Say their names

why we learn the plants

American groundnut, Apios americana Fabaceae

Botany and plant identification are my favourite things to teach. Taking people out into nature and giving them the tools and the awareness to discern one plant from another, to begin to see the diversity in what can often seem like a sea of sameness, and to recognize plants as individuals within a whole and the ways they each uniquely serve the greater ecosystem—it’s a pleasure and a pride that I almost cannot describe. We in the plant world call it “breaking down the green wall” and, to me, this has far greater and important repercussions than simply knowing the plants. Distinguishing species within what to those of western upbringing often see as a homogenous mass called “nature,” in my opinion, has the power to transform the way we see the world and ourselves and all the other people within it. Its power is deeply political. For this reason I teach botany with fervor as I believe it is one of the most important and powerful things we can do.

In the second session of the Winter Botany Intensive last weekend, someone asked a really valuable and honest question—essentially, why does it matter? Why should we learn the names of plants? I’ve been thinking about this ever since, trying to give language to the meaningfulness of the practice of plant identification and the value of a name and how to explain, clearly, why it feels not just important, but imperative.

“Language is one of the most powerful forces in shaping us. Do we see what we don’t have words for? And how do words shape what we see?” posits Georgina Reid in her essay “Say my name: on speaking the indigenous names of plants.” I believe this is true. Linguistic science states that human thought and human language are inextricably linked. People use language to weave the world into existence—without a name, something simply isn’t. “The naming and describing of everything that exists in a place is essential to keeping that place alive in the consciousness,” writes Kim Mahood in her essay “Writing the Country.” Language and land cannot be separated just as people and plants cannot either. The way we talk about the land and the plants and the creatures that dwell there, including ourselves, gives it richness, complexity, reflects our knowing, its value, meaningfulness. And in a world where life is lost daily—the loss of species, the loss of seasons, the loss of cultures and people—we use language, names, stories, to keep things alive. Did you know that, on average, we lose around 200 species of plants and animals every single day? Words help us remember.

Blue-eyed grass, Sisyrinchium angustifolium Iridaceae

There are a number of different ways to name plants. Or, rather, plants have a few different names. There’s the common name, usually what we use to refer to it colloquially—sugar maple, poison ivy, grass. These differ based on where you live, your native language, your culture, and so on. They often refer to the way a plant looks or something it does or how it has been used by people over time. One of my favourite plant names we have growing in the meadows here is blue-eyed grass, a tiny little plant in the Iris family with blue blossoms at the tip that open and close with the sun as though blinking, tiny eyes peering out from the green underfoot. The name expresses, to me, everything that it is. Often our common names in English here on turtle island are a fusion of indigenous learnings and an attempt to place unfamiliar things within European familiarity. Witch hazel, for instance, a tree that sort of looks like a European hazelnut with bendy v-shaped branches which the Mahican people taught the settlers to use for the mystical process of dowsing or “witching” for water.

Then there’s the scientific or botanical name, a more official system of nomenclature based in mostly Latin and Greek that is universal around the world. This is helpful because no matter where you are or the dominant language at hand, this name is always the same. Usually it starts with the genus, then the species (which is the most specific it gets) and the family, which is sort of a larger group in which that plant exists. Sugar maple, for instance, botanically, is called Acer saccharum Sapindaceae. Sometimes the botanical names, particularly the species, are quite helpful and refer to some kind of feature or use. In the case of sugar maple, saccharum refers to the sugar and alludes, like its common name, to its use for making maple syrup. Red maple, on the other hand, is Acer rubrum. Rubrum means red and a red maple’s buds are distinctly red in comparison to its other maple brethren.

Red maple buds, Acer rubrum Sapindaceae

I love botanical names. To me they are like magic spells, like a language all its own, something complex and beautiful that requires a lot of paying attention and memorization and care that has ultimately brought me closer to the plants. The more I learn these names by heart, the more I learn to see. The downside of botanical names, however, are that they are very Eurocentric and many of the plant names simply refer to some old dead white male botanist who claims he “discovered” it, thus erasing the plant’s autonomy and the long history of human interaction and relationship before colonization. As much as I like them, botanical names can often feel cold and scientific. Common names, indigenous names, often more accurately reflect true connection and camaraderie, tell a story that doesn’t centre egotistical men in a field that for centuries kept women out, a story of cohabitation and care. Nonetheless, whatever names you choose to prioritize and learn, learning them at all is an act of paying and giving attention and attention is an act of love. It is the difference between viewing the land and plants as resources to be extracted and seeing them as something we depend on for life. And we do depend on them for life. Without plants, we cannot exist.

“People exploit what they have merely concluded to be of value, but they defend what they love,” writes author and farmer Wendell Berry, “and to defend what we love we need a particularizing language, for we love what we particularly know. The abstract, ‘objective,’ impersonal, dispassionate language of science can, in fact, help us to know certain things, and to know some things with certainty. It can help us, for instance, to know the value of species and of species diversity. But it cannot replace, and it cannot become, the language of familiarity, reverence, and affection by which things of value ultimately are protected.”

Plants are not objects. They are living, breathing, feeling beings. Sovereign beings. They care for one another, they communicate, they breathe and whisper and heal. We both ancient wisdom and modern science to prove that. In the living world it is a sign of respect to learn someone’s name. You would not go more than a few minutes in the intimate presence of another person without asking and learning their name, so why would we live decades with a tree outside the door whose name we haven’t bothered to ask?

Indian Hemp or Dogbane, Apocynum cannabinum Apocynaceae

In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Bioneers speech “The Teachings of Grass,” she talks about the importance of learning plant names. She shares the alarming statistic that the average American can name over 100 corporate logos and only 10 plants. “Is it a surprise that we have accepted a political system that grants personhood to corporations,” she declares, “and no status at all for wild rice and redwoods? Learning the names of animals and plants is a powerful act of support for them. When we learn their names and gifts it opens the door to reciprocity.” When we care enough to get to know the land and plants in this way, she explains, we move away from seeing the earth as “a source of belongings” and shift into seeing it, once again, through the indigenous lens, as a source of belonging.

I often tell my students that I believe learning to identify plants makes you a better person. I believe it is a roadmap for goodness. The forest is a socialist society and as you get to know it more intimately, it’s hard to not see the power and benefits of living in mutual care. Nationalism, political boundaries & borders, capitalism and the pro-individualistic ideology it promotes become meaningless. That homogenous greenscape is not the chaotic wild of competition we were once told but an intricate system of balance and harmony and collaboration towards universal growth and flourishing. And if that doesn’t sound like the perfect way to be, I don’t know what is.

Skunk Cabbage, Symplocarpus foetidus Araceae

Of course I am still thinking of Palestine, grieving, mostly lost for words these days. But just as the trees know no difference between their sapling and that of another, I am the mother of every child that has been slaughtered there, the friend of every mourning woman, every parent and child’s boundless grief is my own. I am Palestine too and every loss of life there is all of ours, is a loss that resounds everywhere, an echo felt forever. As I sit here, musing on the value of naming plants, I realize it extends to people too. It is so easy to other, to turn a whole nation and culture into a homogenous mass that has nothing to do with us. To disassociate. We have so much experience with erasure, it comes too easily, we have been taught it for ages, but if we eliminate our capacity to see good and value life and the plant world dies around us by the day, I ask, what is left?

I want to share just a few names with you today: Aaron Bushnell, age 25, who died yesterday by self-immolation in the name of a free Palestine. Heba Abdin, 7 years old, who died in her home which was bombed by the IDF. Muhammed al-Zayegh, he was just 60 days old and died from starvation in the north of Gaza. Mohammed Yaghi, a journalist, who was killed in his home with his young daughter and wife by Israeli warplanes. Fathi Ghaben, age 77, acclaimed Palestinian artist who was denied medical care by Israeli authorities and died today from complications. Maryam, I don’t know her last name, a baby just a few months old, she lost her entire family while fleeing northern Gaza, and then hours later, orphaned and alone, died in the arms of hospital staff. And the 77 newborn babies in the Emirati hospital in Rafah, almost all of them orphaned as well, I don’t know their names, but they have them, written on small plastic armbands just like my daughter had when she was born alongside my own so they could tell where she belonged.

Say their names, say their names, say their names.

A dead American Elm branch, Ulmus americana Ulmaceae, with the visible markings of the dutch elm disease, a fungus that arrived in the US in the early 1900s and killed almost all of our native Elms

Botany is, sadly, a dying science. With the rise in genetics, molecular biology, and biotechnology, the increasing prowess and availability of AI and plant ID apps, some would argue there’s no need for this tricky little process of dissecting and counting flower parts, measuring leaf stems, noting differences in twig hairs, returning and returning through its many phases of life, a process that takes a lot of patience, care, and, honestly, decades of devotion to master. I have a friend with a PhD in floristics who told me recently that, basically, there are no longer any well-paying jobs in her field of expertise. It makes sense why we would take the easy route, snap a photo on the trail and have the answer instantly and move on to the next, but like all good things, the hard route leads to a deeper, more lasting kind of knowing. To spend the time it takes to tease apart petals and count bud scales and decide whether something is 2 mm wide or 3 or if the hairs are more hirsute or tomentose, there’s a bond that forms that is a little less easy to undo. As I stated above, intimacy and connection come with time, attention, and care, a decentering of our needs and the prioritizing of another’s. Botany isn’t really a science after all, but the act of building a web of relationships across ecosystems that, I believe comes, inevitably, with a feeling of accountability and moral responsibility. And that, that is what it’s all about, that is what gives it value and makes all the difference.

for people and plants always,

hannah

also, SOME UPCOMING PLANT LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES:

Community Plant Walks return! These walks are casual and fun, designed to bring people together in the name of plants. The first one of the year is coming up next month on March 10th at 10 am. We’ll walk the wetland trail at Drowned Lands Swamp, ID the trees still in winter bud and look for those early signs of spring popping through. All plant walks cost $20 but no one is turned away for lack of funds. Anyone who has more is also encouraged to give more if they can to contribute to our “pay it forward” fund which supports fb scholarships and various mutual aid projects. RSVP by emailing me foliagebotanics@gmail.com <3

The third and last session of the Winter Botany Intensive is Sunday March 17th and you are welcome to join us even if you didn't attend the first 2. Just shoot me an email for the details—foliagebotanics@gmail.com xx