https://www.wired.com/story/pink-princess-plantfluencers-pink-congo-scam/

Jeannie Nguyen’s home is full of precious, expensive things, all of them rooted in dirt: the spidery tendrils of a philodendron tortum, the scaly leaves of a piper parmatum. There is an enormous variegated monstera with big white splotches, like the splatter on a painter’s jeans. There is a tassel fern, spiny as a pipe cleaner. Recently, she splurged on a super-rare monstera obliqua, a delicate plant with leaves like lace.

For Nguyen, horticulture is a hobby as well as a side hustle. Each rare plant she acquires can, if properly nurtured, turn into a business opportunity, by selling cuttings she gingerly takes to fellow collectors online. She conducts most of her sales through platforms like Facebook and Instagram, where her account @planthaul has a few thousand followers. “The value of one plant has risen so much that you have to look at it like an investment,” she says. Nguyen has seen the biggest returns from plants with shocks of color—specifically, pink. She has a stock of tradescantia fluminensis, a common houseplant with pink-striped leaves that grows like a weed. “You can cut it and it propagates even if you throw it in the trash,” she says, “but these cuttings sell like hot cakes. People just love pink.”