1.  About 5 years ago, in Concord, California, my grandmother, an avid gardener, told me that African violets will not bloom unless they can see the sky [e-mail, November 2017].

2.  I … have a friend from Barbados whose parents moved here to Britain several years ago. His mother says that African violets are thought to be very unlucky if kept in the bedroom … If they are kept anywhere else that would be fine, but they are never to be put in the bedroom [Waddington, Lincolnshire, November 1996].

Image: Syon Park Garden Centre, Brentford, London Borough of Hounslow; August 2014.