It is the time of year when some of us go a little crazy with decorating for the various holidays involving bringing light to the darkness in some way or another (Christmas, Yule, Hannukah, and more). Seeing all those lights, candles and blow-up characters does life one’s spirits when driving home in the dark. (I admit, I’m actually more fond of lights and less fond of blow-up things, which look so sad during the day when they are deflated.)
This year, we’ve brought more light to the darkness than usual, thanks to our love of battery-powered lights and a gift of a lot of regular lights that my coworker no longer wanted.
We did put a few lights on the deck and door, but most of them are in plants, both outdoors and indoors. I even bought NEW plants to stick lights on (and I hope they will live a long time and decorate the house the rest of the year, too).
I got to wondering, though, whether all these lights are secretly plant torture devices. Sure, some of them are on timers, but some are not, and just twinkle away all the time. Good researcher that I am, I sought out articles about it. The first one I read was about outdoor trees, and it said as long as you don’t wrap things tightly around trees and leave them there, you’ll be fine.
But, that article didn’t address the heat factor, and I wanted to know if so much light would be a problem. According to this fine article, “Are Your Christmas Lights Murdering Your Plants,” the answer is maybe. They point out that heat may be the culprit:
Where this becomes a problem is that during winter, your plants take a nap. They’re dormant, which allows them to make it through the swings of winter weather. If you use incandescent bulbs, they can actually throw off enough heat to come out of dormancy.
https://www.revolutionarygardens.com/are-your-christmas-lights-murdering-your-plants/
They recommend using LED bulbs, which is exactly why we now have so many lights: the coworker has switched to LED lights. This fact made me feel better about my indoor plants, which are nearly all covered with LED lights. And outdoors, I believe just one poor plant has the old bulbs on it.
I did not find anyone who said the light factor was a problem. Instead, I found many, many people recommending the lights in indoor plants, tastefully done. That said, our over-abundance of lights will not be permanent. Some of them will come down immediately after the work happy hour I’m hosting. The rest will be history after New Year’s.
Well, a couple of them look really nice. Maybe they can stay a while.
The Hermits' Rest 