Rose of Jericho

A Plant That Waits

Dry, the Rose of Jericho is a closed brown fist, about the size of a plum. Set it in a shallow dish of water and it begins to open within the hour. By morning it has unfurled into a flat green rosette. Let the water go and it curls shut again, back to the fist, and waits.

It will do this for years. The same plant, over and over, on no schedule but yours.

Specifications

• Size: medium, roughly 3 to 4 in across when open
• Condition: dormant and dry, ready to revive
• Sold: individually, one plant
• Requires: a shallow dish and water. No soil, no light schedule, no feeding

How to wake it

1. Set the plant root-side down in a shallow dish. A saucer or bowl is fine.
2. Add water until it reaches about a third of the way up the plant. Do not submerge it.
3. Leave it somewhere with indirect light. It will begin opening within an hour and be fully green in 24 to 48 hours.
4. Change the water every two to three days while it is open.

How to rest it

Pour off the water and set the plant somewhere dry with air moving around it. It will close over the next few days and return to dormancy. Store it dry until you want it again.

Rest it after about a week open. Leaving it wet continuously is the one thing that will actually kill it, because standing water breeds rot at the center where you cannot see it. A plant that is cycled between wet and dry will outlast one that is kept permanently green.

Working with it

• Open it at the start of a working and let it close as the working completes
• Keep it as a standing presence on an altar, woken for specific occasions
• Use the water it opened in, which practitioners commonly reserve rather than discard
• Set it out as a marker of a cycle you are tracking, opened and rested deliberately

What it is

Despite the name it is not a rose, and not a flower at all. It is a spikemoss, a plant lineage far older than flowering plants, native to the Chihuahuan Desert. What looks like death is a survival strategy: it dries down to roughly five percent water content, suspends its metabolism, and holds until rain returns. Botanists call this desiccation tolerance, and very few plants on earth do it this well.

People have kept these for as long as they have encountered them, for the obvious reason. A thing that appears dead and is not is going to mean something to whoever is holding it.

Care and honesty

Yours will arrive brown, flat, and looking thoroughly dead. That is correct. Give it water and give it a day.

Some plants open faster than others, and older or larger specimens can take a full two days. Some never fully flatten out and stay slightly cupped. Both are normal. A plant that stays brown after 48 hours in water, or that smells sour, should be replaced, and we will replace it.

Notes

Non-toxic, but not a food plant and not for consumption. The standing water it sits in is not drinking water and should be changed regularly. Keep the dish where it will not be knocked over. Plant only; dish not included.