Colonial botany and the shifting identity of Balanostreblus ilicifolius Kurz (Moraceae)

The protologue of Balanostreblus ilicifolius Kurz included the citation of specimens from Bangladesh and Myanmar of a plant now called Taxotrophis ilicifolia (Kurz) S.Vidal. However, the description in the protologue and the accompanying illustration were based largely on the Neotropical Sorocea guilleminiana Gaudich., which was cultivated in the Royal Botanic Garden, Calcutta and has similar vegetative characters. This paper seeks to resolve a century of confusion over the identity of Balanostreblus ilicifolius and reviews its history in light of historical correspondence relating to its identity and the trans-continental exchange of plants under British colonialism. The paper concludes that a previous attempt to typify Balanostreblus ilicifolius with an uncited cultivated specimen of Sorocea guilleminiana should be superseded with material from Myanmar cited in the protologue. A lectotype is designated, fixing the application of the name, which can now serve as the basionym of Taxotrophis ilicifolia.

Angel in the house, angel in the scientific empire: women and colonial Botany during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

‘Angel in the house’ is an idealized icon of Victorian women, who unconditionally loved, supported and submitted to their husbands. Borrowing this metaphor, I discuss three kinds of angels in colonial botany, which was intrinsically patriarchal. The first consists of metropolitan women, who never travelled, but celebrated and consumed trophies of colonial botany in their domestic life in Europe, such as planting exotics in backyards, cooking foreign diets in kitchens, reading botanical and travel literature, collecting foreign specimens in cabinets and sponsoring naturalists. The second covers elegant botanical wives in colonies, accomplished in domestic responsibilities while engaging in botany as polite learning. The third is made up of voyaging botanical women, exempted from domestic responsibilities and completely devoted to botany. These angels often corresponded with elite botanists, botanized under their instruction and made contributions to botanical science. All three categories endorsed the agenda of imperialism and their study of botany was facilitated by its power.

Digging up Colonial Roots

The Millennium Seed Bank Partnership (MSBP) at Wakehurst place in West Sussex, England is the largest repository of wild plant seeds in the world. According to their self-published institutional history, the MSBP was created to take on the mantle of global biodiversity conservation at a moment of ecological crisis. I study the bio-politics of the recasting of Kew’s role as arbiter of colonial botanical knowledge to keeper of botanical futures through seed banking. While the MSBP is a part of Kew’s vision to stay at the cutting edge of conservation and environmental governance, its relationship to colonial botany and political economy must also be interrogated in the light of its legacy. I revivify the origin story of the MSBP to show how Kew Gardens’ long tradition of plant extraction, accumulation, and exchange, as well as nationalist zeal motivated by the potential loss of ‘native species,’ were integral to the ‘rebranding’ of Kew as the MSBP.

A hard nut to crack: nutmeg cultivation and the application of natural history between the Maluku islands and Isle de France (1750s–1780s)

One of France's colonial enterprises in the eighteenth century was to acclimatize nutmeg, native to the Maluku islands, in the French colony of Isle de France (today's Mauritius). Exploring the acclimatization of nutmeg as a practice, this paper reveals the practical challenges of transferring knowledge between Indo-Pacific islands in the second half of the eighteenth century. This essay will look at the process through which knowledge was created – including ruptures and fractures – as opposed to looking at the mere circulation of knowledge. I argue that nutmeg cultivation on Isle de France was a complex process of creolizing expertise originating from the local populations of the plants’ native islands with the horticultural knowledge of colonists, settlers, labourers and slaves living on Isle de France. In this respect, creolization describes a process of knowledge production rather than a form of knowledge. Once on Isle de France, nutmeg took root in climate and soil conditions which were different from those of its native South East Asian islands. It was cultivated by slaves and colonists who lacked prior experience with the cultivation of this particular spice. Experienced horticulturalists experimented with their own traditions. While they relied on old assumptions, they also came to question them. By examining cultivation as an applied practice, this paper argues that the creolization of knowledge was a critical aspect in French colonial botany.

Medical Encounters and Exchange in Early Canadian Missions 1

The exchange of medical and pharmaceutical knowledge was an important facet of the encounter between native and newcomer in early Canada. Throughout New France Récollet and Jesuit missionaries were given privileged access both to indigenous peoples and indigenous plants. Curiously, however, when it came to describing medical treatments, it was people, rather than medicinal plants, that were targets of what might be called “the descriptive enterprise.” Attempting to divide suspect shamanic remedies from those deemed natural, missionary observers carefully documented the context of medical treatments rather than simply the specific remedy applied for treatment. Using records left by early Canadian missionaries this paper will look at the peculiar character of medical exchange in the missions of seventeenth and eighteenth-century New France to look at the interpersonal encounters that formed a constitutive element of colonial botany and framed the way in which indigenous knowledge was represented to metropolitan audiences.