Solana Moreau, a botanist with sun-bleached hair and a laugh like wind chimes, bought the 7-tube Estate in 1897 from a Hamilton, Ohio, catalog with prize money from her prizewinning orchids. She adored the filigree emerald green—“which matches the jungle I’ll never see”—and installed it in her glass-walled conservatory on Lake Erie’s edge.

Every dawn Solana fed the flame while coaxing rare ferns under its glow; the seven flues kept the air moist and warm, turning winter into perpetual summer. Visitors swore the green enamel brightened when her hybrids bloomed.

When the 1913 flood shattered the greenhouse, Solana washed ashore three miles down, rescued by Solana’s apprentice in 1938. It warmed a Cleveland flower shop until 1992, then a nursery shed until her great-grandniece brought it home last spring.

Light Solana now and the emerald vines seem to grow. In the hiss of gas you hear her murmur: “Roots remember light.”