You know you have arrived when

You have the ultimate expression of Victorian respectability – an Aspidistra.

This is ours in pride of place in our drawing room window.

The main reason that these plants were so popular in Victorian times, was that in the cities the air pollution was so bad that the Aspidistra – aka “The cast iron plant” was about the only thing which could survive it.  This obviously doesn’t apply now, and I would honestly be surprised if in a small place like Cupar it ever did outside (though the internal pollution from gas lighting and coal fires would still have been bad).

When I was growing up we used to visit Glasgow once or twice a year (late 70s early 80s) and every year there would be less and less soot blackened buildings as the atmospheric pollution declined and they were sandblasted back to their original colour.  It was actually quite remarkable to see – I don’t think young people appreciate how ugly industrial cities were then.  Of course if you go back another generation, people like my late father (born in 1930) remembered the filthy smogs there were right up until the late 1950s.  So some things have greatly changed for the better and we don’t need Aspidistras for their durability any more – but they are quite nice plants anyway.