Writing the Lives of Plants: Phytography and the Botanical Imagination

Abstract

Phytography refers to human writings about plant lives as well as plant writings about their own lives. The author conceptualizes phytography in terms of vegetal intelligence, behavior, corporeality, and temporality. Narrating the complex worlds of plants, phytography uses a variety of formal strategies to advocate new possibilities for human-flora relations.

Keywords:

• plants
• poetry
• posthumanism
• phytography

Acknowledgments

The author is grateful for the support of the issue editors, Jessica White and Gillian Whitlock. Thanks also to Stuart Cooke for suggesting Burk’s Tree Talks.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See, for example, Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows; Haskell, The Songs of Trees; Mabey, The Cabaret of Plants; and Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees. Published in 2014 and set in southeast Queensland, Greer’s White Beech should also be noted as an important contemporary example of plant-attentive place-based memoir weaving between history, botany, and feminist politics.

2 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 1–5, 6–13, 19–24, 79–84.

3 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 37.

4 See, for example, Karban and Orrock, “Judgment.”

5 Audus, “Roots of Absurdity”; Baluška and Mancuso, “Plants and Animals,” 285; and Green, Secret Life of Plants.

6 Bose, “Literature and Science.”

7 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 31–58.

8 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 39.

9 Marder, Plant-Thinking, 183.

10 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio”; Huff and Haefner, “His Master’s Voice.”

11 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, xvi; Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies, 132.

12 Marder, Plant-Thinking, 183.

13 Baluška et al., “Neurobiological View of Plants,” 20.

14 Gagliano, Ryan, and Vieira, “Introduction.”

15 Dretske, “Machines, Plants and Animals,” 25; Marder, The Philosopher’s Plant, 148.

16 Wickens, Economic Botany, xiii. Even contemporary botanical writers have become ensnared in vegetal utilitarianism—valuing flora narrowly vis-à-vis its usefulness. As a case in point, Mabey’s Plants with a Purpose, published in 1977, focuses on “the ways in which the commoner wild plants of Europe and North America have, and can, be put to fruitful and enjoyable household use” (12).

17 Mancuso and Viola, Brilliant Green.

18 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 4.

19 Ryan, Plants in Contemporary Poetry, 7–8.

20 See, for example, Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 31–58; Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 8–17; and Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 74–92.

21 Smith and Watson, Reading Autobiography, 201–203.

22 Ryan, Plants in Contemporary Poetry, 7–10.

23 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 281.

24 Husserl, Pure Phenomenology, 52–55.

25 Miller, “The Entangled Self,” 544.

26 Huff and Haefner, “His Master’s Voice,” 153.

27 Huff and Haefner, “His Master’s Voice,” 154.

28 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 279.

29 Huff and Haefner, “His Master’s Voice,” 159.

30 Arana, “Biography and Poetry,” 116.

31 Arana, “Biography and Poetry,” 117.

32 Abbs, “Autobiography and Poetry,” 82.

33 Abbs, “Autobiography and Poetry,” 81.

34 Abbs, “Autobiography and Poetry,” 82.

35 Huff and Haefner, “His Master’s Voice,” 165.

36 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 279.

37 Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 193.

38 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 279.

39 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 280.

40 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 280.

41 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 280.

42 Krampen, “Phytosemiotics.”

43 Qtd. in Krampen, “Phytosemiotics,” 266.

44 Vieira, “Phytographia,” 218.

45 Vieira, “Phytographia,” 218.

46 Ryan, “Poetry as Plant Script,” 127.

47 Gagliano, Ryan, and Vieira, “Introduction.”

48 Rivas and Burghardt, “Crotalomorphism,” 9.

49 Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies, 107.

50 Weik von Mossner, Affective Ecologies, 132.

51 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, xvi.

52 Bennett, Vibrant Matter, 99.

53 Rivas and Burghardt, “Crotalomorphism,” 10.

54 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 8–17.

55 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 8.

56 Watts, “Coda,” 259.

57 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 8.

58 James, “What the Plant Says,” 267.

59 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 10; emphasis added.

60 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 10.

61 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 10.

62 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 10.

63 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 15 and elsewhere.

64 Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 17.

65 James, “What the Plant Says,” 268–269.

66 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 74–92.

67 Ryan, Green Sense, 13–40.

68 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 74.

69 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 74.

70 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 78.

71 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 78.

72 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 280.

73 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 78.

74 Thoreau, Wild Fruits, 80.

75 Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows; Haskell, The Songs of Trees; Mabey, The Cabaret of Plants; Mabey, Plants with a Purpose; Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees.

76 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 151–154.

77 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 151.

78 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 151.

79 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 152.

80 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 152.

81 Wohlleben, Hidden Life of Trees, 152.

82 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 32.

83 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 32.

84 Haskell, The Songs of Trees, 36.

85 Marder, Plant-Thinking, 183.

86 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 280.

87 Lansdown, Homecoming; Glück, The Wild Iris; Gladding, Translations from Bark Beetle; Burk, Tree Talks.

88 Lansdown, Homecoming, 8, lines 11–16; emphasis added.

89 Lansdown, Homecoming, 8, lines 17–23.

90 Glück, The Wild Iris, 1, lines 5–10.

91 Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows.

92 Glück, The Wild Iris, 1, lines 16–17.

93 Bervin and Gladding, “Three Dimensions.”

94 Milkweed Editions, “Translations from Bark Beetle.”

95 Bendall, “Secret Inscriptions.”

96 Milkweed Editions, “Translations from Bark Beetle”; emphasis added.

97 Miller, “The Entangled Self,” 544.

98 Gladding, Translations from Bark Beetle, 6.

99 Bervin and Gladding, “Three Dimensions.”

100 Burk, Tree Talks, preface.

101 Kirksey and Helmreich, “Emergence of Multispecies Ethnography”; Russo, “Listening-Being”; Gessner, “The Synecological Poem.”

102 Burk, Tree Talks, 21.

103 Gessner, “The Synecological Poem.”

104 Burk, Tree Talks, 31.

105 Atkinson et al., High Lean Country.

106 Tarlo, “Introduction.”

107 Ryan, “Gorge.”

108 Solnit, “Acts of Hope.”

109 Harris, Dictionary, 57.

110 Ryan, “Gorge.”

111 Gagliano et al., “Tuned In.”

112 Huff, “After Auto, after Bio,” 281.

113 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus.