The first leaf on a Monstera deliciosa emerges like a small rolled letter, tight and secretive. It will stay that way for days, sometimes weeks, before it unfurls. What it becomes has almost nothing to do with what the young leaf looked like — the splits, the holes, the architectural lace of fenestration arrives only in the opening, as the leaf expands against air.
Gardeners call this process "hardening," which is not quite right. The leaf is not getting tougher. It is finding its final shape in relation to the room it happens to be in — the light angle, the humidity, the occasional rotation at the hands of the keeper.
On the economy of leaves
A mature Monstera is careful with its energy. It will only put out a leaf when the previous leaf has finished working. This means that the plant in your hallway is, in some meaningful way, paced to the seasons of your hallway.
In a drafty north window with weak winter light, it might produce three leaves in a year.
In a steady east window in a well-humidified apartment, it might produce eight.
Neither rate is a judgment. The plant is answering the questions you are asking it.
The fenestrations
The holes and splits that Monstera leaves famously develop are not decorative. The leading theory, now well-supported, is that the openings allow light to pass through the canopy to leaves below, while also letting the wind (or, in the rainforest, a heavy rain) pass through without shredding the leaf.
Your Monstera, in your living room, has no light problem below it, and no weather. And yet it makes the holes anyway. This is what species do: they commit to a form, even when the form is not currently needed.
The plant is, in some meaningful way, paced to the seasons of your hallway.
What slow asks of us
I am not going to tell you to meditate with your Monstera. I will tell you that four mornings a week, I drink my coffee looking at ours, and I have gotten better at noticing when a new leaf is about to arrive. There is a faint arching at the cane tip. A few hours of fullness. And then, sometime in the night, a rolled letter.
The plant asks nothing of me in those hours. It is already doing the work. I am only a witness.
