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| Non-Native Species
What Cabbage Teaches Us about Care and Culture
It has been domesticated across Asia for so long, its movements have become opaque.
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| Non-Native Species
Taking History Personally: Tea, Selfhood, and the Story of Empire
Tea plants—and the drinks we make from them—carry so many meanings.
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| Non-Native Species
How Seaweed Shapes Our Past and Future
What do we make of the weediness of seaweeds?
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| Non-Native Species
Budding History: On Nationalism and Cherry Blossoms
Through myth-making and symbolism, the natural world comes to stand in for potent human ideals.
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| Non-Native Species
The Many Meanings of the Mango
Mangoes—revered and prized by almost every culture in which they are cultivated—are a migrant fruit.
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How the Literature of Empire Shaped My View of the Natural World
It took me years before I realized that I’d built my notions of beauty from the stories of a distant land.
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| Non-Native Species
My Grandfather and the Fukien Tea Tree: A Botanical History
I added it to the list of things off-limits: questions about the past, the wars, why my grandparents had fled China for Taiwan. Why eventually they left that place too.