Dudleyas are native to my region, and though they don’t like much rain, Central Coast is within normal climate variation so, I feel like I should leave mine, which was legally acquired, I should quickly point out, outdoors during our spate of storms, especially since I have recently been reminded of the toxic content of indoor air.

Yet it seems so sad, not budding, not really even growing, looking just as it did when I planted it in the fall. Dudleyas, which word I realize is grammatically questionable, but that’s what we say here in California, are the opposite of dull, are in fact know for fabulously colorful and eccentric natural morphs.

Perhaps it regrets being in a pot, from which it can’t reach out its roots to nuzzle with the roots of plants both familial and strange, encounter a friendly or fiendish soil creature, or extend to boundless depth. Perhaps, because the pot is overly large for it, it feels lonely, like a widow whose children live abroad dining at a mahogany banquet table, or an only child with her own bedroom plus a toy room but no nearby companions.

On the other hand, perhaps it is perfectly content, expanding underground while demurely delaying its above-ground flamboyance until the torrent season ends. My gardener friend, to whom I gave a second legal dudleya, says it looks healthy, yet also mentions that hers is blooming. Housewives in Korea and Japan covet dudleyas to showcase their gardening chops, chops I definitely do not share, so perhaps I should tamp my expectations.

Perhaps it feels nothing, being a plant? Yet trees have complex lives, allowing them to engage in long-term planning, group communications, pest control, and even migration, as we know due to years of study and observation by some of the most patient humans among us, the only sort who are suited to study organisms with such enormous lifespans.

Dudleyas live 50-100 years.

Some marine invertebrates and fish live longer than humans, perhaps 100 years, or 300 years, or more? Humans find those creatures’ lifespans much harder to pinpoint than those of trees, since they are underwater and we have more trouble discerning individuals, and perhaps individuals are hard to discern, such as with aggregating anemones.

As you all know, the largest living organism on Earth may be a fungus, but did you know a fungus may be oldest as well, perhaps over 8000 years old? I doubt anyone has studied its feelings, since humans only discovered it a few decades ago.

Creatures with subhuman lifespans may also have more self-awareness than humans thought, or such is the conclusion of a wide range of ethologists. Two examples came to my attention recently. One is a female fish who, when she dislikes the male attempting to mate with her, fakes her ultimate egg-spewing wiggle in order to invoke his ejaculation uselessly, after which he leaves, oblivious, and she seeks a hotter prospect. Another is a male fruit fly who, on realizing he has low prospects of successful mating, gets drunk on fermented nectar in wildflowers.

That fruit fly also may be sad, though also smart. Drunkenness is not a good way to attract a mate.