Eucalyptus
Item
Title
Eucalyptus
Is Part Of
Biological Sciences
See all items with this value
History
See all items with this value
African Studies
See all items with this value
Fine Art
See all items with this value
Centre for Curating the Archive
See all items with this value
Pulmonology
See all items with this value
Description
"The plants [dislayed in this cabinet] were bought from the Adderley Street flower market in central Cape Town and are used by the sellers for medicinal purposes to treat chest and respiratory problems, with the leaves of the eucalyptus added to a bath and those of the protea infused in hot water and drunk as a broth. The flower sellers trading in Trafalgar Place and along Adderley Street have been doing so since at least the mid-1880s but became viewed as threats to the local flora by the European settlers at about the same time the medicine chest was first introduced to the city at the beginning of the 20th century. The settlers initially preferred to cultivate plants imported from their home countries to indigenous varieties, introducing many species to South Africa for nostalgic or practical reasons (subsequently problematic for local biodiversity) (Van Sittert 2002: 103). In the wake of emerging white nationalism in the 1890s, interest in indigenous plants gained momentum and was deployed to create a sense of belonging to the ‘foreign’ land (Boehi 2013: 133). A botanical discourse was mobilised to underscore ideas about identity and belonging, such as ‘roots’ and ‘ideas of rootedness’, and laws regulating flower picking (which usually occurred on the mountain) were passed in this period and were secured by the Wild Flower Protections Act in 1905 and an amendment thereto in 1908 (Boehi 2013: 133)"(Liebenberg 2021: 275).
Creator
Nina Liebenberg
See all items with this value
Date Created
2018
Source
Chest: a botanical ecology
Resonances
Chest: a botanical ecology
See all items with this value
South African Museum
See all items with this value
eucalyptus
See all items with this value
Adderley Street flower sellers
See all items with this value
biodiversity
See all items with this value
identity
See all items with this value
colonialism
See all items with this value
nostalgia
See all items with this value
flowers
See all items with this value
indigenous
See all items with this value
medicine chest
See all items with this value
Type
Objects
Contributor
Nina Liebenberg