Some people are born with a green thumb. This sounds like a medical problem, or something fixable with soap. Other people can keep house plants alive. These people are called horticulturalists. Or sorcerers.

These people are not me.

Indoor plants are a wonderful source of home decor and can brighten up a living space.

They also require sunlight, watering, occasional pruning, maybe some kind of soil additives, and defense against the local indoor wildlife. For many people, this list is too much, and what start out as a delight become first a chore, then (in a best-case scenario) a Halloween decoration.

One alternative to plants for home decorating in recent years has become LED lighting. It has a modern/futuristic vibe, the LEDs don’t draw much power, and the colored ones can be soothing or vibrant, sometimes with the same lights if you have color-changing ones. But strings of lights in the house, creating a constant dorm-room vibe, aren’t for everyone.

That’s where San Francisco-based Fluora comes in. After starting out as providers out major public outdoor light installations, they developed a home system that replaces traditional potted plants with what are essentially LED lamps that resemble plants.

You can program them to stay whatever color you want or gradually shift between a palette of colors. Having one in my office is kind of like being in Avatar (the blue people one, not the airbending one). And it definitely gives off that “living in the future” energy, since we know that alien planets are all CGI anyway.

Definitely worth a look.

Don’t worry, you don’t need to buy them; window shopping to admire “cool tech” is fine!