk cocoons that eventually unfurl to greet the sunlight. Watching him is like watching my kids take their first steps and mumble their first words. It is pure joy. A new person, in formation. A new being, becoming.
I love this rubber tree. I love his roots, and his dark, deep tone of green. I like the way he moves his heavy leaves over the days – curling and uncurling, up and down or towards the sun. I watch him with fascination because he is a wondrous plant being. But also because he is my grandpa’s rubber tree. It is as if my grandfather, who fled from Bulgaria to Turkey as a child, and is buried in the cemetery of the small Anatolian town where he spent most of his life, now lives with me in my Berlin flat.
I don’t exactly know how and when this ficus elastica became my grandfather’s rubber tree. I remember him from my grandparents’ village house which had a large courtyard and two living quarters opening onto it. The rubber tree lived in the upper quarters which was reserved for guests, and kept always clean, tidy and under lock and key. My grandparents slept in the lower quarters. There was nothing special about the rubber tree at the time but it somehow became associated in my childhood memories with this regal part of the house, where there was a dining table and a sofa set, while in the lower quarters (to my pleasure) we sat on the floor to eat and slept on the same diwan we sat on during the day. The true reason why the tree was in the upper ‘house’ was, however, more vegetal. This ‘upper house’, as we called it, received more sunlight, thanks to its large windows, and it served the plants’ needs better.
My grandpa with my siblings and me in the courtyard, Eid al Fitr (Ramazan Bayramı) 1990
My grandparents had other special plants, which were possibly dearer to their hearts. Some connected them to the places they had migrated from (Bulgaria and Crimea), and others were attractive for reasons unknown to me. While it was my grandpa who cared for all the plants, they both loved flowers. Reverse tulips, tuşaye – which is, as I later found out, the emblematic flower of some Balkan immigrants – snowdrops, irises, peonies and tulips marked spring in their garden, while roses were looked after very carefully. They also had a couple of beautiful fruit trees. It must have been a challenge to grow them despite the extremely dry and bitterly cold winters – maybe that was the reason why my grandfather was partial to the pear tree.
There were not so many indoor plants in this house. All those that existed were thanks to my grandfather’s labour and care. My grandma was not enthusiastic about looking after houseplants and, as they got older they had fewer and fewer. The rubber tree was one of those few. When my grandparents moved to a flat in the city, it was the one they carried with them, together with the sofa set and the table. After my grandmother passed away in 2017, my grandfather gradually moved out of the flat and started dividing his time between his three children and my sister. During this period my uncle’s wife took the plant under her care. She has a green thumb and a soft voice, which she also used when speaking to her plants. Shortly before my grandfather’s death she cut the top of the rubber plant and gifted the cutting to my aunt in Ankara. My grandfather’s rubber tree became two, and after my grandfather’s death in 2021, it started to embody him.
My grandpa never came to stay with me in my Berlin home. Knowing how much he loved seeing new places and travelling, this brings tears to my eyes even today. When I saw that the ficus was doing very well in the Ankara living room, I decided to grow a part of it in Berlin, in order to finally host my grandpa. I found some videos showing how to propagate a ficus elastica from the leaves. I cut off a leaf in April 2022 and carefully brought it to Berlin. It spent two months in water, rooting, and then I planted it in the soil.
A single sad leaf was sitting passively in a pot. For months, I desperately waited for it to grow a shoot, a branch, any sign of new life. Nothing happened. I dutifully watered it, gave it nutrients, put it on the windowsill, and arranged the angle so that it would receive direct sunlight. Nothing happened. One day it started to dry from the edges. I looked up advice to help it out. I cleaned the roots and repotted it. It did not help. The poor single leaf, which I ridiculously called my grandpa’s rubber tree, slowly dried out and died.
Back then I was unaware of the fact that propagating a ficus elastica from a leaf was a mission impossible. A new plant could have only grown from where the stem met the leaf. In the case of my single pitiable leaf, I did not have the stem.
For months I could not throw it away. It stayed in the pot. One dry leaf.
During the year I had hoped to grow a rubber plant from a single leaf, my grandpa’s rubber tree sprouted at least a dozen new leaves in my aunt’s sunny flat in Ankara and reached up towards the ceiling. At the end of 2023, with my aunt and father’s help, I cut off the top 30 cm. We filled a small plastic bottle with soil, moistened it and pushed the cutting into it. We wrapped the bleeding wound of the mother tree with a clean cloth and hoped that it would not be infected. About a month later he already started to grow fresh leaves.
*
My rubber tree had many more adventures. I carried him first to Istanbul. Then I laid him flat in my luggage and brought it to Berlin. I immediately planted him into a transparent plastic pot so I could observe the rooting. I was worried that he would not find enough energy to grow roots in the dark depths of Berlin winter, so I bought a growth lamp.
Waiting to be put into the suitcase,
January 2024
Before transplantation in Berlin,
January 2024
Roots, April 2024
When his leaves started to curl, panic rose in my heart. I spent some hours reading about the plant – this was when I learned why the first one did not survive. But I could not find a solution to leaf curl. How little we know about most plants, and how ignorant I am about plant biology… When our cats started jumping on him, I wrapped his stand and the rim of the pot with aluminium foil to deter the cats. It was not enough of a deterrent though. They toppled the pot once. I reacted with such fury that both of them could not find the courage to leave their hiding place under the sofa for some hours. After that we never left the cats in the kitchen unattended. I could not risk either – not the cats, nor my grandpa’s rubber tree – being hurt.
Fresh leaves, May 2024
In mid-April 2024, I came back from another holiday in Turkey, where I visited and admired my grandpa’s rubber tree in my aunt’s flat. I found two new, tender, light green leaves on my grandpa’s rubber tree. As I write this in May 2024, he has three new leaves and is growing another one.
My grandfather is now with me, living through this tree, watching my children grow, and even tolerating the cats. When I miss him, I look at the rubber tree; when I look at the rubber tree, I remember the beautiful human being he was. His scent fills my nostrils, his beard tickles my cheek. In the tree, which is not yet a tree, is my beloved grandpa: his wrinkled hands, his soft hair, his perfect teeth, aching knees and layers upon layers of clothing. His kindness and humility; his clever eyes and gentle soul. The tree is a beauty in itself. His every move is a miracle (and yes he is moving, in his own elegant slow way). But he also carries the many beauties of my grandfather.
My grandpa’s rubber tree is one tree but it is also three, located in three different homes in different parts of the world. So fitting to who my grandpa was. Born in one country, raised and lived in another, he spent his final years between four homes in different cities. Yet he only had a small bag holding his few possessions, which one could easily count but never reach 20. And now, his rubber tree grows in just a potful of soil, demanding only an occasional watering, as it sends down roots in Germany.
Hilal Alkan is an interdisciplinary researcher of migration and care, based at the Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin. In her current research in Germany, she works with migrants from Turkey and the plants they grow, trying to understand plant affordances in home-making. Her research has an auto-ethnographic element and she explores artistic methods with her interlocutors.
Photos and watercolours courtesy Hilal Alkan
