LIVING ROOM A JUNGLE OF FLORA

It's a jungle down there. This view of Wilma Stratton's living room is from a bedroom in the loft. The windows at the right are among 18 that allow a great deal of sunlight into the room.

Wilma Stratton checks the condition of about 25 young green bananas on a banana tree in her living room. The tree is not the tallest plant in her house, but two years ago it produced enough bananas for a pie.

If the heat and humidity were higher the living room in Wilma Stratton's house would more closely resemble a tropical rain forest -- dense vegetation is there, everywhere.

But with the climate in the home kept temperate -- cool in the summer, warm in the winter -- the dozens of proliferating plants seem friendly, not stifling. Surely, they are happy since they grow like crazy -- one is 30 feet tall.

Stratton, who was born in Lutesville, now called Marble Hill, moved to Cape Girardeau in 1955. In 1978, she and her husband had a grand design -- they built a huge house on a hill.

The house, in the rural north of the city, faces south, and 18 large plates of glass on its facade allow plenty of sunshine to cascade inside.

The living room measures 40-by-22 feet, but it's the cathedral ceiling that's awesome -- it's 26 feet high and, in some places, covered with lush, green vines.

"Everyone wants to know what I do to make the plants grow so tall, and all I know is they get a good amount of light," said Stratton, tilting her head backward to look skyward. "Where I lived before I couldn't grow anything and didn't even try."

Stratton, whose husband is in the quarry business, says she did not intend to pack her living room with so much lush vegetation, it just sort of happened.

"We had so much room here that I bought a few plants and all were quite small," she said. "Like the pencil plant, it was about 8 inches tall, now it hits the 26-foot ceiling and drops down about 4 feet.

"The shefalera is about 26 feet tall and it and the rubber plant and the dumb cane (dieffenbachia) all were in little pots my husband got when he was in the hospital, and that was right before we moved in.

"I had no idea they would grow like that."

Near a fireplace are three Norfolk Island pines. Four to 5 feet tall, they were once "in little bitty pots my mother gave me for Christmas. They might have been 7 or 8 inches tall."

Another pine lives in an upstairs bedroom where it almost hits the ceiling. "It was a little bitty thing that no one would buy, but I did and it grew," said Stratton, sounding amazed.

Green and white striped spider plants hang from wooden beams under the ceiling in the living room, and mothers-in-law tongues, their leaves long and sharp, are happily potted in one corner of the room. A philodendrum is plush nearby.

A corn plant reached for the ceiling until its weight caused it to tip and fall across a beam. It was cut into smaller pieces and planted in a plethora of pots.

A species of cactus called crown of thorns huddles next to an arborescent form that's getting a lot of attention these days -- a banana tree and yes, there are bananas on it.

"This is the second time it's produced bananas," said Stratton, obviously pleased. "The first time was two years ago. I made a banana pie and my husband had bananas with his cereal for several mornings.

"They almost got ripe all at once and I could hardly use them up fast enough.

"They were real tasty and not very large. The peelings were yellow and paper thin, not like the thick peelings of the ones you buy in stores."

Stratton was given the banana tree in 1985 by a woman for whom she made a stained glass window. The woman came to Stratton's home to pick out the color of glass she wanted (Stratton has a workshop in her basement) and she noted the vaulted ceiling and large windows facing south.

"She had an extra one and thought it would have a good home here. A few months later she brought me another. It looked sick and she was going to throw it away, but I took it and it turned out fine."

The banana trees were about 2 1/2 feet tall when they took up residence in the living room; they have reproduced and several stand 8 feet tall today. One pot contains about 13 banana trees of various heights.

Stratton repots most of her plants -- "I have to every once in a while," but she hasn't repotted the perpendicular pencil plant for ages "because there's almost no roots."

A philodendrum was repotted not long ago -- its roots were breaking through the surface of the soil.

She has a watering schedule and all the plants get anoited at least once a week. The banana trees get drinks three or four times weekly. And fertilizer? -- Schultz Plant Food is used with each watering.

Stratton trims her plants to keep them shapely, and when leaves die she removes them. She doesn't mist the vegetation, but if the room gets too hot she'll pull the drapes to give them some shade.

She quickly admits that visitors to her home are overwhelmed by the sight: "My son's always teasing me when he visits. He says it's like walking through a jungle."