plants’ luggage

Residency at Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh – Plants’ luggage: Endophytes & Plant destroyers
Conversations with micro-fungi specialists of RBGE have emphasized the consequences of the worldwide movement of plants over centuries of botanical and economical exchanges: plants have brought micro-organisms living within them such as symbiotic endophytes or parasites and pathogens. Conceived as a diptych, each illustration scales up the biological luggage of plants through their characteristic spores and reproductive structures. Oxydothis endophytes specific to palm tree Trachycarpus fortunei originate from China and are now found worldwide, including in Cornwall graveyards. Phytophthora ramorum, meaning ‘plant destroyer’ in Greek, is a severe plant disease, which does not cause much trouble in its original habitat, though when brought into other ecosystems it can attack weakened trees, thus bleeding out through the bark. Illustrations of those shuffled plant habitats dialogue with paper-cut micro-organisms like specific windows a researcher may look through to understand the world.