How Do Plants Teach Us?
If we learn to listen, how much can plants teach us?
When American botany professor Robin Wall Kimmerer (1953-) takes her students out on fieldwork expeditions, she encourages them to listen to the ‘teachings of plants’. Besides being a world expert on mosses, Kimmerer is steeped in the spiritual knowledge of the indigenous Potawatomi people. This makes her think in an interesting way about her work as a scientist. Rather than seeing herself as an all-powerful investigator who inspects inert specimens, she thinks about what the plants have to say to her. She thinks of humans and plants alike as lively beings, bound together in a single community.
Kimmerer’s spiritual take on science is reflected in many religious traditions. The Hebrew and Christian bible says in the book of Job: ‘ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you’ (Job 12:8).
The Celtic tradition is an example of Christianity that has been taught by plants. Practising beyond the Western edges of the Roman church (in modern-day Ireland, Scotland and Wales), its early-medieval monks were steeped in the love and study of nature.
In recent decades, some scholars have argued that Celtic Christianity is a romantic fiction. But even if there was not an integrated, independent ‘Celtic’ church across Ireland, Wales and Scotland, many Christians in the area took inspiration from God in nature and grounded their faith, practice, and theology in the natural world
When Celtic monks established monasteries in Ireland, they often thought first about trees. It was important for the monks to choose places for their holy settlements where the woods, especially oaks, remained. So deep was the monk St Colmcille’s feeling for oaks that, according to one story, he built his church facing the ‘wrong’ way, so as not to disturb an established group of the trees.
Later in his life, Colmcille (known in English as Columba, 521-597) travelled to Scotland, where he founded more monasteries. There is tantalising evidence about the gardens built within these communities, and what their plants taught the monks who lived and worked there.
St John’s wort, with its bright yellow flowers, was well regarded in traditional medicine. Known in Ireland as Beachnuadh Columcille and in Scotland as Chalium-chille, it has long been associated with Colmcille and its namesake John the Baptist, for whom Colmcille had a special affection. Prescribed from antiquity for a variety of ailments, it has become popular recently as a treatment for depression. From its place in the Celtic Christian community, St John’s wort ‘spoke’ to restore humans to their proper place in creation.
We will probably never know what specific research Colmcille and his monks did to learn from the many herbs in their gardens, and growing in nearby fields and woods. But we do have evidence, from the native names of plants, that the Celts named plants often from their uses, their appearance, their habitats, and their traditional and religious associations. These names sprang from deep acquaintance with the leafy world. Early writings by monks throughout Europe reveal a common focus on the power of green and growing things.
Like the Celtic Christians, European monks drew on pre-Christian knowledge about plants. But they did not always treat their ancestors respectfully. Traditional ways of knowing, which look something like Kimmerer’s 21st century methods, were sometimes labelled as witchcraft. The forests of Colmcille’s homeland were systematically cut down by the English. Their immediate aim was to get wood for shipbuilding, but their colonial interests were also served when the Irish were culturally and spiritually uprooted along with their trees.
Over the coming centuries in Europe, into the era of modernity, plants were reduced to resources, and to data. But some monks continued to listen – and perhaps the most famous of these is Gregor Mendel (1822-1884).
In the garden of St Thomas’ Abbey, Brno, Mendel listened to his peas. The Augustinian friar and biologist observed how traits passed from generation to generation – seed colour, seed coat, height and so on. He observed patterns in the inheritance of ‘dominant’ and ‘recessive’ factors, which led to the modern theory of genetics. Like Colmcille before him, Mendel’s ideas were shaped by nature. His faith and his science were informed by the teaching of plants
Some decades later, statisticians found that Mendel’s results were too good to be true – as though a person had repeatedly tossed a coin 10 times and got exactly 5 heads in every single trial. Various explanations have been given for Mendel’s results, such as deliberate misreporting. But perhaps we can place Mendel in that longer tradition of monastic study. Perhaps he ‘knew’ what the plants were trying to say and adjusted his human methods to best capture their truths.
The experiences of Mendel, Columba and Kimmerer all show us how much plants can teach us when we learn to listen.
Credits
Written and Produced by the Equipping Christian Leadership in an Age of Science project
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Further Reading
Susan Power Bratton. "Oaks, wolves and love: Celtic monks and northern forests." Journal of Forest History 33.1 (1989): 4-20.
Robin Wall Kimmerer (2020), Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (Penguin Books)