FOR many ecologists, it would be better if we humans were not here at all. Nature, they think, should be something apart from us, pristine and perfect. In the Anthropocene epoch, with the world now dominated by humans, that is not possible. Nature lovers can mourn this. Or they can be like Richard Mabey, our greatest nature writer, and rejoice in it. For him, much of the joy and beauty of nature lies in how we respond to it, and how it responds to us.
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Mabey鈥檚 exploration of 鈥渂otany and the imagination鈥� is, as his latest book suggests, a marvellous cabaret of which he is a splendid impresario 鈥� a true Renaissance man of botany, effortlessly bridging the divides between science and literature, history and psychology, forensic examination and sheer exultation at how plants are central to our lives.
He complains that modern science and environmentalism all too often reduce plants 鈥渢o the status of utilitarian and decorative objects鈥�. Wordsworth鈥檚 鈥渉ost of golden daffodils has been rebranded as natural capital鈥�. But Mabey is determined to challenge that downgrade and restore our wonder in the botanical kingdom 鈥� and our sense of engagement with it.
鈥淲ordsworth鈥檚 host of golden daffodils has been rebranded as natural capital鈥�
His book is the story of plants as medicines and drugs, as fruit-bearers and chemical factories, as windows on evolution and objects of sheer beauty. For Mabey, there is no distinction between good and bad plants, natives and non-natives, weeds and flowers, or even crops and wilderness. For him, the cultivation of plants over millennia has created more diversity, not less. Ginseng from North America, samphire from his home county of Norfolk, UK, the long march of the apple from the Tien Shan mountain range between China and Kazakhstan, the olive trees around the Mediterranean (鈥渙ne of the most beautiful and fragrant plantscapes on earth鈥�) 鈥� all have starring roles in his cabaret.
Mabey has often written about the English and the parochial, but here his canvas is global. His heroes in the appreciation and application of plants range from Amazonian shamans and swidden 鈥渇orest farmers鈥� to architects and the eccentric 20th-century plant painter Margaret Mee, better known in the Amazon than in her native Chiltern Hills in the UK.
He salutes artists such as C茅zanne and Renoir for painting olive trees, as well as Thomas Hardy鈥檚 vivid depiction of the ferns on English heathlands, and Raymond Chandler鈥檚 description of Philip Marlowe feeling nausea at the 鈥渞otten sweetness鈥� of orchids in a California hothouse in The Big Sleep.
His potted histories of the discovery and understanding of plants are fascinating. He takes us to South Africa with Francis Masson, an amateur gardener who became 鈥淏ritain鈥檚 first official roving plant collector鈥�. Masson worked for Joseph Banks, the 鈥淪vengali of 18th-century botany鈥�. And a century later, we scour the Andean jungles for orchids at a time when prized specimens could change hands in Europe for a thousand guineas or more.
I sense that Mabey feels most at home with the first generation of Enlightenment scientists 鈥� people such as Benjamin Franklin and Joseph Priestley, a 鈥減reacher, dissenter and radical chemist鈥� who broke off from writing about philosophy to conduct experiments with sprigs of mint in a jar, thereby stumbling on photosynthesis. Back then, scientists regularly conversed with poets and politicians about their work, and thought nothing of giving their discoveries lewd names.
The troubles created by naming plants recur throughout the book. Taxonomists in 19th-century Britain suppressed the name given to a giant lily, Victoria amazonica, because their queen could not be associated with a tribe of warrior women. And the less said about the innuendo behind naming the Venus flytrap and its 鈥渧ulval pink surfaces鈥� the better.
Naming continues to be a minefield. David Attenborough refused to repeat on television the name of a giant flowering tuber from Sumatra in Indonesia called, for reasons that the book鈥檚 illustration makes clear, Amorphophallus. Mabey also devotes a whole chapter to the sexual lures and sexual metaphors behind the naming of orchids, and the unseemly lust in Victorian times to collect them 鈥� a madness known as the 鈥渙rchidelirium鈥�.
He revels in the past and present battles between the reductionism of taxonomists and the romanticism of those who just want to enjoy plants 鈥� not least, I suspect, because he sees and appreciates both sides. His fascination with plant explorers extends to intrepid modern visitors to the unknown botanical worlds in rainforest canopies. In these 鈥渞ainforest reefs鈥� high above the ground, the absence of soil means that most species are in complex, symbiotic relationships with each other. 鈥淭his is where the rainforest lives,鈥� he concludes.
But it is the weird stuff that Mabey loves best. His cabaret includes a walk-on part for a cactus that climbs trees. Then there鈥檚 a Patagonian vine with leaves that can change shape and colour to mimic the host tree on which it dwells. Not forgetting the trees that have produced clones of themselves, such as the 80,000-year-old clonal complex in Utah known as the Trembling Giant. And what about the fabulous Scythian organism known as the vegetable lamb, which was eventually unmasked as the humble cotton plant?
Plants, says Mabey, are not passive spectators on the planet. They may have more to say than we know: research is revealing that they have unexpected superpowers and covert means of communication. For example, he finds 鈥減assionflowers with their own pesticides, yew trees morphing their aerial roots into trunks, carnivorous species with the powers of muscled animals, orchids mimicking insect pheromones [and] arums able to raise their internal temperature鈥�.
鈥淧lants are not passive spectators on the planet. They may have more to say than we know鈥�
Such powers, he teases, raise the 鈥渁ncient conundrum of whether plants can be said to possess intelligence鈥�. That topic, too, gets a whole chapter 鈥� though thankfully, Mabey concludes that what is really emerging from the science is complex and proactive sensor systems, rather than some innate desire to chat to Prince Charles.
His erudition and joy about plants pulses throughout this book. Their lurid and bizarre stories, and the sheer zest of his prose, bring them gloriously to life. But it is a life that is all about us, too. In the Anthropocene, that is unavoidable. And in Mabey鈥檚 vision, this is something to be cherished.
(Images: Frans Lanting/NGS creative; Frans Lanting / Mint Images /Getty)
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This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淎 world of wonders鈥�
