Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging

In this richly textured work, environmental historian Lee (Two Trees Make a Forest) mines a variety of sources—personal, scientific, literary, historical—to explore the entwined paths of plants and humans. The book’s 14 essays originated in “Non-Native Species,” a column Lee wrote for Catapult magazine. Of Canadian, British, and Taiwanese ancestry and, at the time she wrote the book, an itinerant scholar in COVID-stricken Europe, Lee brings an interesting perspective to her discussion of non-native plants, which she calls “migrants.” These migrant plants include those that move through weedy wiles (heath star moss), crop plants collected by imperial directive (tea), trees relocated via diplomatic or hegemonic endeavor (flowering cherry), and more. The author views her subject through a postcolonial lens. For example, in the brilliant chapter “Frontier,” readers witness that sensibility developing as Lee surveys (and reconsiders) the work of botanists/explorers such as David Fairchild, Walter Tennyson Swingle, and Kin Yamei.