ABSTRACTS
Jan Baedke, Ruhr-University Bochum
Lost Legacies of Local Plant Collectors on the Yucatan Peninsula, 1930-1978
In the early 20th century, extensive botanical expeditions were launched to explore the Yucatan peninsula, particularly the Maya regions spanning Mexico, Guatemala, and British Honduras (now Belize). This paper highlights the crucial yet forgotten roles of local plant collectors in these explorations, focusing on Percy H. Gentle (1890-1958) and Elias R. Contreras (1922/23-?) and Eizi Matuda (1894-1978). Gentle, a black plant collector from British Honduras, collaborated with Harley Harris Bartlett and Cyrus Longworth Lundell in Petén (Guatemala) and British Honduras from 1931 to 1936. Supported by Lundell, he continued his independent explorations, collecting around 10,000 specimens, including 153 new taxa, making him Belize's foremost flora collector. From 1959 to 1978, Elias Contreras, a local farmer from Petén, collected approximately 7,000 specimens for Lundell and contributed significantly to archaeological and ecological projects at the Tikal ruins in the 1960s and 70s. In addition, Eizi Matuda, a trained botanist, farmer, and Japanese migrant to Mexico collected extensively in Chiapas between ca. 1938-1974. Despite their significant contributions these and other local collectors remain largely unrecognized today. This paper draws on expedition reports, archival material, and digital records from virtual herbaria and biodiversity collections (e.g., GIBF, SERMEC, iDigBio, Tropicos) to reconstruct their contributions to botanical and archaeological expeditions. Additionally, it reflects on labeling practices in plant collection, the loss of indigenous knowledge, and the power structures that have obscured the valuable contributions of these collectors to conservation and biodiversity efforts.
Fabrizio Baldassarri, Università degli Studi di Milano
Plant philosophy as a root of seventeenth-century botanical knowledge
While a fully-fledged science of plants did not entirely surface before eighteenth-century taxonomies and Carl Linnaeus’ work, several attempts to provide botanical knowledge with a theoretical ground have characterized Renaissance and seventeenth-century science. In this talk, I aim to shed light on the importance a more speculative approach to plant studies played in the period, as this approach to vegetation importantly transformed the science of plants that developed in the second half of seventeenth century. In particular, I aim to outline three theoretical changes that influenced botanical knowledge, namely, (a.) the refusal of Aristotelian essentialism and substantial forms, aiming at isolating the essential characters of bodies, (b.) the definition of a mechanical framework, concentrating on the inner structure of plants, and (c.) the chymical experimentation of plant changes, transformations, adaptations, degenerations and resurrections. Moving from Andrea Cesalpino’s philosophical botany to John Locke’s philosophical herbarium, I ultimately aim to discuss a few examples of the importance of plant philosophy in the seventeenth century.
Quentin Hiernaux, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Are there taxonomic biases in the representation of plant biodiversity?
​The idea that there are taxonomic biases in the representation of biodiversity is not new to biology or the philosophy of biology. The concept of plant blindness is now well known. However, we may wonder whether more specific biases exist within the plant kingdom itself. For example, are people citing mainly trees or flowering plants (Angiosperms) when thinking about plants? Very little empirical work has been done to objectivize these biases within the population. Our survey aims to answer this question, namely by comparing the results to the intrinsic biodiversity existing within plant taxonomy. Several philosophical and epistemological interpretations of the data collected and results are discussed".
Katharine Legun, Wageningen University & Research
New digital technologies in agriculture and the politics of care for plants
Geographers and sociologists interested in the politics of agricultural production have long engaged in studies that recognize the ways that the botanical features of plants influence processes of commoditization. Expanding this line of work, a growing number of social scientists in areas like political ecology and vegetal geography are attending more closely to the dynamic ways that plant vitality shapes social, economic, and political life. Relatedly, concepts that highlight multi-species relationships, like conviviality and care ethics, are gaining traction as entry points into understanding diverse farming practices and the social and cultural damage of capitalist modes of food production.In this talk, I will reflect back on five years of research within MaaraTech, a project based in Aotearoa New Zealand building autonomous robotics for winegrape and apple production. I will reflect on the empirical work of the project broadly by focusing on automation and the politics of care within the botanical histories of these particular crops. I will discuss how attending to care for plants can clarify the historical politics in which new robotic technologies are situated, and generate insights into their practical implications for agriculture.
Sabina Leonelli / Hugh Williamson, Technical University München
When more knowledge is less power: Extractive epistemologies, data-intensive crop science and the history of cassava research
This paper discusses a severe and seemingly inescapable tension underpinning efforts to share and re-use data about plants on a global scale, which are typically regarded as crucial to planetary health. Many of those who engage in data sharing are not recognized for their contributions and not consulted when data are interpreted – a situation rife with epistemic injustice, resulting in unreliable biological knowledge and problematic agricultural intervention. On the one hand, countering such epistemic injustice means making data sharing and modelling efforts more inclusive, thereby allowing for a variety of perspectives on what counts as biological knowledge and acceptable frameworks for agricultural development. On the other hand, the global system of data sourcing and re-use, with its countless contributors and its highly distributed expertise, remains under the knowledge-control regime exercised by agro-tech businesses and data analytics companies, which has been widely critiqued as unjust towards local farmers and biased towards a market-oriented view of agricultural development tied to crop yield. We argue that resolving this tension may involve moving away from the idea of data as an unavoidable starting point for knowledge development, which is part and parcel of contemporary extractivist epistemologies of science. To exemplify these claims, we focus on contemporary efforts to share data about cassava and discuss their roots into the history of cassava research in West Africa.
Kärin Nickelsen, Ludwig-Maximilian-University München
Which Power of Movement in Plants? How Nineteenth-Century Botanists Struggled with Plant-Animal Analogies
How similar (or different) plants and animals are has long been debated in botany. One of the perennial issues in this context was the phenomenon of plant movement, which in nineteenth-century European botany became a particularly hot topic. The paper analyses the ensuing debate at selected examples with a focus on methodological questions. People disagreed on almost everything: the accurate description of the explanandum, the best method of investigation, the range of permissible, potential, and actual explanatory factors, and the usefulness of plant-animal analogies. The paper argues that this debate was symptomatic of how botany, or more precisely: plant physiology, struggled to recalibrate its aims and methodology during these decades. The field found itself caught between the rise of evolutionary thinking and the growing importance of physicochemical approaches, the desire to find laws of nature and the persistent popularity of vitalism. Finding an explanation for the movement of plants became important for various fractions, albeit in fundamentally different ways.
Abigail Nieves Delgado, Utrecht University
The medical origins of ethnobotany in Mexico (1890-1929)
​In this presentation, I look closely at the development of Mexican ethnobotany at the turn of the 19th century in the context of public health. By exploring the botanical and medical work done at the ‘Instituto Médico Nacional’ (hereafter IMN) in Mexico City, we come to understand how the utilitarian focus of ethnobotany was driven by domestic human health concerns. Mexican historians have written extensively on the national and international scientific relevance of the IMN but they have failed to connect it to the development of ethnobiology. The IMN (founded in 1890) had the purpose of developing a Mexican pharmacopeia based on the study of the rich diversity of Mexican plants and their associated indigenous knowledge and uses. One task of the IMN was to test the effectivity of plant based remedies and educate the public accordingly. To collect plants, the IMN sent questionnaires and instructions for collectors who then returned plant specimens and information on their usage. These plants were passed to subsequent commissions for the extraction of active substances and the production of medicines. Finally, the medicines would be tested on patients in medical institutions. Through a focus on the ethnobotanical work at the IMN and its underlying practices (1890-1929), I uncover recurrent motivations and worries among scientists, still relevant today, that are related to the exceptionality of Mexico’s natural and cultural richness and the importance of its preservation. More generally, I discuss the role of early ethnobiology in Mexico within a larger scientific and socio-political context.
Arnika Peselmann, Julius-Maximilians-University Würzburg
Becoming with Apples. Doing Ethnographic Research on Human-Plant Relations in Commercial Orcharding
In my presentation, I will explore human-plant relations in intensive agriculture from the perspective of multispecies studies, based on findings of my ethnological DFG-research project Becoming with Apples. Using the example of apple breeding and cultivation in the orchard region Alte Land near Hamburg, I examine interspecies interactions in rural economies and ask about prevailing knowledge and ontologies of cultivated apples (malus domestica) as well as forms of vegetal agency. In agrarian life worlds human-plant entanglements are affected and shaped by transforming trajectories of agricultural production – what kind of human practices of care and affection but also violence and exploitation towards plants become visible here? Besides, I also wish to tackle methodological questions and challenges when engaging with vegetal beings in ethnographic research: How can our disciplinary methodical took kit help us in approaching plants and their multispecies entanglements and where does it need to be extended?
Miguel Segundo-Ortin, Universidad de Murcia
Comparative psychology: What can we learn from studying plants?
Comparative psychology studies the species’ differences in their cognitive abilities – e.g., perception, decision-making, learning, memory, anticipation, and so on –, including the underlying mechanisms that permit such abilities. Even though in the last decade more non-human animal species have attracted the attention of comparative psychologists (e.g., insects), the field remains particularly zoo-centric. In this talk, I will be examining the empirical studies being conducted on plants, as well as the numerous challenges these studies find. My interest is in determining what lessons can be learned from studying cognitive abilities in plants.
Matthew Sims, Ruhr-University Bochum
Reversible behaviour in climbing plants
From the perspective of animal ethology, the notion of plant behaviour is often seen as contentious. One reason for this contention presumably can be traced back to the idea that for a response to qualify as behaviour, it must be reversible (i.e., modifiable in response to sensed environmental change). Unlike animal responses, so the thought goes, plant responses are fixed or predetermined and thus fail to qualify as behaviour. In this talk I will review three different examples in which climbing plants reversibly adjust how they respond to changing fitness-relevant conditions in their environment. These will include circumnutation, the organ abscission, and secondary metabolite production. I shall argue that although the reversibility of such responses differs from that which is characteristic of animal behaviour, these differences do not warrant rejecting the status of such reversible plant responses as forms of behaviour. Rather, they emphasise how sessility and motility constrain behaviour in different ways. The examples discussed, I will conclude, also highlight the importance of investigating the details of plant behaviour in the context of light resource competition and herbivory, two selection pressures which do not elicit animal behaviour.
Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, University of Florida
“Say it with Flowers”: Elizabeth Britton, Roses, and the Floral Politics of America (1929-1934)
Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton (1858-1934) is best known as the wife of Nathaniel Lord Britton (1859-1934), one-half of the celebrated “creative couple” responsible for founding the New York Botanical Garden, and shaping its early history. Although Nathaniel made his reputation in floristic studies of the northeastern United States and the West Indies, Elizabeth distinguished herself in the systematics of the bryophytes, or mosses, tackling especially difficult groups. By the 1920s, she was one of the foremost experts on mosses and pursued their study with so much zeal that she served as the inspiration for Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling novel, The Signature of All Things. Yet despite these distinctions, historians have paid but passing attention to Britton, missing many other vital aspects of her botanical work. She published extensively on a number of other plant groups in addition to mosses, for example, and was active in conservation efforts with the Federated Garden Clubs in New York. In 1929 she drew on her considerable authority in the botanical world, her significant visibility, and her influence with the wealthy patrons who had helped to support her idea of a garden in the US to rival Kew Gardens in England, when she entered what had become an unusually rancorous national debate—the choice of the national flower. This paper focuses on this largely unknown portion of Elizabeth Gertrude Knight Britton’s career, her campaign to establish the rose as the national floral emblem, and the rationale for her choice. It also explores the national debate over the choice of floral emblem, the recognition that some flowers were native, while others were not, and the symbolic politics of natural objects like flowers--and their meaning--in expanding geographic and indeed imperial contexts. Having spent her childhood in Cuba on a sugar plantation, and her winters in Puerto Rico while Nathaniel was involved in the famous Survey, for example, Britton’s sense of what counted as the United States extended well beyond the traditional continental boundaries and shaped her choice of floral emblem. This paper will draw on archival records, newspaper and other media sources, as well as a range of secondary historical literature on geography, national imaginaries, and natural objects to explore the entanglements between botany, horticultural science, collections, commerce, urban design and gardening, in the context of both a growing nationalism, imperialism, and floral identity.
Vera Straetmanns, Ruhr-University Bochum
Witty weeds: How early theoretical biologists conceptualized plant agency and intelligence
In today´s philosophy of mind and philosophy of biology, we see an emerging trend of construing vegetal agency through the concepts of plant intelligence or plant cognition. This framing, however, is not new. In the early 20th century, questions of individuality and agency in plants were intensely discussed in German-speaking (and international) theoretical biology as these issues were a central topic of the vitalism-mechanism debate. Yet, current treatments of plant intelligence rarely consider or even mention these historical roots.
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In my talk, I will flesh out how botanists and theoretical biologists in the early 20th century engaged with plants and their unique features. Looking at several biologists that studied and conceptualized vegetal agency based on different theoretical frameworks, I will shed a light on how scholars grappled with the concepts of plant agency and intelligence, which theories were put forward or refuted and on what grounds. Analyzing conceptual difficulties, rebuttals, and dead ends that earlier concepts of plant intelligence or “plant psychology” encountered, might help in avoiding these in today´s conceptual frameworks.
Frank Uekötter, Ruhr-University Bochum
Do You Really Need Plants When You Have Magic? The Spread of Monoculture and the Intellectual World of Biology
In the 21st century, monocultures rule the world of food. It is the result of a long-standing trend: in the age of global modernity, widely different organic production regimes share a tendency to focus on a single product. Much has been written about the socioeconomic, political, and environmental toll of monoculture, but the consequences for academic research are no less dramatic: what remains of concepts such as plants when quantifiable gains in productivity are all that matters? The presentation is based on my ongoing ERC project, which seeks to explore the mystery of monoculture with the tools of global history. One of the working argument is that monocultures thrived on three different types of agricultural expertise: repairmen, optimizers, and control freaks. These expert groups different in mindsets and tools, but they had a shared disdain for holistic concepts. Furthermore, neither group related to the project of monoculture as a whole: their job was to provide specific services that allowed monocultures to rumble on. Breakthroughs were often the province of charismatic men with a magic touch who vouched for new paths with their careers. So maybe you do not need an idea of plants if you have magic?