Introduction: Global Flora: Mastering Exotic Plants (Eighteenth —NineteenthCenturies)

Abstract

In this dossier, we reflect on plants that travel and the knowledge associated with them. Like human beings, plants move around and can adapt to new situations. In fact, it is no longer possible to effectively distinguish native and exotic plants. Environmental preservation and restoration works often deal with plants foreign to the biome they now inhabit, some of which become invasive species that stunt the growth of native plants. At the same time, to take but one example, our current pattern of food consumption is based on such nearly ubiquitous plant species as potatoes, wheat, and rice. Other plants are now so acclimatized in their new habitats that people think of them as having been there forever, like mangoes in Brazil, cassava in Africa, chili peppers in India, and rubber trees in Malaysia.