WHATEVER HAPPENED to the aspidistra? There was a time when every house in Britain had one. With leaves like wide, waving tongues of green flame, the aspidistra first became popular as a houseplant in Victorian days. Other plants turned brown and died in rooms where the gas routinely leaked from the lamps, but not the aspidistra. Neither do aspidistras mind drought, lack of light, cigarette smoke, burns nor neglect. Famously hardy, they became a staple of Edwardian guesthouses as well as pubs, for which they were known as the bar-room plant. Growing slowly through the years on a table in the nation’s hall, aspidistras became so widespread that George Orwell used them as an emblem of comfortable conformity in his satirical novel Keep the Aspidistra Flying. As well as being the lead ch