“We Have Always Known”: On the Trails of People, Plants, and Humboldt
by Paula Ungar
12 minutes
I am trying to focus on my writing, I really am. But my phone buzzes again. This time, the message is difficult to ignore. I see a photograph of my be...
Roots through Asphalt: A Conversation with Sonja Dümpelmann
by Sonja Dümpelmann and Pauline Kargruber
15 minutes
Sonja Dümpelmann is a landscape historian who is currently working on how grass species have transformed the world, and the history and political impl...Five Ways of Seeing the Steinsee
by Steve Mentz
7 minutes
The true eye of the earth is water. Gaston Bachelard I. The Last Shortest Day On my last day as a Landhaus fellow at the Rachel Carson Center, with th...
Monarchs of the Great Plains: Plant Power and Colonial Legacies in North America
17 minutes
Resplendent in shades of orange and black as they float along the breeze, migratory Monarch butterflies have ridden the gusts of transformation over t...
Earthworm
by Sumana Roy
1 minute
Earthworm From here, life seems like background noise, speech a fossil from a disobedient time, cleanliness a bed for the frail and aging. And light a...South African Eden: The Kruger National Park
4 minutes
The world-renowned Kruger National Park—situated on South Africa’s boundary with Mozambique and comprising some 19.000 km²—has its origins in two colo...The World as a Wardian Case
by Kate Brown
21 minutes
In 1829, Nathanial Bagshaw Ward, a London doctor, placed the pupa of a sphinx moth, some dirt, and a few leaves in a glass bottle and clamped on a lid...Encountering Ghost Species
by Cameron Muir
5 minutes
Listen to Cameron Muir reading his article. The audio version of this article may differ from the written version. On Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres...An Otherworldly Species: Joshua Trees and the Conservation-Climate Dilemma
14 minutes
About 210 km east of Los Angeles, along the boundary of the Mojave and Colorado Deserts, stands a national park dedicated to the American Southwest’s ...In Praise of Weeds: Sympoiesis at St. James’s Piccadilly
by Kate Rigby
6 minutes
At 7:54 p.m. on 14 October 1940, the church of St. James’s Piccadilly, in the heart of London, was hit by high explosive and incendiary bombs. By the ...A Crab’s-Eye View of the Food Chain in Contemporary China
6 minutes
This article rethinks Chinese foodways and invasive species from a crab’s perspective....Lockdown and Locked In: Houseplants and Covid-19
12 minutes
Just before the official lockdown was announced in Scotland, I moved all of my office plants home. There was no space for them in my room, but I rearr...