ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

A Botanical Escapee from Peru: the Spread of Galinsoga parviflora and Associated Narratives in Partitioned Poland

• In Event: Plant Transfers Beyond Botany: Histories of Human-mediated Long-distance Dispersals to and from Latin America

English Abstract

In 1853 Józef Warszewicz, a prolific orchid collector, returned from a multi-year journey across South America to assume the role of head gardener of the Botanical Garden of the Jagiellonian University in Kraków. He brought with him boxes full of seeds, prized orchids and various live plant specimens. At that time however, there was already a certain Latin American plant well-settled across the region.

Galinsoga parviflora arrived as seeds from Peru at the botanical gardens in Madrid and Paris in 1784, and at Kew Gardens in 1796. Other European botanical gardens and plant nurseries soon followed suit, growing the plant that, over the following decades, would come to be referred to as the indestructible Peruvian buttonweed and the Kew weed among other names. The plant adjusted to new circumstances, perhaps too well. Relegating a plant as a weed relies on human binaries of it being wanted/unwanted, valued/unvalued, in the right/wrong place, irrespective of the plant’s adaptation.

In this paper, I trace the unintentional, human-mediated dispersal of Galinsoga parviflora and attempts at its management in the territories of the partitioned Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, as well as the contending narratives surrounding it. Looking for evidence in gardening manuals, didactic story books, encyclopaedia, newspapers and periodicals, I ask what knowledge about this plant was being constructed, by whom and for what purposes? I argue that case studies such as this can yield insights into human-plant entanglements and the role that weeds play in the social world, while also helping to challenge our anthropocentric view of vegetation.

Author

• Aleksandra Kaye, The Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology