Nope. The plant thing can happen. Pull em out, spray root kill if you want. Clean away loose gunk, don't let it go in the pipe. Install new stuff.

Feed me Seymour!.....roots under your toilet aren't normal. Also, that flange sits too low (should be sitting on your finished floor, not below). The flange also has bunch of gunk in it, needs to be clean or you'll never get a good seal.

Put it in soil and see what it grows into. Think it deserves a chance, must be nails.

You should have your drain inspected with a camera. You may have roots damaging it.

Buy a thing of root out and run that through your pipes after replacing the toilet. Just follow instructions....stuff works wonders.

Life, uh…finds a way.

OP do you have Willow trees? If so you'll want to get an inspection done.

No willow trees for me. Also, for context, this bathroom is in the basement of my house with no trees on that side.

I misread "toilet seat" instead of "toiled seal", and was wondering how on earth could you have a whole plant growing there without noticing it before...

I was expecting a cornstalk 😅

look for the rotting lumber that has to exist subsequent to all that water.

It's on the basement level, so no wood, just tile and concrete.

This. If you have roots coming in the drain line you it could lead to some serious issues quickly.

That, “extreme dirty” you are referring to is Doo-doo cake build up

Why? We had a willow tree that was growing almost right next to the house.

Pick up your pencil? I have never used this type of seal, only wax bowl rings. They work great unless the toilet wobbles because it is not secured properly and then they will leak. I think I paid about $3 for one the last time I replaced a toilet.

Luckily that plant smelled a little minty 😄

Firstly you need to change the type of fiber in your diet so you don’t grow a forrest in your drains.

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also, duct tape off toilet flange (the pipe) so sewer gas doesn’t leak into your house.

They have a tendency to find their way into sewer drains and cause a lot of damage.

The flange is always dirty in my experience. I reseated two toilets the other day.

Regarding this fix. About the only thing that can go wrong for you right now is the flange breaking. I would carefully clean everything up, reset the toilet with a new seal, and then test it. If it tests good, I would use blue painters tape, and a suitable silicone/caulk to caulk around the bottom edge of the toilet. Maybe use a root killing chemical product.

You can replace the flange if you like, but this depends entirely on what kind of flange it is. PVC flanges are easy. Cast iron flanges are hard.

As far as the better than wax ring goes, I find them inferior to a heavy duty Oatey wax ring

Probably tiled after it was originally the right height for the original flooring

My toilet started to drain slowly. Then adjoining shower started to slowly fill up. Was my weekend home so didn’t pay much thought to it. Guest bathroom fixtures were draining fine, so i started to use it. After about 6 months finally saw neighbor and asked if she was having issues. She wasn’t. I continued to ignore and finally saw lady from HOA office. As soon as I mentioned issue she said roots. But closest ficus hedge is 30’ away. Finally I lifted the toilet and sure enough, roots had found their way and went between wax seal and sewer pipe. Needed hacksaw to cut 1” thick root. And when i was finally able to pull out the roots, it was a total ‘nest’ of roots about 4” in diameter and ~2’ long. Long story short. No roots through the pipe (sewer pipe is clear) but minuscule gap in wax allowed root to get through. There’s a product, forget what it’s called, root out or root away, but available at big box stores, it’s blue crystal stuff in a black plastic bottle about 8” tall.

We’re all rooting for you

Just curious, in all European toilets I've seen, the drain is above floor level and the toilet slots into it with the seal built in. What's with the wax rings?

Thanks. We had to replace a portion of our main sewer line. I wonder if the willow was the culprit.

How old is the house? If that is an older cast iron drain system there could be breaches which can cause all sorts of issues.

1950s

I saw a guy on YouTube put a disposable coffee cup in there to block out the gas and it's worked like a charm.

Also, you should rase your toilet flange so it is level with your tile surface. It looks like who ever did your tile work skipped a step to save a few bucks. Also ,that friend of a friend that knew a plumber that dated his sister once who suggested a double wax ring is giving bad advise

Ohh boy that's a fortunate thing

In my case they found an already weakened section and then grew enough to cause a blockage, leading to me discovering the problem(s)