The plants came home. The knowledge didn't.
The old plant-hunters brought back thousands of plants.They filled their gardens with specimens from every corner of the world.Mediterranean trees. Asian shrubs. Plants from North America, South Africa, Australia.They created collections that still exist today. In our parks. Our National Trust estates. Our public gardens.Here's what they didn't bring back.The knowledge.
What was lost.
When they took a tree from the Mediterranean, they took the beauty. The flowers. The impressive appearance.But they left behind five hundred years of people knowing how to eat from it.How to heal with it.How to use every part of it.The plant arrived.The knowledge stayed behind.
What this means.
You walk past these plants every single day.City parks. National Trust properties. Coastal paths.You know they're pretty. You might know the name.But you don't know what they meant to the cultures that actually lived with them.Not the relationship. Not the practical knowledge. Not the cultural significance.All of it erased when someone decided a plant was just "a garden plant". Grown for beauty alone.
What I'm doing about it.
Travels With Plants is a new publishing project that recovers these lost histories.Plants you'll recognise. Histories you won't.The food uses that never made it into the cookbooks.The medicinal applications that got dismissed as "primitive."The cultural practices that seemed irrelevant to people who only wanted pretty gardens.
What this isn’t.
This isn't folklore.This isn't social media wisdom.This is actual ethnobotanical investigation. Real research that traces plants back to their origins and uncovers how people lived with them before they became garden plants.
What you get.
Beautiful books written by a human!
Why this matters.
Cultural knowledge is disappearing fast.Every day, we lose more of it.This work recovers what can still be recovered. Before it's gone completely.If you care about preserving this knowledge, this is for you.
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