Plant Directory Meeting – Lent Term

On the 8th March we met in the faculty to present new contributions from our respective areas to be added to the Plant Directory. Each member brought along an example of a plant with literary or cultural significance.

We heard from Georgina Wilson, who told us about the role of hemp in early modern paper-making, with specific reference to John Taylor’s The Praise of Hemp-seed, and discussed the potentially gendered connotations of hemp and flax in this period.

Becky Field told us about the multi-layered symbolism of hazel and honeysuckle in Chevrefoil, a twelfth-century Breton lay by Marie de France: an example of botanical symbiosis that in fact represents a parasitic rather than romantic entanglement of star-crossed lovers.

We then heard from Lisa Mullen, who shared her work on Hugh Casson’s campaign to turn the sites of bombed churches in the City of London into memorial gardens after the Second World War. She brought along the campaign pamphlet, ‘Bombed Churches as War Memorials’, which contained detailed planting plans for the gardens, and an essay on secular garden spaces for healing.

Bonnie Lander Johnson brought some examples from The Duchess of Malfi, in which Ferdinand and the Cardinal are likened to overladen plum trees growing ‘crooked over standing pools’ as an illustration of their corruption, and the duchess is given apricots by Bosola as a test to reveal pregnancy.

Finally, Kasia Boddy offered some poignant and timely reflections on the significance of the sunflower in Ukraine. She gave the recent example of a Ukrainian woman giving sunflower seeds to a Russian soldier, and offered some context on the use of flowers in protests in recent history. She discussed the central role of the sunflower in the Ukrainian economy, as well as the way it has been used to remove nuclear waste from the soil and water at the site of the Chernobyl disaster.

We hope to hold more of these informal events in future. In the mean time, if you would like to contribute to the Plant Directory, please do sent a paragraph or two, as well as an image of your chosen plant, to Spandan (sb2357@cam.ac.uk) or Becky (rf429@cam.ac.uk), and we will add them to the site.