Overlooked but Ever-Present: Dandelions and the Botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris
In May 1859 with her carefully tended Philadelphia garden in full bloom, the botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris crouched down to examine the least remarkable
Magnetic Attractions: Feeling Plants in Nineteenth-Century Botanical Correspondence
In the depth of the pandemic, my partner and I, accompanied by our dog, headed out of snowy Colorado for the desert landscapes of Sedona, Arizona. Instead of the spruces, ponderosas, and big bluestem grasses that make up the winter landscape of our home, we encountered a wintergreen—and spiky—world of succulents and cacti. During a […]
Narrating Gendered Tree Cultures in Histories of the Horticultural Transformation of America
Historian Jared Farmer observed, “Personification is intrinsic to treeness.” But, so is gender scripting. Western tree stories and images construct human-tree relations in decidedly masculine and feminine terms, a binarism that disregards the complexity of sexuality among both humans and trees. Gendered personifications of trees are as old as our ancient mythologies. The Norse myth […]
Roses, Root Shock, and Urban Renewal in the Roanoke Valley
In 1968, shortly after the purchase of the last house where my great-grandmother, Carrie Mills Calloway, would ever live, the transplanting of her roses began. Over the course of a year, she moved her prized rose bushes, along with chrysanthemums, peonies, and gladiolus, from her house on Gilmer Avenue in the mostly Black and working-class […]
Protected: Plant Stories- Introduction
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
