Reflections & Interviews
The initiative published scholarly and creative essays from authors across a range of disciplinary backgrounds and career stages, as well as reflections from practitioners and artists.
Thinking with Plants and Fungi Blog
Should Plants Have Rights? A Conversation with Alessandra Viola
In recent years, scholars across law, philosophy, environmental science, and Indigenous studies have ignited a vibrant debate over whether legal rights can—and should—be extended to plants. Historically treated as property or a passive backdrop in Western...
Harmonizing with History: A Journey Through Vancouver Island’s Indigenous Heritage
“We come into this world to share and give of ourselves to the all.” – Elder Bill Jones
Rooted in Connection: A Conversation Between Rebecca McMackin and Basil Camu
A tree care expert and an ecological horticulturist explore belonging, biodiversity, and hope through hands-on work with trees and landscapes. The following is an edited transcript of the conversation between Basil Camu and Rebecca McMackin. Basil Camu...
New Names for Very Old Ideas: Theosophy and Vitalism in Algernon Blackwood’s "The Man Whom the Trees Loved"
By Timothy Grieve-Carlson / Edited by Rachael Petersen He painted trees as by some special divining instinct of their essential qualities. He understood them. He knew why in an oak forest, for instance, each individual was utterly distinct from its...
Self-Branching Beings: Hedwig Conrad-Martius as Plant Philosopher
By Isabel Jacobs / Edited by Russell Powell Before retiring to his cabin in the Black Forest in the 1970s, Martin Heidegger gave lectures in Switzerland that revisit ed his phenomenological ontology of Dasein, developed in Being and Time (1927). In one...
The Invention of Plant Consciousness: Science, History, and Contradiction
By Russell C. Powell / Edited by Rachael Petersen Have you heard? Plants, we’re learning, might be conscious . They’ve been shown to possess abilities to communicate, to exhibit complex decision-making processes, to remember, and to learn. Not only are...
Adelma Grenier Simmons and the Lucidity of Herbal Adoration
By Katie Terezakis, PhD, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology / Edited by Russell Powell Adelma Grenier Simmons (1903-1997) was an herbalist, writer, educator, and host to thousands of people who came to her Connecticut farm...
Fighting a new invasive species: AI's impossible flora
By Giovanni Aloi / edited by Rachael Petersen Ten-foot-tall hostas and bright teal blooming geraniums, purple sunflowers, blue pampas grass plumes, black marigolds, and rainbow roses—the list is endless. Social media platforms have recently become...
Seedbeds of Creativity: Superblooms and Superorganisms
By Lisa Sideris / edited by Russell Powell To open one’s mind to the mere existence of a superbloom shreds all kinds of narratives: the end of nature, the hopelessness of our times, the loss of wildness. – Thomas Ranier, “The Superbloom in an Age of...
What’s at Stake in Debates about Plant Agency? The Promise of Transdisciplinarity and a “New Biology”
By Stella Sandford / Edited by Russell Powell To understand what is at stake in contemporary debates over plant agency, it is helpful to situate them within the well-accepted narrative of recent biological theory. It goes like this: at the beginning of...
