The author of the book examines Russian poetry of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from an unexpected angle: how the spread of exotic plants in Europe influenced the change of artistic styles and contributed to the emergence of modernism in literature. An ironic look allows us to draw an unexpected conclusion: it was not decadents who created the fashion for the orchid, but the orchid itself "gave birth" to the decadent, and Russian symbolism "grew" on the windowsills of the Moscow merchant Matryona Bryusova. The author suggests treating indoor plants as a universal indicator of philistine ideas about beauty, and in this case it turns out that changing colors on window sills is fraught with serious shocks in art. The book is illustrated with drawings, photographs and texts from old publications on floriculture, it can serve as a brief reference on "literary botany".