That's pretty much straight from encyclopediadramatica (except they refer to a particular plant) or second-hand (starsandrobots).

The rumour would be more poetic if it said he liked plants, and that he feigned having a phobia to get people to have office plants.

Edit: removed unintentional copy pasta.

I don’t know why this is being downvoted: it is actually true. I know it sounds ridiculous, but that is because tolerating his behavior for this long was ridiculous.