Our nearest ape cousins live among and thrive on plants. Our ancient hominin ancestors lived with plants in the forest and then across the savannah. Early modern humans settled in the Levant and other places to farm plants. Philosopher Emanuele Coccia in The Life of Plants writes how florae are not only fundamental for the survival of most life forms but are also earth’s primary life force. Unsurprisingly, in our contemporary homes distant from forests and grasslands, we’ve welcomed plants to share our space as shown in the copiously illustrated and beautifully designed book Plant Fever. In addition to a Preface, there are ten articles written by the editors and a host of experts in art history, gardening, and environmental studies. Each article is a joy to read and reinforced with academic influences. As suggested by the book’s title, the fever is in the human need for a green connection to plants and flowers. Charles Darwin had this fever studying the movements and pollination habits of many plants exemplified in another art-inspired book called Darwin and the Art of Botany by James T. Costa and Bobbi Angell. Plant Fever makes a valuable contribution to the nascent field of plant humanities, bringing together the arts, post-colonial and other theories, and plant science.

Plant Fever springs from exhibits in Denmark at The Hirschsprung Collection and the Ordrupgaard Musuem of nineteenth century art, so the book focuses on how plants are part of Danish culture. Of course, plants are parts of many cultures, enabling people indoors to connect with soil, leaves, and flowers in small ways. According to the authors, plants in paintings are not just ornaments but key figures representing Danish culture and history. Many nineteenth-century Danish paintings reveal, as the editors and contributors suggest, the hidden stories of plants: how they traveled from tropical areas to windowsills in Danish homes. Moreover, plants in paintings express, beyond the assumed subject matter, notions of social class or socioeconomic status, gender, and colonialism. Plants not only represent natural life, but they also indicate other places. For instance, as the authors discuss, on a windowsill in Denmark in one painting you can see Japan (hydrangea), Oman (aloe vera), and Central America (amaranth).

Some plants not native to Denmark in window display conspicuously represented social standing. Explorers and collectors were eager to identify specimens in distant lands and send them home to their nation’s botanical gardens. The authors say that starting in the late eighteenth century, and then seen in artworks by Martinus Rørbye (1803-1848) in the early nineteenth century, we find what they call “botanophilia” or plant fever. This recalls, perhaps with more specificity, biophilia, or human sympathy for nature, described by American biologist E.O. Wilson. Certainly, for many centuries, going back to (not least of all) Aristotle, we are preoccupied by and have a keen interest in nonhuman forms of life. More precisely, the editors and other authors note in the opening article, women as homemakers were charged with care of plants while men, evident in some pictures, were depicted outside the window at work on ships. Thus, plants on the windowsill are not just an extension of a garden but are also tinged by a world of issues, from global trade and technology to slavery and women’s rights.

In nineteenth-century Britain, says Pernille Leth-Espensen in one article, since tropical plants survived indoors there was a “mania” to collect them. Telegraphing prestige in the ability to purchase and house such rarities was evident in Denmark as well. As Leth-Espensen points out, by around 1800 there were up to 50,000 plant species in European greenhouses and many “transplanted” to homes. Contributions to the discovery, transportation, and naming of plants included Danish naturalists. Likely enhancing their value and mystique, it was difficult to transport tropical plants across long sea voyages. In Europe, plants were bought and sold between countries by professional growers and sales people as commercial ventures for the bourgeoise in addition to work done by scientists. Some expensive flowering plants evoking class and status, like camellias, were worn as women’s hair accessories à la mode. Similarly, among Victorians exotic feathers adorning one’s hair were also symbols of opulence. Leth-Espensen goes on to note how during the second half of the nineteenth century parlor palms, ferns, and plants with elegantly shaped leaves became popular. Enthusiasm for plants also spread to a fruit like the pineapple, which was almost exclusively royal and yet coveted by the upper classes. At the same time, fruits, as with many imported plants, were manifestations of colonial empires.

In their article, Gertrud Oelsner and Anette Vandsø take botanophilia further by showing how in a painting called The Green Room (1895) by Viggo Johansen even the furniture appears plant-like. Aesthetics and social sensibilities are depicted in the home sphere. The authors point out that there was an explosion of home plant guides in the second half of the nineteenth century attesting to indoor plant fever and green rooms. There was a growing perception among the bourgeoise, and particularly women, that plants belonged to a home’s interior decor, encouraged by gardeners and vendors who increasingly domesticated wild varieties. Furthermore, as city populations and urban centers expanded later in the nineteenth century, houseplants provided a means of bringing the natural world indoors. Plants are a portal to nature, since there are paintings of people and plants sharing outdoor patios, a liminal space; nature is both tamed and yet transitional, the authors intimate.

Not unlike other contributors, Astrid Steffensen renders an excellent analysis of a painting. The author makes clear that in An Evening with a Friend (1891) by Anna Petersen the interior room’s iconography fits in with and amplifies the plant motif: for example, blooming creativity centered around women artists. In other paintings, flowering plants from far away are juxtaposed with modern Europe, evoking past, present, and future in symbolic growth, especially evident in women artists. In some paintings, cuttings under glass are evident, revealing how metamorphosis from seed or plant part relates to the transition of creative being and human flourishing. As exemplified by Rikke Zink Jensen, botany can be used as an interpretive tool for art. For instance, plants address and challenge dominance in light of “queer ecology.” The powerful symbolism of plants and art are often intertwined. Art can be staged; plants can be pruned, manicured, and taught to grow a certain way. In nature, however, there is queer ecology: instability yet dynamism with fluid genders and asexuality as well as male, female, and hybrids. Plants foster a relationship between art and nature, human and nonhuman.

Gry Hedin notes how caring for plants can also be an art, seeing them not as commodities but as living beings passed among others for protection. Plants, too, have been subject to colonialism, removed from their homelands and then bred and altered according to Western European tastes. Where they naturally grew and blossomed independently, they later became indoor ornaments dependent upon humans. A form of this capitalistic colonialism continues as pharmaceutical companies mine forests for medicinal plants previously known to Indigenous people. Martha Fleming, in her article, says plants became part of the slave trade, notably aloe vera, as people were forcibly transported from West Africa to the Caribbean. Europeans discovered that local people used aloe to make rope and for medicinal purposes. Of course, for Europeans, expeditions and collateral findings from the slave trade and colonialism were of commercial value.

Orchids seem to play a special role in the story of plant fever, Pernille Leth-Espensen and Anders S. Barfod tell us. Orchids date to 1731 in England, and by 1840 there was orchid mania for those who could afford them. Orchids were studied by preeminent naturalists like Charles Darwin. The authors mention how there were special orchid hunters who braved harsh conditions in the tropics in search of rare species of great value. Unfortunately, in the obsession for orchids that could bear financial gain natural areas and forests suffered at human hands. Curiously, the authors note how the fascination with orchids early in the nineteenth century was mostly by men; later in the century orchids became associated with women, another case of plants and gender. According to program information from 1897, an orchid exhibition in Denmark organized by women described the flower as ‘“utterly feminine.”’ Noteworthy, in England, suffragettes reacted strongly against hothouse flowers and orchids as representing the delicacy of feminine beauty requiring masculine protection. Since there was less orchid cultivation in Denmark, compared with England, there are not many paintings that feature them.

Where some plants were commodified signs of conspicuous consumption in nineteenth century Europe and Victorian England, now many are mass produced and more common than rare. We’ve taken plants out of nature and through control via human technology have brought them into our homes and continue to depict them in art. Low paid laborers now, and slaves then, are implicated in this bourgeois culture. The control of nature, as Anette Vandsø, says, is reflected in colonial empires and their economic interests throughout the world in tobacco, tea, and coffee. On the other hand, much of this plant-centered activity reveals our desired proximity with the natural world. Indeed, as Nick Shepherd philosophically observes, the caring for and sharing of plants among family and friends involves intimacy. These feelings are complicated since some endearing plants in particular, like the pelargonium, paradoxically represents Denmark’s colonial past. The role of plants and people, he says, can be merged “between nature and culture,” perhaps as a form of mutual support. On a larger plane, the human relationships formed with houseplants should provide context for how people have cared for, or not, the natural world: are we in contact or conflict with nature?

Plant Fever is a uniquely enjoyable book: abundantly illustrated while insightful and stimulating with accessible academic essays. The authors reveal in many ways hidden plant stories: the culture of classes and the economies of empire and industry as displayed, consciously or not, on windowsills and in visual art.