From the award-winning author of “Two Trees Make a Forest” comes a dazzling collection of essays on identity, belonging, the political stakes of nature, and the seeds from which they all grow.
A tree is planted on a precarious border. A shrub is stolen from its culture and land. A seed slips beyond a garden wall. What happens when these plants leave their original homes?
These fourteen essays centre on the lives of plants and their entanglement with our human worlds: from those considered invasive, like giant hogweed, to those vilified but intimate to many, like soy, and those like kelp, on which our futures depend. Each of the plants Lee considers in this collection are somehow perceived as 'out of place', as weeds, samples collected through imperial science, or crops introduced or transformed by our hand. Loosely following each of their seasons from spring to winter, Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.
As nature writing continues to be re-envisioned in our contemporary moment, this collection brings together concerns at the heart of the genre today: invasion ecologies, identity and belonging, climate change, landscape, borders, and human-plant relations, all told through a blend of history, memoir, and nature writing.
