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Botany of Empire: Plant Worlds and the Scientific Legacies of Colonialism
An accessible foray into botany’s origins and how we can transform its future
Colonial ambitions spawned imperial attitudes, theories, and practices that remain entrenched within botany and across the life sciences. Banu Subramaniam draws on fields as disparate as queer studies, Indigenous studies, and the biological sciences to explore the labyrinthine history of how colonialism transformed rich and complex plant worlds into biological knowledge. Botany of Empire demonstrates how botany’s foundational theories and practices were shaped and fortified in the aid of colonial rule and its extractive ambitions. We see how colonizers obliterated plant time’s deep history to create a reductionist system that imposed a Latin-based naming system, drew on the imagined sex lives of European elites to explain plant sexuality, and discussed foreign plants like foreign humans. Subramanian then pivots to imagining a more inclusive and capacious field of botany untethered and decentered from its origins in histories of racism, slavery, and colonialism. This vision harnesses the power of feminist and scientific thought to chart a course for more socially just practices of experimental biology.
A reckoning and a manifesto, Botany of Empire provides experts and general readers alike with a roadmap for transforming the colonial foundations of plant science.
Colonial ambitions spawned imperial attitudes, theories, and practices that remain entrenched within botany and across the life sciences. Banu Subramaniam draws on fields as disparate as queer studies, Indigenous studies, and the biological sciences to explore the labyrinthine history of how colonialism transformed rich and complex plant worlds into biological knowledge. Botany of Empire demonstrates how botany’s foundational theories and practices were shaped and fortified in the aid of colonial rule and its extractive ambitions. We see how colonizers obliterated plant time’s deep history to create a reductionist system that imposed a Latin-based naming system, drew on the imagined sex lives of European elites to explain plant sexuality, and discussed foreign plants like foreign humans. Subramanian then pivots to imagining a more inclusive and capacious field of botany untethered and decentered from its origins in histories of racism, slavery, and colonialism. This vision harnesses the power of feminist and scientific thought to chart a course for more socially just practices of experimental biology.
A reckoning and a manifesto, Botany of Empire provides experts and general readers alike with a roadmap for transforming the colonial foundations of plant science.
328 pages, Paperback
Published May 16, 2024
33 people are currently reading
1241 people want to read
About the author
Banu Subramaniam
12 books8 followersBanu Subramaniam is a professor of women, gender and sexuality studies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Originally trained as a plant evolutionary biologist, she writes about social and cultural aspects of science as they relate to experimental biology.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
December 30, 2025
As a biologist with a dissertation on a couple of invasive species, I was fearing the way this book would handle the subject. The rest of the book is illuminating and interesting--especially the middle section on the sexualization of plant anatomy and finding solace in the strangeness or queerness of plant reproduction. I enjoyed the structure of the book, which alternates between theory heavy and research chapters with personal anecdotes and a light hearted imagining of young people finding community on a fictional iNaturalist type platform.
I don't write this out of an instinctive desire to defend a field I have contributed to. I'm familiar with and interested in decolonial, feminist, and STS critiques of science. It's why I read the book. That said, the section on invasive species warrants comment and context. Hopefully this review, informed by a close knowledge of the relevant scientific literature, is useful to those curious about the issue.
I find some of the discussion of invasion biology helpful, and other parts woefully lacking given the well documented threat of invasive species to biodiversity, agriculture, forestry, and plant life in general. The author knows better than to deny outright the impact of invasive species, and she does not. To do so is about the intellectual equivalent of denying climate change given abundant evidence, evidence readily observed during a brisk walk in the woods. Yet there is little acknowledgement of the scale of the problem. Denial of invasive species instead comes through an interrogation of the concept. It's not clear to me what position she means to take in any practical sense.
With increased trade and movement of people around the world, many species are moving across geographic boundaries (oceans, mountains, etc.). A small subset of these, in their expanded ranges, cause extraordinary economic and ecological devastation. Specific examples are frustratingly left out of the book. In New York, where I live, I can't go on a walk through the woods without seeing a dead ash tree, killed by the emerald ash borer, a recently introduced species in North America. In New York, forests were once dominated by chestnut trees, now near locally extinct due to a fungus introduced 100 years ago. In Australia, where forests are dominated by diverse myrtle family trees, a rust fungus of myrtles is now invasive. Many species have limited resistance to the fungus, and some are on the path to extinction.There are thousands of examples. These biological invasions threaten species and ecosystem function, as well as human cultural practices, both settler and indigenous. Continued harm can be prevented to some extent through phytosanitary restrictions, restrictions on importation of exotic species as pets, ornamental plants, etc., This does involve closing borders to some species. While this is, by a logic, xenophobic, I'm not bothered by this since fungi, flowers, and beetles are not people.
Ultimately the book runs into the mostly unacknowledged issue that invasive species are are a huge problem, and we need a way to talk about them and study them. To me, plenty within the field of invasion biology is useful to do this, even despite issues, some of which are acknowledged within literature and discussed at conferences in my experience. Others are helpfully discussed at length in this work.
Given this relevant context, it seems to me in poor taste to offer the following: "Are invasive species worrisome? No; they can be our saviors " (p 179). Later, in a fictional interlude, a child, described in flowery prose, asks, "Why blame plants? We are expected to make our communities welcoming to newer people... Why do we not extend this to all creatures on earth?" (p214). Elsewhere, this position is qualified, favoring evaluating species based on which might become a problem: "We could locate our policies around biology, not colonial politics. Imagine that!" (p192).
So which is it? Are invasive species our saviors, or should they be carefully evaluated based on their biology to assess risk?
Some of the confusion lies in the interchangeable use of non-native and invasive. It's true that it's not much use managing for dandelions, as is discussed through an imagined conflict in a suburban community. But if it's acknowledged that some species are worth managing, why spend so much space criticizing the management of exotic plants in a fictional community? There are real life examples that would be more informative. Second, we have a focus on invasive plants, rather than invasive species at large, which are awkwardly conflated here. This does merit some distinction. Pathogens and predators relate ecologically through predation and parasitism, rather than competition. While I'm unconvinced this privileges them to a specific class of concern, it is a position adopted by some ecologists. Neither of these issues, which muddy the argumentation, is discussed in appropriate detail or clarity.
The impatience of the author for the field of invasion biology is palpable, and at times it is criticized unfairly. For instance, the last example quoted above, regarding managing based on biology, demonstrates an irritating habit of diminishing a scientific body of literature by describing a line of thinking commonly held within the field, by no means monolithic. Indeed scientists have imagined that species should be evaluated based on their biology rather than colonial politics (broadly, geographic origin). Prioritization based on biological impact is the rule rather than the exception. Given the plethora of introduced species in many ecosystems, it is unreasonable to manage all of them in hopes of restoring some idealized pure community, untouched by exotic species. Admittedly, I think the infeasibility is more a barrier than are issues in the underlying thinking, which are rightfully questioned by the book. To imagine an edenic ecosystem, untouched by humans does echo the thinking of early conservationists who violently removed indigenous people from lands for "preservation".
As another example, I agree with the author that in many cases, plant species are invasive due to habitat destruction and fragmentation, climate change, rampant nutrient pollution, and other anthropogenic disturbances, which favor weedy species. This point, however, has been made many times within invasive species literature, by me for one. I too wish scientists at large would or could explicitly attribute these drivers of ecosystem level changes to human greed. In any case, much cited work from within the field does center these abiotic factors that make ecosystems susceptible to biological invasion, or their "invasibility". The counterpart to invasibility is the invasive species, whose introduction can at least be prevented, or its impact mitigated. It is a more available management target than climate change or industrial agriculture. The two considerations go hand in hand, and successful management requires focus on both. From an academic perspective I have to disagree that the focus is exclusively on invasive species or that they alone are regarded as the number one problem (p 210). Certainly there is not consensus.
I understand the writer's instinctual aversion to the field of invasion biology. It is rife with terminology shared with reactionary, nativist, and xenophobic demagoguery: alien, exotic, invade. Species are imagined as immigrants, natives, indigenous, and colonizers, begging for comparison with human immigrants, the indigenous, and colonizers. Vilification of invasive species is easily transferrable to foreigners or immigrants. The writer insists, however, that the issues are in the field's conceptual framework, more than they are linguistic, and she reports despair when scientists misunderstand this point.
There's not an obvious solution to the problems identified. The terminology could be improved, but it will inevitably be euphemistic and in some way reproduce the same native vs alien and indigenous vs colonizer dichotomies. At the end of the day, I guess we have to figure out a way to decouple fearing Asian beetles and fearing Asian people. I don't think this is an impossible task. Hating human immigrants because of beetles is absurd. It is equally logically inconsistent to welcome exotic organisms because of an ethic of embracing human migration, as implicitly argued in the text quoted above.
How should we relate to the emerald ash borer? It is a species that has killed tens of billions of ash trees in North America, exacerbating climate change, destabilizing ecosystems, and harming the many organisms that coevolved with the species. Should we make an effort to prevent more species like the emerald ash borer from entering? What does it mean
to decolonize science in this regard? Maybe we accept the lesson and don't import a bunch of unsustainably sourced wood products. But while this is still happening, what do we do?
It is not necessarily the author's responsibility to answer these questions, although they would be productive to ask. It's fair to critique a field, contextualize its foundations, and be dissatisfied. Rather, what bothers me is the tepid insinuation that the described shortcomings in invasion biology invalidate the premises of invasive species management when the empirical evidence is barely discussed. Maybe that's my bias as a scientist, but if this book is intended for scientists, I think it's fair to consider this oversight a significant fault.
Careful observation of community interactions is a primary activity of ecologists, but when they come to conclusions that are incongruent with the author's idealized imaginings of relations among organisms, the conclusions are discarded. In her construction of an "anti-edenic" ethic of decolonial science, the author embraces and discards branches of biology on whims and based perceived incompatibility with her conception of a decolonial ecology. A vision of a new Pangaea is offered: a world metaphorically undivided by geography, with little regard for what ecological and paleobiographical knowledge indicate this might mean for the organisms within. In this sense, the author's anti-edenic thinking, while otherwise commendable, shares with edenic thinking
a hubristic and anthropocentric worldview that disregards valuable ideas that may inform an ethic that values and protects biological diversity. The convenient dismissal and qualification of concepts like diversity and species to bolster her argument is unconvincing.
I don't follow Subramaniam's imagining of a decolonization that metaphorically conflates national borders and biogeographical boundaries, and I don't follow that because of conceptual issues with invasion biology and the confusion of invasive species histories with human migration and colonial history, that we should acquiesce to the well-documented (and often preventable) damage by invasive species. Generously, this is not the explicit contention of the author. But it is implicit at various times throughout the section in tone or in content. It is not something to be careless about. If you want to make this argument, be explicit, but a more coherent argument with careful engagement with relevant literature is needed to do so.
It may well be true that among humans, globalization does not produce homogenization but rather hybridity and new forms of diversity (p196). Novel interactions between organisms of diverse geographical origins in new environments certainly occur too, and are the subject of much research within invasion biology. This unfortunately is about the extent of the argument provided to rebut the idea that management of invasive species is useful to protect biodiversity. To imply that the development of this type of diversity is an acceptable tradeoff with threats to biological diversity due to invasive species is unsound and not adequately argued. Observational evidence is not considered, and if presented honestly would likely lead readers to a conclusion undesirable to the author.
Altogether, this section is a blemish on an otherwise useful and ambitious book. The section is inadequately and at worst dishonestly argued. It omits relevant context, mischaracterizes its subject, creates a strawman argument to criticize management of invasive species, confuses invasive (damaging) with harmless non-natives, and with a tenuous negation of the concept of invasive species, argues indirectly and timidly that invasive species are not a problem. To argue that they are requires reliance on concepts that are not defensible to the author. But then what to do exactly? With these shortcomings and the decision not to engage with valuable observational evidence, the section is unconvincing.
I don't write this out of an instinctive desire to defend a field I have contributed to. I'm familiar with and interested in decolonial, feminist, and STS critiques of science. It's why I read the book. That said, the section on invasive species warrants comment and context. Hopefully this review, informed by a close knowledge of the relevant scientific literature, is useful to those curious about the issue.
I find some of the discussion of invasion biology helpful, and other parts woefully lacking given the well documented threat of invasive species to biodiversity, agriculture, forestry, and plant life in general. The author knows better than to deny outright the impact of invasive species, and she does not. To do so is about the intellectual equivalent of denying climate change given abundant evidence, evidence readily observed during a brisk walk in the woods. Yet there is little acknowledgement of the scale of the problem. Denial of invasive species instead comes through an interrogation of the concept. It's not clear to me what position she means to take in any practical sense.
With increased trade and movement of people around the world, many species are moving across geographic boundaries (oceans, mountains, etc.). A small subset of these, in their expanded ranges, cause extraordinary economic and ecological devastation. Specific examples are frustratingly left out of the book. In New York, where I live, I can't go on a walk through the woods without seeing a dead ash tree, killed by the emerald ash borer, a recently introduced species in North America. In New York, forests were once dominated by chestnut trees, now near locally extinct due to a fungus introduced 100 years ago. In Australia, where forests are dominated by diverse myrtle family trees, a rust fungus of myrtles is now invasive. Many species have limited resistance to the fungus, and some are on the path to extinction.There are thousands of examples. These biological invasions threaten species and ecosystem function, as well as human cultural practices, both settler and indigenous. Continued harm can be prevented to some extent through phytosanitary restrictions, restrictions on importation of exotic species as pets, ornamental plants, etc., This does involve closing borders to some species. While this is, by a logic, xenophobic, I'm not bothered by this since fungi, flowers, and beetles are not people.
Ultimately the book runs into the mostly unacknowledged issue that invasive species are are a huge problem, and we need a way to talk about them and study them. To me, plenty within the field of invasion biology is useful to do this, even despite issues, some of which are acknowledged within literature and discussed at conferences in my experience. Others are helpfully discussed at length in this work.
Given this relevant context, it seems to me in poor taste to offer the following: "Are invasive species worrisome? No; they can be our saviors " (p 179). Later, in a fictional interlude, a child, described in flowery prose, asks, "Why blame plants? We are expected to make our communities welcoming to newer people... Why do we not extend this to all creatures on earth?" (p214). Elsewhere, this position is qualified, favoring evaluating species based on which might become a problem: "We could locate our policies around biology, not colonial politics. Imagine that!" (p192).
So which is it? Are invasive species our saviors, or should they be carefully evaluated based on their biology to assess risk?
Some of the confusion lies in the interchangeable use of non-native and invasive. It's true that it's not much use managing for dandelions, as is discussed through an imagined conflict in a suburban community. But if it's acknowledged that some species are worth managing, why spend so much space criticizing the management of exotic plants in a fictional community? There are real life examples that would be more informative. Second, we have a focus on invasive plants, rather than invasive species at large, which are awkwardly conflated here. This does merit some distinction. Pathogens and predators relate ecologically through predation and parasitism, rather than competition. While I'm unconvinced this privileges them to a specific class of concern, it is a position adopted by some ecologists. Neither of these issues, which muddy the argumentation, is discussed in appropriate detail or clarity.
The impatience of the author for the field of invasion biology is palpable, and at times it is criticized unfairly. For instance, the last example quoted above, regarding managing based on biology, demonstrates an irritating habit of diminishing a scientific body of literature by describing a line of thinking commonly held within the field, by no means monolithic. Indeed scientists have imagined that species should be evaluated based on their biology rather than colonial politics (broadly, geographic origin). Prioritization based on biological impact is the rule rather than the exception. Given the plethora of introduced species in many ecosystems, it is unreasonable to manage all of them in hopes of restoring some idealized pure community, untouched by exotic species. Admittedly, I think the infeasibility is more a barrier than are issues in the underlying thinking, which are rightfully questioned by the book. To imagine an edenic ecosystem, untouched by humans does echo the thinking of early conservationists who violently removed indigenous people from lands for "preservation".
As another example, I agree with the author that in many cases, plant species are invasive due to habitat destruction and fragmentation, climate change, rampant nutrient pollution, and other anthropogenic disturbances, which favor weedy species. This point, however, has been made many times within invasive species literature, by me for one. I too wish scientists at large would or could explicitly attribute these drivers of ecosystem level changes to human greed. In any case, much cited work from within the field does center these abiotic factors that make ecosystems susceptible to biological invasion, or their "invasibility". The counterpart to invasibility is the invasive species, whose introduction can at least be prevented, or its impact mitigated. It is a more available management target than climate change or industrial agriculture. The two considerations go hand in hand, and successful management requires focus on both. From an academic perspective I have to disagree that the focus is exclusively on invasive species or that they alone are regarded as the number one problem (p 210). Certainly there is not consensus.
I understand the writer's instinctual aversion to the field of invasion biology. It is rife with terminology shared with reactionary, nativist, and xenophobic demagoguery: alien, exotic, invade. Species are imagined as immigrants, natives, indigenous, and colonizers, begging for comparison with human immigrants, the indigenous, and colonizers. Vilification of invasive species is easily transferrable to foreigners or immigrants. The writer insists, however, that the issues are in the field's conceptual framework, more than they are linguistic, and she reports despair when scientists misunderstand this point.
There's not an obvious solution to the problems identified. The terminology could be improved, but it will inevitably be euphemistic and in some way reproduce the same native vs alien and indigenous vs colonizer dichotomies. At the end of the day, I guess we have to figure out a way to decouple fearing Asian beetles and fearing Asian people. I don't think this is an impossible task. Hating human immigrants because of beetles is absurd. It is equally logically inconsistent to welcome exotic organisms because of an ethic of embracing human migration, as implicitly argued in the text quoted above.
How should we relate to the emerald ash borer? It is a species that has killed tens of billions of ash trees in North America, exacerbating climate change, destabilizing ecosystems, and harming the many organisms that coevolved with the species. Should we make an effort to prevent more species like the emerald ash borer from entering? What does it mean
to decolonize science in this regard? Maybe we accept the lesson and don't import a bunch of unsustainably sourced wood products. But while this is still happening, what do we do?
It is not necessarily the author's responsibility to answer these questions, although they would be productive to ask. It's fair to critique a field, contextualize its foundations, and be dissatisfied. Rather, what bothers me is the tepid insinuation that the described shortcomings in invasion biology invalidate the premises of invasive species management when the empirical evidence is barely discussed. Maybe that's my bias as a scientist, but if this book is intended for scientists, I think it's fair to consider this oversight a significant fault.
Careful observation of community interactions is a primary activity of ecologists, but when they come to conclusions that are incongruent with the author's idealized imaginings of relations among organisms, the conclusions are discarded. In her construction of an "anti-edenic" ethic of decolonial science, the author embraces and discards branches of biology on whims and based perceived incompatibility with her conception of a decolonial ecology. A vision of a new Pangaea is offered: a world metaphorically undivided by geography, with little regard for what ecological and paleobiographical knowledge indicate this might mean for the organisms within. In this sense, the author's anti-edenic thinking, while otherwise commendable, shares with edenic thinking
a hubristic and anthropocentric worldview that disregards valuable ideas that may inform an ethic that values and protects biological diversity. The convenient dismissal and qualification of concepts like diversity and species to bolster her argument is unconvincing.
I don't follow Subramaniam's imagining of a decolonization that metaphorically conflates national borders and biogeographical boundaries, and I don't follow that because of conceptual issues with invasion biology and the confusion of invasive species histories with human migration and colonial history, that we should acquiesce to the well-documented (and often preventable) damage by invasive species. Generously, this is not the explicit contention of the author. But it is implicit at various times throughout the section in tone or in content. It is not something to be careless about. If you want to make this argument, be explicit, but a more coherent argument with careful engagement with relevant literature is needed to do so.
It may well be true that among humans, globalization does not produce homogenization but rather hybridity and new forms of diversity (p196). Novel interactions between organisms of diverse geographical origins in new environments certainly occur too, and are the subject of much research within invasion biology. This unfortunately is about the extent of the argument provided to rebut the idea that management of invasive species is useful to protect biodiversity. To imply that the development of this type of diversity is an acceptable tradeoff with threats to biological diversity due to invasive species is unsound and not adequately argued. Observational evidence is not considered, and if presented honestly would likely lead readers to a conclusion undesirable to the author.
Altogether, this section is a blemish on an otherwise useful and ambitious book. The section is inadequately and at worst dishonestly argued. It omits relevant context, mischaracterizes its subject, creates a strawman argument to criticize management of invasive species, confuses invasive (damaging) with harmless non-natives, and with a tenuous negation of the concept of invasive species, argues indirectly and timidly that invasive species are not a problem. To argue that they are requires reliance on concepts that are not defensible to the author. But then what to do exactly? With these shortcomings and the decision not to engage with valuable observational evidence, the section is unconvincing.
September 4, 2024
Absolutely brilliant and necessary book, recommend this to everyone interested in understanding how colonialism violently shaped relationships to the natural world, through turning plants into commodities, epistemicide and concepts of the natural/foreign and more.
Writer's voice is great, good balance of human storytelling and academic insights. Really glad this book exists.
Writer's voice is great, good balance of human storytelling and academic insights. Really glad this book exists.
Read
March 2, 2025This is an excellent introduction to a lot of topics I've already thought about intensely, also a great resource for further reading material and such! I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the relationship between us and nature and how it has been impacted by our narratives and, particularly, impirialism/colonialism. (Unfortunately, because I'm already quite well-versed on the subject, this was a tiny bit too superficial for me. I would have loved if Subramaniam dove deeper into either history/botany/environmental narratives. But I'm glad to have read this book either way.)
The one thing that I didn't like outright was the little chirp net narrative. It's not particularly well-written and I ended up skipping most of them.
The one thing that I didn't like outright was the little chirp net narrative. It's not particularly well-written and I ended up skipping most of them.
October 18, 2025
Banu Subramaniam draws on fields as disparate as queer studies, Indigenous studies, and the biological sciences to explore the labyrinthine history of how colonialism transformed rich and complex plant worlds into biological knowledge. Botany of Empire demonstrates how botany's foundational theories and practices were shaped and fortified in the aid of colonial rule and its extractive ambitions. We see how colonizers obliterated plant time's deep history to create a reductionist system that imposed a Latin-based naming system, drew on the imagined sex lives of European elites to explain plant sexuality, and discussed foreign plants like foreign humans. Subramanian then pivots to imagining a more inclusive and capacious field of botany untethered and decentered from its origins in histories of racism, slavery, and colonialism. This vision harnesses the power of feminist and scientific thought to chart a course for more socially just practices of experimental biology.
I enjoyed some of this immensly, while I found other sections quite borign and a bit dry but without hundreds of facts.
My favourite chapter was Chapter 3 The Categorical Impurative: Names Norms, Normings. This chapter goes into the categorisation and naming of nature as a colonial pursuit and arm of power and control.
Quotes:
“The colonists rapidly named their "discoveries" in the colonized worlds, cre-ating a virtual "new Babel." But the problem for colonists was that the same plant or animal had different names in different parts of the colonies. How to tell if the aromatic spice in one region was the same as the one in another?
By the eighteenth century, the colonists felt the urgent need for a consistent system. After all, how could they exploit natural resources efficiently if they did not know what plants existed where? Might they be able to grow these in their homelands? This created the grounds for a botanical nomenclature system with standardized names, well-developed life history details, good ecological plant characterizations, and a standardized hierarchical system of organization. Eventually a scientific infrastructure of botanical nomenclature emerged-standardized diagrams, herbarium sheets that displayed the plant with strict protocols, and key biological and contextual knowledge about the plant. The herbarium sheets traveled to find homes in colonial institutions, where they often remain to this day.”
• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). “In 1735, he published the Systema Naturae, where he organized biological life into a hierarchical set of groups-species into genera, genera into orders, orders into classes.” “This method, called binomial nomenclature, gives each species a unique, two-word name consisting of the genus and species name…Today, the rules by which we name plants still depend largely on Linnaeus, although for plant families, A. L. de Jussieu's classification in his Genera Plantarum of 1789 remains import-ant. ^ By 1799, there were fifty-two different systems of botany, each taxonomy emphasizing a different part of a plant or plants' geography.* Ultimately, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Linnaean system beat out the others and emerged as the norm.** Despite the advent of evolutionary methods and DNA technologies, and despite its many critics and shortcomings, Linnaean classification remains remarkably resilient.
Empires, especially the Spanish, embraced the Linnaean system. Further,
as King astutely argues, it seemed functional precisely because it relied on a 1
social understanding of marriage and normative modes of sexuality." Linnae-uss analogies between plants and humans, particularly about sexuality and the distinctions between male and female, made his work accessible.”
• (A Botanist in Lapland): “As Prosek reflects, "I think what bothered me was his hubris. ... Plants and animals already had names in indigenous languages, and Linnaeus, in a show of imperialism, renamed them with his Latinisms. He believed he could take nature-holistic, fluid and constantly changing and fragment, label and systematize…”Linnaeus mythologized his sub-Artic travels into a formative encounter with an Edenic "wild nation" (Sami reindeer herders) and a cross-cultural encounter between "high" and "folk" science. He then used this performative narrative to enter Dutch learned circles. Yet the Lapland journey was also part of the colonization of "our West Indies," as Scandinavians termed their Artic frontier. And this colonial venture in turn was predicated on erasing indigenous culture, as the "wild" Sami and their herds were chained to the engines of cameralist industry.”
“Academies and their focus on phylogenetic relationship don't always see eye to eye with applied botanists outside of academia.”
“Boranical nomenclature has never been fully aligned with botanical clas-sification. Decisions on nomenclatures are not arbitrary but are regulated by the taxonomic community through a "family planning" committee that meets regularly." In 1982, for example, International Botanical Congress in London adopted a set of basic rules. To quote Gledhill, they included the following:
1. One plant species shall have no more than one name.
2. No two plant species shall share the same name.
3. Ifa plant has two names, the name which is valid shall be that which was the earliest one to be published after 1753.
4. The author's name shall be cited, after the name of the plant, in order to establish the sense in which the name is used and its priority over other names.”
2 interesting cases of academia vs in the field naming of species: “Some systematists in 1999 proposed that the tomato should move from the genus Lycopersicon to the genus Solanum.8 While this change may satisfy academics, for seed companies, the costs of relabeling, repackaging, and advertising could run in tens of millions of dollars. A debate ensued. Ultimately, the tomato was renamed from L. esculentum to S. lycopersicum. If this happens repeatedly, costs can be considerable. For the buyer and seller of tomatoes, does the scientific nomenclature matter? Should it?
More recent is the case of the genus Acacia, a massive cosmopolitan genus across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Growing genetic evidence suggested that the genus was not monophyletic (that is, descended from a common evolutionary ancestor). Some proposed a split: one lineage in Australia and another in South Africa. But which would retain the name Acacia?
Which local species would emerge as the type species? Nature and nationalism aligned-both countries claimed the acacias. A passionate and contentious debate ensued with strong political and nationalist fervor. Ultimately, the 2005 International Botanical Congress in Vienna approved a decision to conserve the name Acacia for Australia while two pan-tropical lineages were named Vachellia and Senegalia. Interestingly, this was possible because the committee adopted minority rule even while the majority voted against this decision.
Arguing for a procedural violation, this issue was revisited in 2011 but with similar results.®7
Many professional and amateur botanists in Africa, Asia, and Central America were incensed by the decision, arguing that a well-financed, politicized campaign by Australia was behind it.88 It ignored the tree's African symbolism. Does retyping the genus signify "yet another act of economics and cultural pillage of the Third World by the First?" The website for the South African National Parks, under a banner headline "Africa to lose all its Acacias," pointed out that nine people had decided for the entire world. A newspaper in Nairobi expressed outrage in the headline, "Did you know it is illegal to call this tree Acacia? Australia claims exclusive rights to the name."*o So deep is the opposition that despite the decision, several authors writing about African acacias have pointedly retained the genus name Acacia.”
“The indigenous San peoples have long used Hoodia to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breastfeeding. In Reinventing Hoodia, Laura Foster chronicles how the plant was reinvented through law, science, and the marketplace and collaboratively repackaged as an appetite suppressant.”
“Young African taxonomists are frustrated about not being able to access, let alone maintain and expand, their work while European institutions grow moribund without functioning budgets or staff, "where valuable African specimens are deposited, uncurated and unused, running the risk of slow, inevitable decline, if not decomposition.'
" 12 In short, postcolonial
nations that have invested in expertise have no access to control the representations of flora of their own nations. An exception is an initiative, Flora of Ethiopia, where external research funding has worked alongside building local infrastructure.”
“The Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which started in Cape Town, South Af-rica, in 2015 and then spread across the world, has added urgency to these ques-tions. Cecil John Rhodes, a colonist, imperialist, and racist and "a symbol of the ruthless imperialism," has 126 plants (collected between 1899 and 1976) that bear his name. The name of Rhodes has been erased from the names of nations (Rhodesia), and the recent South African campaign challenged the presence of his legacy in the statues and in the names of institutions. Yet some activists astutely ask: why is he still celebrated in the botanical world?"* Rhodes is, of course, only one of many colonists who continue to be honored in the botanical imagination. During colonial rule, white colonists replaced local names with those of royal figures and the names of white botanists. Why should those names remain? Why should botany reinforce colonialism through a parade of western names? With the rise of digital media, change should be easy.
Many environmental organizations such as Sierra Club and the Audubon Society are reckoning with the nativist and racist beliefs of their founders.
The continued link of environmental groups to nativist and xenophobic ideas, dubbed the "greening of hate," is a reminder of enduring racist and colonial legacies. 15 While the national chapter of the Audubon Society has retained its founder's name, some local chapters have opted for new names. 116 The American Ornithological Society announced on November 1, 2023, that it would change the names of all bird species named after people. Further, it committed to involve a diverse representation of experts and the public in the process.”
“One of the problems with the taxonomic system is that it is not designed to be an information retrieval device. In folk taxonomies, names are practical and pragmatic-they provide contextual information to others who already share an understanding of the organism's cultural significance."
I enjoyed some of this immensly, while I found other sections quite borign and a bit dry but without hundreds of facts.
My favourite chapter was Chapter 3 The Categorical Impurative: Names Norms, Normings. This chapter goes into the categorisation and naming of nature as a colonial pursuit and arm of power and control.
Quotes:
“The colonists rapidly named their "discoveries" in the colonized worlds, cre-ating a virtual "new Babel." But the problem for colonists was that the same plant or animal had different names in different parts of the colonies. How to tell if the aromatic spice in one region was the same as the one in another?
By the eighteenth century, the colonists felt the urgent need for a consistent system. After all, how could they exploit natural resources efficiently if they did not know what plants existed where? Might they be able to grow these in their homelands? This created the grounds for a botanical nomenclature system with standardized names, well-developed life history details, good ecological plant characterizations, and a standardized hierarchical system of organization. Eventually a scientific infrastructure of botanical nomenclature emerged-standardized diagrams, herbarium sheets that displayed the plant with strict protocols, and key biological and contextual knowledge about the plant. The herbarium sheets traveled to find homes in colonial institutions, where they often remain to this day.”
• Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). “In 1735, he published the Systema Naturae, where he organized biological life into a hierarchical set of groups-species into genera, genera into orders, orders into classes.” “This method, called binomial nomenclature, gives each species a unique, two-word name consisting of the genus and species name…Today, the rules by which we name plants still depend largely on Linnaeus, although for plant families, A. L. de Jussieu's classification in his Genera Plantarum of 1789 remains import-ant. ^ By 1799, there were fifty-two different systems of botany, each taxonomy emphasizing a different part of a plant or plants' geography.* Ultimately, by the end of the eighteenth century, the Linnaean system beat out the others and emerged as the norm.** Despite the advent of evolutionary methods and DNA technologies, and despite its many critics and shortcomings, Linnaean classification remains remarkably resilient.
Empires, especially the Spanish, embraced the Linnaean system. Further,
as King astutely argues, it seemed functional precisely because it relied on a 1
social understanding of marriage and normative modes of sexuality." Linnae-uss analogies between plants and humans, particularly about sexuality and the distinctions between male and female, made his work accessible.”
• (A Botanist in Lapland): “As Prosek reflects, "I think what bothered me was his hubris. ... Plants and animals already had names in indigenous languages, and Linnaeus, in a show of imperialism, renamed them with his Latinisms. He believed he could take nature-holistic, fluid and constantly changing and fragment, label and systematize…”Linnaeus mythologized his sub-Artic travels into a formative encounter with an Edenic "wild nation" (Sami reindeer herders) and a cross-cultural encounter between "high" and "folk" science. He then used this performative narrative to enter Dutch learned circles. Yet the Lapland journey was also part of the colonization of "our West Indies," as Scandinavians termed their Artic frontier. And this colonial venture in turn was predicated on erasing indigenous culture, as the "wild" Sami and their herds were chained to the engines of cameralist industry.”
“Academies and their focus on phylogenetic relationship don't always see eye to eye with applied botanists outside of academia.”
“Boranical nomenclature has never been fully aligned with botanical clas-sification. Decisions on nomenclatures are not arbitrary but are regulated by the taxonomic community through a "family planning" committee that meets regularly." In 1982, for example, International Botanical Congress in London adopted a set of basic rules. To quote Gledhill, they included the following:
1. One plant species shall have no more than one name.
2. No two plant species shall share the same name.
3. Ifa plant has two names, the name which is valid shall be that which was the earliest one to be published after 1753.
4. The author's name shall be cited, after the name of the plant, in order to establish the sense in which the name is used and its priority over other names.”
2 interesting cases of academia vs in the field naming of species: “Some systematists in 1999 proposed that the tomato should move from the genus Lycopersicon to the genus Solanum.8 While this change may satisfy academics, for seed companies, the costs of relabeling, repackaging, and advertising could run in tens of millions of dollars. A debate ensued. Ultimately, the tomato was renamed from L. esculentum to S. lycopersicum. If this happens repeatedly, costs can be considerable. For the buyer and seller of tomatoes, does the scientific nomenclature matter? Should it?
More recent is the case of the genus Acacia, a massive cosmopolitan genus across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Growing genetic evidence suggested that the genus was not monophyletic (that is, descended from a common evolutionary ancestor). Some proposed a split: one lineage in Australia and another in South Africa. But which would retain the name Acacia?
Which local species would emerge as the type species? Nature and nationalism aligned-both countries claimed the acacias. A passionate and contentious debate ensued with strong political and nationalist fervor. Ultimately, the 2005 International Botanical Congress in Vienna approved a decision to conserve the name Acacia for Australia while two pan-tropical lineages were named Vachellia and Senegalia. Interestingly, this was possible because the committee adopted minority rule even while the majority voted against this decision.
Arguing for a procedural violation, this issue was revisited in 2011 but with similar results.®7
Many professional and amateur botanists in Africa, Asia, and Central America were incensed by the decision, arguing that a well-financed, politicized campaign by Australia was behind it.88 It ignored the tree's African symbolism. Does retyping the genus signify "yet another act of economics and cultural pillage of the Third World by the First?" The website for the South African National Parks, under a banner headline "Africa to lose all its Acacias," pointed out that nine people had decided for the entire world. A newspaper in Nairobi expressed outrage in the headline, "Did you know it is illegal to call this tree Acacia? Australia claims exclusive rights to the name."*o So deep is the opposition that despite the decision, several authors writing about African acacias have pointedly retained the genus name Acacia.”
“The indigenous San peoples have long used Hoodia to reduce hunger, increase energy, and ease breastfeeding. In Reinventing Hoodia, Laura Foster chronicles how the plant was reinvented through law, science, and the marketplace and collaboratively repackaged as an appetite suppressant.”
“Young African taxonomists are frustrated about not being able to access, let alone maintain and expand, their work while European institutions grow moribund without functioning budgets or staff, "where valuable African specimens are deposited, uncurated and unused, running the risk of slow, inevitable decline, if not decomposition.'
" 12 In short, postcolonial
nations that have invested in expertise have no access to control the representations of flora of their own nations. An exception is an initiative, Flora of Ethiopia, where external research funding has worked alongside building local infrastructure.”
“The Rhodes Must Fall campaign, which started in Cape Town, South Af-rica, in 2015 and then spread across the world, has added urgency to these ques-tions. Cecil John Rhodes, a colonist, imperialist, and racist and "a symbol of the ruthless imperialism," has 126 plants (collected between 1899 and 1976) that bear his name. The name of Rhodes has been erased from the names of nations (Rhodesia), and the recent South African campaign challenged the presence of his legacy in the statues and in the names of institutions. Yet some activists astutely ask: why is he still celebrated in the botanical world?"* Rhodes is, of course, only one of many colonists who continue to be honored in the botanical imagination. During colonial rule, white colonists replaced local names with those of royal figures and the names of white botanists. Why should those names remain? Why should botany reinforce colonialism through a parade of western names? With the rise of digital media, change should be easy.
Many environmental organizations such as Sierra Club and the Audubon Society are reckoning with the nativist and racist beliefs of their founders.
The continued link of environmental groups to nativist and xenophobic ideas, dubbed the "greening of hate," is a reminder of enduring racist and colonial legacies. 15 While the national chapter of the Audubon Society has retained its founder's name, some local chapters have opted for new names. 116 The American Ornithological Society announced on November 1, 2023, that it would change the names of all bird species named after people. Further, it committed to involve a diverse representation of experts and the public in the process.”
“One of the problems with the taxonomic system is that it is not designed to be an information retrieval device. In folk taxonomies, names are practical and pragmatic-they provide contextual information to others who already share an understanding of the organism's cultural significance."
August 10, 2025
Wow I wish this had been included in my university reading in any way. It would have been so incredibly useful in helping me articulate the underlying social issues that limit the biological sciences. It took me a while to finish, not being well versed in feminist academic works and wanting to take time to comprehend everything, but I'm so glad I pushed through and have the copy to read again, especially the sections on invasive species. Recommend 100%, especially for (white) biology students.
September 19, 2024
"Science is not a set of unbiased methods that produce truth about the world. Rather, it is a set of historically derived knowledge practices that help elucidate the workings of the world. Science is a process, it is constantly made and remade."
I think there's something especially valuable about a professionally trained botanist becoming a feminist STS academic.
This is a book that is truly interdisciplinary that presents a vision of what science could be, beginning with decolonisation.
If this was on first/second year ecology courses that would be just great.
I think there's something especially valuable about a professionally trained botanist becoming a feminist STS academic.
This is a book that is truly interdisciplinary that presents a vision of what science could be, beginning with decolonisation.
If this was on first/second year ecology courses that would be just great.
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