Plantophilia

My jaw hit the floor when last week's Apothecary Gary episode labeled Hop Pop a "plantophile" (314a). Plants symbolize infants and young children, so the term strikes me as an obvious code for pedophilia. This characterization of Hop Pop at first seemed completely out of left field—but upon reflection, it's not without precedent.

The first Apothegary installment has Hop Pop sneaking into his sleeping grandchildren's bedrooms to rub spores (i.e., reproductive cells) on their foreheads. Sprig feels like "a prisoner in my own body," and Polly accuses Hop Pop of having "crossed all kinds of ethical and moral lines." The literal transgression is mind control (119a). It's not hard to read it as a metaphor for sexual abuse.

As for why, my first thought is toward Anne's incest kink. Hop Pop is Anne's idealized guardian, and she seems to entertain a fantasy wherein one's first sexual experiences are with a trusted adult (ideally but not exclusively a family member). Anne knows that this fantasy can't ever be reality, that an adult who would bone her is inherently not trustworthy. Take Tritonio's sexually charged combat training: it might be wish fulfillment on Anne's part, but at the end of the day, he grooms her, uses her, and is dragged away by the authorities and called a "sicko" for his repeat offenses involving children (118b). Hop Pop's allegorical molestation of his grandkids might similarly represent the dark side of Anne's fantasy, her understanding that this would be Actually Very Fucked Up were it real.

I think there's probably more to it than that, but it's my best guess so far. In any case, this casts Hop Pop's potato pinup (302b) in a new light.

A counterpoint: Much of the baby symbolism coalesces around Marcy, whose schema of plants is explicitly different than Hop Pop's: her "The humble seed: so much potential for growth!" versus his "One of the rare things life where you actually get out what you put in! It's beautiful!" (215b). So it's possible that plants = babies/children is localized to Marcy, while they symbolize something else entirely for Hop Pop. The counter-counterpoints: Not all the baby symbolism is tied to Marcy, it's equally possible that Marcy and Hop Pop's differing opinions on seeds signify their different views on infancy, and the sheer evocativeness of "p⸺ophile" is hard to ignore.