Representations of Plants in Australian Literature : From the feared to the Revered

This book explores how plants have been written about, represented, and imagined from the early writings of colonial authors where plants are conquered, ripped out and replanted to contemporary representations of native, hybrid and collective gardens.

Australia has some of the most unusual and unique plants in the world and today many of these plants are appreciated and valued. However, this has not always been the case. Through Australia’s colonial and settler history plants have been misunderstood, cursed, and demonised. There was also a total disregard for the Indigenous Peoples’ understanding of the native plants. An area where these struggles and tensions reveal themselves is in the creative imaginings of authors. This book explores how plants have been written about, represented, and imagined from the early writings of colonial authors where plants are conquered, ripped out and replanted to contemporary representations of native, hybrid and collective gardens. It explores the complex and diverse relationships that authors and plants have had in an Australian context and discusses how writers have written about plants to raise not only ecological concerns but also to offer alternatives to knowledge systems and ideologies. While Australian art and paintings have been well researched and written about in their representations of plants there has been little on the relationship between literature and plants. This book goes someway into addressing this gap.