I t’s impossible to forget where you were the day the pandemic began. 2 weeks of uncertain cancellation quickly degenerated into months of complete absence. Absence of crowds, of contact, of performance, of art at large. Such a change for many opened a void. At the drop of a pin, inspiration felt foreign and far away as if there was no way to create collaboratively.

For Norwegian singer, songwriter, and novelist Jenny Hval, scent, specifically a classic perfume called “Iris Silver Mist” (the title of her ninth solo album), brought sparks when things were dim, quiet, unknown, and, at times, perilous. I had the privilege of interviewing Hval and discussing the creation of this new project, her attention to scent while performing in cities worldwide, and the little notes in between that get her gears turning.

Ian Sleat: I’m dying to hear about the conception of this idea of an album based on a comfortable, familiar scent symbol. When and why did you decide that “Iris Silver Mist” was going to be the title and the all-encompassing theme of the record?

Jenny Hval: I think part of the reason I chose the title Iris Silver Mist was that this particular scent is so uncomfortable… It’s the opposite of comfort. It has been described as something you’d wear to a poet’s funeral! Or as the perfume the ghost in Hamlet would wear! It was the aura around the scent that made me connect with it, long before I tried it… and the suggestion that it would be worn by a ghost character made me feel like it belonged to me too. For many years now, I’ve felt like artists are ghosts. I’ve seen the value of art (at least music that doesn’t fit into the popular) diminish, there’s less music in the media, streaming services has been strangling music, the pandemic drove people away from concerts, the rise of obsessive and algorithmic social media platform has made “everyone” is an artist, but forced to perform inside the same little screen. Etc. If there is any overarching theme on the record, it is to be human inside these structures, at this time. Feeling like a pile of dry bones, chalk, and sand.

“Iris Silver Mist” for those who don’t know is a fragrance by Serge Lutens. Without describing its literal notes, could you describe what is so evocative about the scent for you?

First of all, it’s a cult classic, so many very good writers have written its fanfiction over the years. As someone deeply interested in the language around invisible art forms, I find great value in that. To me the scent smells like boiled carrots, but also cold earth. It’s both milky and dry at the same time too. I feel like the perfume, when you spray it on, penetrates your skin and fuses with your bones. Maybe it even rearranges you and puts bone on the outside and skin on the inside. It’s not an experience I want to have every day, I save it for rainy, misty days when the dead can dance.

Before the album was determined, you mentioned many of the tracks were a “continuous flow of ideas.” Were these songs always going to exist on a project together or did this aspect of scent serve as the glue for “Iris Silver Mist.”

The very first idea I had was to create a mixtape. A long sausage of sound that would be continuous, but one idea would turn into the next, and there would be songs – but it would feel as if it was “a continuous trip you couldn’t skip”. I tried to write all the songs inside the same project file, and I imagined there would be a seed of what would come next placed inside each idea. I wanted immediacy and continuity.

The scent did come into the process – I had become obsessed with perfume a few months before I started working on the album, and this obsession consumed me – I used it to reconnect with sound and get ideas.

I would go test a scent and then sit down to write, and I would name the piece I wrote whatever I wore that day. It became a scent diary. I don’t know if the scents I tested really influenced my writing, but the ritual of testing them and then writing while sniffing my wrist (“huffing my arm”) made me work steadily and with some kind of direction. As if each scent was an invisible guide.

Could you discuss the weeks following the release of this project? What’s the response been? How do you feel?

The response has been really wonderful, more than I’ve ever really experienced. Maybe because I published a book at the same time as the record here in Norway, so I gave the audience the possibility of two linked artworks – I’ve not been able to do that before.

Playing the music live is very rewarding for me, I’m very fond of this music, and I guess it feels like home. I work with very good friends and artists that I admire immensely, so it’s an honor to get to release and perform my work. I am overwhelmed to meet people and share it with them. It is such a privilege.

Now that you’re up and touring the album do you attribute more meaning or attention to local smells as you bounce from place to place?

I think a lot more about scents and places now than I used to. I notice how flowers bloom at different times and smell different depending on the weather. I notice more nuances in spices and cooking scents, like the different facets of sweatiness in cumin. I do think more about the correlation between scent and place. But I need to travel more (and without a cold like I had on my first tour for this album) to gather more thoughts.

Since I’m more of an indoor person, it’s fascinating for me to experience the smells of cleaning products when I travel. Cleaning products are many times made to mask the presence of people (and their dirt or fluids). They are conceptually very interesting to me – smells of absence. Unlike perfumes, which are smells of a person’s presence. Cleaning product scents are not universal. Here in Norway, many products are delicately pine or citrus-scented. However, I remember arriving in Spain recently, walking into a recently cleaned airport bathroom, and finding it to smell sweet and rosy. I never used to think about this so much but now I am creating a map in my head.

I also notice people and their scents differently. The perfumes they wear. The nuances of people’s sweat and body odor. People are fascinating. And different.

Beyond Iris Silver Mist, are there any other scents or notes that are particularly poignant or evocative for you? What have they meant to you/made you feel if there are any particular examples?

There is a lot of stuff that I have a deep connection to from my childhood. Wet concrete basements (I loved this as a child), old books (magic), grass, and hay in a barn. A sweet purple flower I used to pick and eat. Dog paws – they smell of popcorn. Steamed rice. Warm waffles (very Norwegian). Overboiled milk. The smell of wet, sleepy kids on the school bus on the way home from a forest trip in the rain. My fingers on my left hand after playing the steel-string guitar (metal skin). So many things. 

Have these deeper connections to your senses and the body always been central to your creative process? How, if at all, has scent and perfume driven your creativity before creating an album central to it?

I think my interest in scent and the mystery of smelling, remembering, and feeling has always been strong. It is all over my writing, as an invisible art and even a form of silent protest (in my book Girls Against God a mysterious, unpleasant scent is unleashed in Oslo). My added interest in perfume over the past few years has just made me more aware of composed smells. It has given the art of composition and writing a new facet, a more nuanced language. It has unpacked what scents can be made of, how they can relate to creativity, and how they can change over time.

Do you approach creating an album inspired by a perfume or scents with specific narratives in mind or did each song sort of flow out with no immediate story in mind?

I didn’t really think I was making music inspired by perfume in the beginning. Trying on perfumes before writing music was just a private motivation, I didn’t understand how it could be conceptually connected to the music. I was quite embarrassed about how deep my interest was at the time because I felt it was just a midlife crisis hobby or something. Over time I remembered how important scents are to me and how related music and perfume can be, or at least how they can shadow each other. As two invisible arts.

Could you share any moments of scent-related inspiration that were turning points in either a specific track on the album or the album as a whole?

I don’t think I felt like there were, sadly. It would have been interesting though. I discovered a lot of ingredients that I love during the making of the album. I thought a lot about presence and absence. Not just when I thought about cleaning products! Also when I thought about the album as a whole. There are songs on the album that I wanted to have a human voice very, very present – but there’s always the idea of a world without humans (or a world without me, or a loved one, a world that moves on). The birdsong in Lay down could signal a post-apocalyptic world with no humans, and the track “Huffing my arm” can signal a more ghost-like idea of a human, whispering across dimensions or using wordless phrases. A world without words.

Do you experience any kind of synesthesia between sound and scent while creating? If so, has that boundary become more porous in the making of Iris Silver Mist?

Yes, definitely. I had started using a lot of sampled string synths and mellotron sounds on my demos for this album (the demos are quite similar to the album, we just added things on top later). To me, these sounds, and what they made me write, felt fragile and airy, like a singing ghost. This again reminded me of a powdery, dusty, chalk-like substance. Then I started smelling dusty or powdery perfumes – with violet, or iris. That was part of the reason I couldn’t let go of the connection to Iris Silver Mist The Perfume. It smelled like those sounds.

I like how you describe the album as its perfume with top, heart, and base notes. Was mirroring fragrance structures something you consciously did or was it something that happened by chance?

It was something I mainly did when writing about the album after it was finished. Most of my thoughts about my work come after everything is done. 

I’m sure that touring and press for this album are probably booming now more than ever, but once it comes time to create a new project, do you think scents will continue to be this infusion of inspiration that they have been for Iris Silver Mist?

I hope so, but I’m not ready to write anything yet. I need to live. And smell more.

Ian Sleat is a freelance music, food, and culture writer. You can subscribe to his SubStack “To Be Frank” here.

T here is sheer, wordless pleasure in standing on a sea cliff and breathing in the mingled scents of salt spray and sun-warmed aromatic plants—thyme, gorse, or pine—each note carried on the wind like a secret from the land. The sharpness of the ocean air deepens their fragrance, awakening something primal and deeply alive within.

I recently had a moment to walk the beginning of the aromatic cliffs of Bray Head in Ireland. Bray Head rises dramatically above the Irish Sea, its rugged cliffs and sloping meadows offering one of Ireland’s most iconic coastal walks. Located on the eastern edge of County Wicklow, this windswept promontory is not only a place of natural beauty and panoramic views—it is also home to a remarkable community of aromatic plants that thrive in the salt-spray air and shallow, stony soils. This Spring, one plant was red valerian (Centranthus ruber), which was providing nectar to large wild bees it had called with its heavy aroma.

When I walked the cliff path years ago, I was enveloped by the scent of gorse (Ulex europaeus), a sun-loving shrub whose bright yellow flowers emit a warm, coconut-like fragrance. Gorse seemed more dominant in the landscape in my memory, and its resilience to wind and poor soil makes it a signature plant of Bray Head’s coastal heath. But this time it was spring and there was so much more in bloom. These plants form what could be called an aerobiome of the edge—a living, aromatic ecology shaped by salt air, wind, and seasonal shifts. The smells that rise from Bray Head’s cliffs are not just pleasing—they are cues of ecological resilience and deep cultural memory. Ancient peoples who moved through this landscape would have known these scents well, as signals of place, time, and nourishment.

Along the margins of land and sea, in many places, a quiet transformation is underway. The smell of the coast—once a mingling of salt spray, wild herbs, and flowering shrubs—is changing. As climate change intensifies, sea level rise and increased salinity are reshaping coastal ecosystems and, with them, the scent profiles of the aromatic plants rooted there. This subtle yet profound shift in the olfactory landscape is an overlooked indicator of ecological stress, cultural loss, and botanical adaptation.

Coastal regions are home to unique aromatic flora adapted to briny winds, sandy soils, and fluctuating moisture. In Mediterranean garrigue, Irish machair, Californian chaparral, and the windswept dunes of the Baltic, native plants like Rosmarinus officinalis (rosemary), Helichrysum italicum (immortelle), Crithmum maritimum (rock samphire), Artemisia maritima (sea wormwood), and Armeria maritima (sea thrift) thrive in marginal soils, many drawing their intense scent from the stress of survival.

These stressors—drought, salt spray, and high UV exposure—trigger the production of essential oils that protect plants from dehydration, herbivory, and fungal attack. The resulting compounds are not only pharmacologically potent but also deeply evocative of place.

However, with the rising tides, this dynamic balance is being thrown off.

Salinity is a big force, and changes in salinity intrusion are among the most insidious impacts of sea level rise. As saltwater moves inland, it alters soil chemistry and damages root systems. Some halophytic (salt-tolerant) species, like Salicornia or Limonium, may thrive or expand their ranges, while others, like lavender and thyme, exhibit reduced vigor and changes in volatile oil composition. The salt stress doesn’t just stunt growth, it alters the biochemistry of the plant. Science is showing that it can both increase or suppress the production of certain aromatic compounds depending on the severity of stress and the species in question.

In rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis), for example, moderate salt stress can elevate levels of carnosic acid and essential oil production, intensifying the herb’s signature scent. Yet as salinity becomes chronic or extreme, oil yields drop, and plants can wither or die.

Coastal squeeze, the trapping of plant habitats between rising seas and human development, further endangers aromatic species. Unable to migrate inland due to roads, seawalls, or urban sprawl, these plants face localized extinction. In southern England, native sea lavender and sea wormwood are losing ground. In the eastern U.S., salt marshes are expanding, displacing sweet-scented meadowlands.

Species migration may lead to hybridization and altered plant chemotypes. This creates new scent profiles but threatens the continuity of culturally and medicinally important varieties. For communities that rely on traditional plant knowledge, such as coastal foragers in Brittany or Crete, these changes are more than botanical; they erode identity.

Changing scents means changing memory. Scent is among the most powerful triggers of memory and place attachment. As the composition of coastal flora shifts, so too do the olfactory cues tied to home, seasonality, and ritual. The familiar fragrance of immortelle in Corsica, or wild thyme on Greek islands, may grow faint or vanish, replaced by less fragrant invaders or salt-tolerant species with pungent or unfamiliar aromas.

From a neuroaesthetic perspective, in many cases, these changes may dull the affective power of landscape, weakening emotional bonds with coastal environments.

Not all news is grim. Some plants are demonstrating remarkable resilience and signs of adaptation. Crithmum maritimum (rock samphire), long used in coastal cuisines and perfumery, is thriving in some newly saline zones. Its essential oils, rich in limonene and dillapiole, are gaining renewed attention for antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties.

Researchers are also exploring the cultivation of salt-tolerant aromatic plants as climate-resilient crops. Some projects aim to stabilize coastal soils, restore dunes, and preserve olfactory heritage while developing niche perfumes and herbal medicines. There is a growing interest in leveraging such plants for coastal restoration and climate resilience. This aligns with broader European efforts to utilize halophytes—plants that thrive in saline conditions—for environmental and economic benefits.

For instance, the EU-funded Aquacombine project explores the potential of halophytes in sustainable agriculture and coastal restoration, highlighting their role in stabilizing soils.

Additionally, the Saltmarsh Habitat Restoration Handbook provides practical guidance on restoring saltmarsh habitats across the UK and Ireland, emphasizing the importance of such ecosystems in coastal defense and biodiversity. While the handbook doesn’t focus exclusively on aromatic plants, the restoration of these habitats could create favorable conditions for cultivating salt-tolerant aromatic species. 

Incorporating salt-tolerant aromatic plants into coastal restoration efforts not only aids in stabilizing soils and combating erosion but also offers opportunities for developing products like natural niche perfumes and herbal medicines. This approach supports both environmental sustainability and local economies, preserving the olfactory heritage of coastal communities.

Toward an Olfactory Conservation Ethic

To protect coastal aromatic plants, World Sensorium Conservancy is calling for an “olfactory conservation ethic”—an approach that recognizes scent as part of ecological and cultural heritage. Efforts for coastlines include:

Encouraging countries and communities to map scent loss through science, citizen science and traditional ecological knowledge

Supporting dune restoration and managed retreat zones to give plants room to migrate

Preserving chemotype diversity of aromatic species through seed banking and cultivation

Documenting traditional uses of coastal aromatics in cuisine, medicine, and cultural practices.

Our coastal margins are more than physical boundaries—they are sensorial frontiers. As sea levels rise, what lingers in the air reminds us that climate change is not only changing landscapes, but also altering and erasing the invisible, fragrant threads that connect people to place.

Gayil Nalls, PhD is an interdisciplinary artist and theorist. She is the founder of the World Sensorium Conservancy and the editor of its journal, Plantings.

Top photo: pixabay.com, photo by holgerheinze0

Selected Sources

Tattini, M., et al. (2015). “Physiological and molecular responses of plants to salt stress.” Plant and Soil, 381(1–2), 1–17.

Rozema, J., & Flowers, T. J. (2008). “Ecophysiology of coastal halophytes.” Annals of Botany, 101(3), 341–353.

IPCC (2021). Sixth Assessment Report. Chapter 2: Terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems and their services.

Barbero, F., et al. (2010). “Volatile Emission in Mediterranean Plants in Response to Environmental Stress.” Natural Product Communications, 5(10), 1675–1680.

Classen, C., et al. (1994). Aroma: The Cultural History

Sánchez, E., García, S., & Contreras, J. A. (2010). Influence of salt stress on phenolic compounds and essential oil composition of rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis L.). Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 58(1), 114–120. https://doi.org/10.1021/jf902596j

Swamy Gowda, M. R., Hirtemath, C., Singh, S., & Verma, R. S. (2022). The influence of NaCl salt stress on the yield and quality of the essential oil from two varieties of rose-scented geranium (Pelargonium graveolens L’Hér.). Biochemical Systematics and Ecology, 105, 104532. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bse.2022.104532

Ben Taarit, M., Msaada, K., Hosni, K., Hammami, M., Kchouk, M. E., & Marzouk, B. (2009). Plant growth, essential oil yield and composition of sage (Salvia officinalis L.) fruits cultivated under salt stress conditions. Industrial Crops and Products, 30(3), 333–337. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2009.06.007

Standing at the last edges of winter, I always look forward to spring. The cascade of color, the scent of flowers, the warmth of the sun on bare skin; my body eagerly anticipating the seasonal surge of dopamines, itching to peel off my hibernation. But this year was different. I wasn’t ready to emerge. I didn’t want to leave the sleepy quiet of the colder months or quicken my pace to meet the urgency of spring. I was depleted and foggy. So I dug in my heels and attempted to cultivate presence, to slow down and perceive the borderlands between the seasons. Lingering here, I began to feel spring vibrating just below winter’s surface. Like the energy of a swarm of bees held within a single seed. It undulated, edging closer and closer to the moment when the spring bulbs would crown, rupturing winter with their bright green shoots. It was in this liminal time that I noticed Galanthus rousing from her underground slumber, the winter harbinger of spring, blooming alone in an ornamental garden. 

Galanthus is an herbaceous perennial with a single bell-shaped white flower and two slender leaves. Typically, the flower has three outer tepals and three smaller inner tepals, each forming a circle. The outer tepals are thermotropic, opening for pollinators when the weather is warm enough and closing when it is too cold. The inner tepals have distinctive green marks which function as both nectar guides and photosynthetic organs rich with chlorophyl.¹ These markings (usually green, but sometimes yellow or peach) help galanthophiles and taxonomists distinguish between the twenty known species and numerous hybrids and cultivars—it is variously held that there are anywhere from 500 – 1500 named varieties. Galanthus make themselves at home in cool mountainous regions with moist soil, originating throughout Europe and the Middle East, from the Pyrenees across to the Caucasus and Iran, then down to Italy, the Peloponnese and Syria. 

Galanthus is neither native nor naturalized where I live. Our climate is too warm for her, so I didn’t grow up familiar with her cold-hardy fortitude. And in this regard, she is remarkable. With most varieties blooming from late January to mid-March, Galanthus can flower while the ground is still hardened under a blanket of snow and when the temperatures continue to drop below freezing. She is elegantly equipped to do so. Utilizing energy stored in the bulb, Galanthus sends up leaves with hardened tips to pierce the frost layer. Once above ground, she withstands sub-zero temperatures using anti-freeze glycoproteins in her sap that inhibit the formation of ice crystals. In these conditions, her tissues will collapse but remain undamaged, reviving when the weather warms up enough for the sap to flow once again.² It is often repeated that Galanthus can even create her own heat through thermogenesis, raising her body temperature to melt the surrounding snow, though this has yet to be proven scientifically.

Snowdrop, Fair Maids of February, Eve’s Tears, Mary’s Tapers, Candlemas Bells. Galanthus has been blessed with many, many names over the years and the history of her monikers is quite murky.³ In 1753, the botanical systematist Carl Linnaeus gave Galanthus her generic name from the Greek gala meaning milk and anthos meaning flower. In 1597, the herbalist John Gerard described her as the “timely flowering bulbous violet” and noted her dutch name which he translated as Sommer fooles.⁴ In 1663, her most common English name, snowdrop, first appeared in Thomas Johnson’s revised edition of Gerard’s Herball, which also suggested she was the same plant as Theophrastus’ Leukoion from his Historia Plantarum (c. 350–287 BCE).⁵ However, Dioscorides writes that the flowers of Leukoion may be white, yellowish, azure, and purple, which does not match Galanthus’ morphology.⁶ In an attempt to trace her further into antiquity, researchers have proposed that the herb moly used by the sorceress Circe in the Odyssey may be identified as Galanthus, but this tenuous claim has recently been challenged.⁷

Galanthus’ regional folk names from England, France, Germany, and the Netherlands often refer to Candlemas or the Feast of the Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In Plant Lore Legends and Lyrics, Richard Folkard notes that Galanthus was once sacred to virgins and is dedicated to the Virgin Mary. He explains that because monastic tradition holds that the flowers bloom on February 2, Candlemas Day, the flower is called the Fair Maid of February, and on this day of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, her image was removed from the altar and snowdrops were placed in her absence.⁸ He also shares a Christian story of how Galanthus was born of snow: 

An angel went to console Eve when mourning over the barren earth, when no flowers in Eden grew, and the driving snow was falling to form a pall for earth’s untimeous funeral after the fall of man; the angel, catching as he spoke a flake of falling snow, breathed on it, and bade it take a form, and bud and blow. Ere the flake reached the earth Eve smiled upon the beauteous plant, and prized it more than all the other flowers in Paradise, for the angel said to her: ’This is an earnest, Eve, to thee, that sun and summer soon shall be.’ The angel’s mission being ended, away up to heaven he flew; but where on earth he stood, a ring of Snowdrops formed a posey.⁹

In Romania and Moldova, Galanthus is associated with Mărţişor, an ancient tradition stretching back 8,000 years that celebrates the arrival of spring. On March 1, people present each other with Mărţişor tokens, small decorations tied with red and white string. Thought to bring fertility, beauty, and luck, while also preventing sunburns and warding off the evil eye, the Mărţişor are worn until the trees bloom and then they are hung on their twigs.¹⁰ Folktales associated with Mărţişor describe the cyclical shift from the cold dark of winter to the warm light of spring. These tales are varied and may feature the sun personified, a treacherous dragon, the spring maiden and the winter crone, or the legendary Baba Dochia. In one story, Spring is battling Winter and in their struggle Spring cuts her finger. Where her blood fell to the ground and melted the snow, a snowdrop rose up, and in this way Spring defeated Winter.

While many Galanthus folk stories have been transmitted orally, traditional knowledge of her healing properties is limited, as the classic European medical-botanical texts, herbals, and leechbooks do not mention her. Likewise, while discussing her virtues, Gerard asserts that he has “nothing to say, seeing that nothing is set downe hereof by the old writers, nor anything observed by the new,” believing that her only virtue is the beauty of her flowers.¹¹ Yet Galanthus left breadcrumbs for modern Eastern European researchers to follow. According to anecdotal reports, in the 1950s a Bulgarian pharmacologist noticed people rubbing wild Galanthus bulbs on their foreheads to relieve nerve pain and a Russian pharmacognosist witnessed peasant women living at the base of the Caucuses treat cases of Polio in children with a decoction of Galanthus woronowii bulbs to protect against paralysis.¹² Similarly in Ukraine, an ointment made of ground Galanthus bulbs and goat fat was used to treat the chronic neurological disorders radiculitis and multiple sclerosis. While in France Galanthus was instilled in the eye for cataracts and employed as an emmenagogue and an abortifacient.¹³

It is evident from these traditional remedies that Galanthus has an affinity for the human nervous system. This was clear to Soviet chemists who began to explore Galanthus for alkaloidal activity in the early 1950s. Alkaloids are bioactive compounds that have strong effects on the human body. Like Narcissus, Galanthus contains the alkaloid galanthamine, which has the power to cross the blood-brain barrier and today is used to slow the onset of the neurodegenerative disease Alzheimers. There is also growing evidence of a connection between galanthamine and the neurological phenomenon of lucid dreaming.¹⁴ And curiously, one of the Croatian names for Galanthus, dremuljka, links the plant to sleep, with drem relating to napping, slumbering, or nodding off.  

My encounter with Galanthus this winter has left me feeling pulled to her relationship with the realm of dreams. Perhaps this isn’t surprising as I associate the time between winter and spring with the liminal, drowsiness of a waking dream. But since then, she has often been on my mind, nodding to me quietly, directing my awareness toward the dreamworlds. And while I have always had vivid dreams, their presence in my life has become a priority of late and their frequency has increased. One of the ways I like to get to know a plant is through careful observation. What is their morphology like? Where and when do they grow? How much sun and water do they need? Through this process, I thought of Galanthus waking up while most everyone else was still in their winter slumber, becoming conscious, if you will, in an unconscious time, symbolically embodying the process of lucid dreaming. 

Another way I like to get to know a plant is by discerning their planetary correspondences. This is informed by the tradition of natural magic, but it is also personal as many plants we know today were not accounted for in the old magical texts. To my knowledge, this includes Galanthus. Given her affinity for the nervous system, her power to cross the blood-brain barrier, her ability to increase our conscious awareness in the realm of dreams, and even the murkiness of her historical record, I would like to offer Mercury—the trickster and psychopomp—as a planetary correspondence, or at very least, a kindred celestial spirit. 

But of course, the very best way to get to know a plant is to build your own relationship. If you happen upon Galanthus, perhaps sit down on the ground next to her. Close your eyes. Rest here awhile and notice what you perceive. You can work with plants magically without touching or ingesting them, which in this case is ideal, given that all parts of Galanthus are considered toxic. For those interested in exploring how this plant can encourage lucid dreaming, you might also try an age-old method of placing a small piece of an oneiric plant beneath your pillow so that its influence can reach you while you sleep. And if you do, I wish you the sweetest of dreams.

Margaux Crump is a gardener and interdisciplinary artist exploring the entanglements between ecology, spirituality, and power. She is currently investigating the phenomena of unseen worlds, from the microscopic to the parallel mythic realms that surround us. Follow her on Instagram @margauxcrump

References 

1. Guido Aschan and Hardy Pfanz. “Why Snowdrop (Galanthus nivalis L.) tepals have green marks?”  Flora 201 (2006) 623 – 632. doi:10.1016/j.flora.2006.02.003

2. Trevor Dines. “What Makes Snowdrops Flowering Superstars?” BBC Earth. 2 February 2016, accessed 12 March 2025, https://web.archive.org/web/20201029180017/http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20160128-what-makes-snowdrops-superstars.

3. This blog has compiled an extensive list of regional names for Galanthus: https://drawingandillusion.blogspot.com/2016/03/the-secret-history-of-snowdrops-part-ii.html

4. John Gerard. The Herball or Generall Historie of Plantes. (Imprinted at London By John Norton, 1597) 120–121.

5. Freda Cox. “Galanthomania: Crazy about Snowdrops!” The Bulb Garden 10 no. 4 (2011) 1–3, 10, https://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/files/TBG/BG.php?v=10&n=4

6. Dioscorides Pedanius, T. A. Osbaldeston, and R. P. A. Wood, De Materia Medica: Being an Herbal with Many Other Medicinal Materials: Written in Greek in the First Century of the Common Era: a New Indexed Version in Modern English (Johannesburg: IBIDIS, 2000), 519.

7. Rafael Molina-Venegas and Rodrigo Verano. “The quest for Homer’s moly: exploring the potential of an early ethnobotanical complex.” Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 20 no, 11 (2024) https://doi.org/10.1186/s13002-024-00650-7.

8. Richard Folkard. Plant Lore, Legends, and Lyrics: Embracing the Myths, Traditions, Superstitions, and Folk-lore of the Plant Kingdom. (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884) 546.

9.  Folkard. Plant Lore. 546.

10. “Martisor – one of the most representative of Romania’s traditions.” Permanent Mission of Romania to the United Nations, accessed 12 Mar 2025, https://mpnewyork.mae.ro/en/romania-news/375#:~:text=Martisor%20a%20genuine%20Romanian%20holiday,are%20men%20who%20receive%20martisor.

11. Gerard. The Herball. 121.

12. Michael Heinrich and Hooi Lee Teoh. “Galanthamine from snowdrop—the development of a modern drug against Alzheimer’s disease from local Caucasian knowledge.” Journal of Ethnopharmacology 92 (2004) 147 – 162, doi:10.1016/j.jep.2004.02.012.

13. Dimitri A. Cozanitis. “The snowdrop, wellspring of galanthamine: A brief descriptive and scientific history.” Wien Med Wochenschr 171 (2021) 205 – 213, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10354-020-00799-2.

14. Stephen LaBerge, et al. “Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming: A double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover study.” PloS One 13, (8 Aug. 2018), doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0201246.

Ihave spent much time walking amongst the hedgerows. I didn’t intend to become so intimate with them in Ireland, Wales, or England, but hedgerows are impossible to ignore. As boundary markers and livestock barriers, they quite force your path. Tall, dense, and thorny, they insist that you walk along their margins, obediently following their patchwork maze until you find a stile or a gap to squeeze through. Having spent most of my life in American cities, I had naively thought of hedgerows as perfectly coifed monoculture bushes planted in formal, orderly rows. But a traditionally managed or conservation-laid hedgerow is, in fact, a brilliant human-created habitat—an ecotone—that resembles an unruly woodland edge. Hedgerow creation and stewardship in Britain have roots dating back to the Bronze Age, and some of the hedges I followed had been growing in the same spot for hundreds of years. As I walked, I met many familiar faces: blackberries weighed down by their fruits, cleavers creeping amongst the dandelion and plantain, and nettle, always quick to chide me for not noticing her soon enough. Rowan, blackthorn, and Elder made regular appearances, too, and I was happy to come across my dear friends Mugwort, Violet, and Rose.

Encountering myriad species within the hedge is by no means unique to my experience. Christopher Hart, author of Hedgelands: A wild wander around Britain’s greatest habitat, writes that the most generous hedgerows:

should include shrubs, trees and bushes, coppiced and/or cut and laid forming a row…such as blackthorn, hawthorn, dog rose, and crab apple…Above this main scrubby, shrubby line that is the classic hedgerow will, ideally, tower some fine mature trees, with some showing signs of decay: not too many, though – one every few dozen yards is ideal. And then cladding the sides of the hedgerow all the way along, spilling down to ground level, will be ivy, bindweed, and brambles, and then smaller flowers like celandines and dandelions, bluebells and perhaps even orchids…If of sufficient age, the entire hedge may sit on top of a venerable earthen bank, offering a whole new range of home-making possibilities to burrowing rabbits, badgers, stoats, and so on, while the very best hedge will also feature a good damp ditch.¹

According to the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, hedgerows may support up to 80 percent of woodland birds, 50 percent of mammals, and 30 percent of butterflies in Britain.² With Hart adding that “1,000 plant species or more have been recorded in British hedgerows over the years, nearly a third of the total of some 3,500 or so species native to the UK.”³ Hedgerows then, are small but mighty ecosystems that are an invaluable resource for wildlife, providing food, shelter, and safe passage between other isolated ecosystems in intensively farmed areas.

Perhaps this is why hedgerows have earned the favor and fascination of naturalists, botanists, and biologists, including Charles Darwin. Thirteen years after planting a generous hedgerow along his daily walking path at his home in Kent, Darwin dedicated the final paragraph of On the Origin of Species to this liminal ecology, writing: “It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth…”⁴ Many years later, still contemplating the vitality of such entangled life, Darwin observed that at least two dozen new plants had sprung up in his hedge, planted not by him, but by residents of the hedgerow itself.⁵ The life hedges cultivate and support not only sustain the ecology, but enrich and perpetuate it.

It will be of little surprise, given their abundance of life and liminal nature, that hedgerows are also reported to be the haunts of super-natural beings, particularly the little-folk. Indeed, hedgerows are ripe with otherworldly folklore. As literal and symbolic boundaries, hedgerows are often said to act as magical gateways or contain the doors to fairy homes. Ecologically, with the presence of many plants associated with fairies like elder, blackthorn, and rowan, it is only natural that sightings of the little-folk would be common—just as we might expect to see honeybees visiting bee balm. 

Hedgerows are the site of several fairy encounters recorded by W.Y. Evans-Wentz as part of his ethnographic fieldwork in the early 1900s. The personal stories he gathered across Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Brittany, and the Isle of Man would eventually become the core of his important publication The Fairy-Faith in Celtic Countries. In one such story, a farmer named Pat witnesses the gentry (or fairy) army near a hedge, sharing that:

Old people used to say the gentry were in the mountains; that is certain, but I never could be quite sure of it myself. One night, however, near midnight, I did have a sight: I set out from Bantrillick to come home, and near Ben Bulbin there was the greatest army you ever saw, five or six thousand of them in armour shining in the moonlight. A strange man rose out of the hedge and stopped me, for a minute, in the middle of the road. He looked into my face, and then let me go.⁶

Elsewhere a carpenter offers a more lighthearted interaction: 

I was making a coffin here in the shop, and, after tea, my apprentice was late returning; he was out by the hedge just over there looking at a crowd of little people kicking and dancing. One of them came up and asked him what he was looking at; and this made him run back to the shop. When he described what he had seen, I told him they were nothing but fairies.⁷

Well over 100 years later, people are still encountering the little-folk near hedgerows. The Fairy Census: 2014–2017 specifically documents the sightings of fairies around the world through self-submitted experiences. From their records, hedges are explicitly mentioned as sites for encounters with the otherworldly. People from Britain, Ireland, and the United States share stories of lights dancing within the hedges, witnessing small humanoid beings appear, losing time while walking along hedgerows, and even being chased away by an unseen presence.⁸

Folklore also has much to teach us about the need to protect hedgerows. In Britain, hedge habitats are threatened by intensification of industrial agriculture and it is routinely estimated that there has been a 50% reduction of hedgerows since the 1950s. A 2007 report indicates that of those remaining managed hedgerows, only 48% are structurally sound.⁹ Because of their association with fairies, folk wisdom has long warned against the destruction of hedgerows, especially if they are in the vicinity of a fairy dwelling. For instance, in Ireland, it is considered unlucky to cut a hedge that grows near a fairy fort. Those that are foolish enough to do so risk injury or sudden death. There are over 100 accounts recorded in The Schools’ Collection that associate hedges with fairy forts and the majority of them include a warning against harming the hedge habitats, especially their trees. One such entry about a fort in Drumcalpin, Co. Cavan notes:

This fort is a circular shape and there is a hedge growing round it. The hedge is made of white thorn bushes and hazel trees. There are three ash trees growing in the centre of the fort. The land has never yet been cultivated, because long ago a man was going to cultivate the land of this fort. He stuck a stick down to see was there good clay there. But the stick came up with such force, that it hit him in the head, and he died in three days after. A lot of lights have been seen in the fort.¹⁰

Sometimes, however, transgressors are lucky enough to simply be scared away. Another entry from The Schools’ Collection shares that:

Some of these forts are very picturesque and one in the Drumona district has a beautiful white-thorn hedge encircling it and in the centre also a large white thorn is growing. This fort is in Mr. Beirne’s field. Some people say that music and dancing are heard and lights are seen in this fort previous to deaths in some families.There were two boys about fifty years ago who began cutting the bushes growing in the fort. The stems of the bushes spurted blood and the boys fled to their homes very frightened and since then no bush or shrub was interfered with in that fort.¹¹

Whether or not your understanding of biodiversity is inclusive of the supernatural, hedgerows are undeniably vital and vibrant ecologies that support interactions between communities and ecosystems.

Through weaving webs of relations across worlds, hedges become more than a sum of their myriad constituents. Rather, they come alive. So the next time you are walking or driving along a hedgerow, take a moment to be present and participate. Slow down. Sit. Watch. Listen. Smell. Sow seeds. Collect blackberries. And be open to what—or perhaps who—you might encounter in these edge ecologies. By embracing and celebrating liminality, we open ourselves (and the world) up to new possibilities and pathways to our collective future flourishing.

Margaux Crump is a gardener and interdisciplinary artist exploring the entanglements between ecology, spirituality, and power. She is currently investigating the phenomena of unseen worlds, from the microscopic to the parallel mythic realms that surround us. Follow her on Instagram @margauxcrump

References 

1. Christopher Hart, Hedgelands: A wild wander around Britain’s greatest habitat, (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2024) 5–6.

2. “A Diverse Habitat,” RSPB, 10 November 2024, https://www.rspb.org.uk/helping-nature/what-we-do/influence-government-and-business/farming/farm-hedges/a-diverse-habitat.

3. Hart, Hedgelands, 49.

4. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species, (John Murray, 1859), 489.

5. Charles Darwin (1880), Hedge-row in sand-walk planted by self across a field years ago. CUL-DAR205.2.209. Edited by John van Wyhe (Darwin Online, http://darwin-online.org.uk/)

6. W.Y. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, (Oxford University Press, 1911), 57.

7. Evans-Wentz, The Fairy Faith in Celtic Countries, 124.

8. Simon Young, ed, The Fairy Census, 2014-2017, http://www.fairyist.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/The-Fairy-Census-2014-2017-1.pdf

9. UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, Countryside Survey: UK Headline Messages from 2007, 10 November 2024, https://www.ceh.ac.uk/sites/default/files/Countryside%20Survey%202007%20UK%20Headline%20Messages_Part2.pdf

10. National Folklore Collection, The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0976, 21; Collector: Annie O Hare, Drumcalpin, Co. Cavan. 1937-38.

11. National Folklore Collection, The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0209, 354-55.

W hen people talk about plants, it’s usually in terms of their utility for us—how they look, smell, taste, or grow for our benefit. But plants do much more than we give them credit for. At very least, they nourish, deplete, heal, poison, maim, salve, trick, and collaborate. And by virtue of these myriad behaviors, plants are incredible teachers. They embody principles of cooperation and competition. They model clever strategies to adapt to changing environments. They illuminate the ecological importance of reciprocity. In other words, they show us how to be in community.

These are the conversations about plants I enjoy being a part of. In that light, I’m thrilled to share such a discussion with Dr. Jack Hunter, an anthropologist who has done phenomenal work exploring the borderlands between consciousness, religion, ecology and the paranormal. As you’ll see from our conversation below, thinking deeply about plants presents us with ongoing opportunities to reimagine ourselves, our behaviors, and the world(s) around us.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity

I first discovered your work through the anthology you edited, Greening the Paranormal, and I feel that would be a fitting place to start. Perhaps you could share a bit about your interest in the relationship between ecology and what we might call ‘paranormal’? How do those two things intermingle for you?

Well it might seem like they are two vastly different domains. On the one hand, there’s ecology, which comes out of the academy and generally refers to the science of relationships between organisms and their environment. And then there’s the paranormal, which is supposed to be this irrational domain of thought and experience. There’s of course a tension here, because the dominant scientific models underpinning mainstream ecology maintain that the paranormal can’t exist—that there’s no such thing as spirits or ghosts or anything like that. So it seems like they’re two fields that wouldn’t really come into contact with each other, but I think there’s a number of different ways that they do. 

Towards the end of my PhD, I started working on a permaculture project in our local area. I got introduced to all of these ideas about natural systems, Gaia hypothesis, and so on. But what I really took away was the realization that if we really want to understand the world, we need to think about it in terms of complexity. We can’t reduce it down to any single discipline—psychology, pathology, chemistry, social functions, or the like. None of these alone are enough. We need them all, working together. So I started to see that complexity seems to be a principle that underpins everything including ecology, which itself implies a dynamic network of relationships and interdependence. 

It’s interesting because academically speaking, ecology is a relatively new science—at least in terms of how it’s been codified. And yet the ideas that we’re exploring here aren’t new at all. People have had what we would call ‘anomalous’ experiences and encounters with plants for as far back as we can reach.

Exactly. Broadly speaking, people tend to assume that the scientific expression of ecology is the only one that’s relevant. But we also have Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) systems all over the world. And these worldviews tend to include the spiritual or non-physical side of things, such that plants and trees have spirits and personhood baked into a scientific understanding of how local ecosystems work. So ecology doesn’t necessarily have to be averse to the idea of a dynamic, living world. The scientific and spiritual can overlap with each other.

In my own research and conversations about similar ideas regarding plants, there are these moments that crop up again and again where people have shared their experiences of receiving insight, knowledge, or communications directly from plants. But it’s been relatively easy in academia to write this off as superstition. And then, some new lab-based scientific study corroborates what people have been experiencing—for example, confirming that plants respond intelligently to changes in their environment, that they can learn and remember, that they’re social beings, and that they even display signs of ‘swarm intelligence’. And it seems that people get really excited about these studies, which in a way only confirm what many people have already known, sometimes for thousands of years. And I think it’s interesting to consider why we tend to privilege academic knowledge about plants over people’s direct experiences in relationship with plants.

Absolutely. I think it shows how reductionist scientific thinking can be. If you look at most plant research, you’ll find a discrete study exploring plants’ capacity for memory, and then you’ve got a separate study about how plants sense their environment, and so on. But when we’re able to join all of it together, including other knowledge systems like TEK, the larger picture suggests that plants have all these simultaneous capacities to perceive and interact with the world in much the same way we do. All of this points in the direction of recognizing the subjectivity of other beings.

But for me this runs deeper than a mechanistic explanation of plant behavior. I’m thinking about how sunflowers will follow the sun across the sky. Some might say that’s just a mechanism at work in the plant and that it doesn’t require or suggest the presence of a sunflower intelligence. But I personally think it’s irresponsible, if not outright naïve, to categorically dismiss a plant’s capacity for agency and intelligence.

That’s where animistic traditions are essential, because they tend to take the holistic view to see a plant as more than a cluster of capacities, but rather as a complete person. So you have to engage with it as a person—a being—rather than a mere ‘thing.’

So if more people understood plants in this way—as individual beings with their own distinct ambitions, personalities, and intelligence—what do you think the implications would be following that shift in perspective?

They would be profound because we would have to appreciate that the world runs on subjectivity. I’ll add that we’ve been talking about plants as individual beings, but they might not perceive themselves that way. Plants live in groups, colonies, rhizomes, and so on. You can have many different plants on the surface that are actually connected underground as one large being. So we need to expand our imagination to consider different kinds of minds that might be out there. Plants might not be individual minds in the same way that we perceive ourselves to be individuals. They might be constantly experiencing the connection that we only sometimes experience in telepathic moments.

I remember reading something about how we tend to think of plants as stationery because they literally root into a place. But if you look at plants from a species perspective and think about how they reproduce, you then start to see how mobile they are. Partly because they collaborate with others—birds, bees, wind, and so on—to travel and roam across the Earth.

Right. And we can trace their movements with climate change. When certain areas become warm or cool, the plants flee or colonize. And again, it’s on different kinds of scales—even time scales. There’s a forest not far from where I live. We call it the “Bouncy Woods” because you can sit and bounce on the sprawling limbs of the oak trees that grow there. I’ve been going to that forest for 30 odd years, and over that time I’ve seen how the acorns have gradually spread outward, creating all these trees that used to be saplings when I was young. It’s been interesting to see that forest move over these long timescales that we sometimes don’t recognize.

It’s interesting to think about the language we use to describe how forests move. Even just now, we talked about how plants ‘colonize’ new areas. But we don’t often talk about forests as ‘migrating’—and I think that’s an interesting possibility. Like Ents!

Like Ents!

Exactly! They’re actually an ideal segway into one of the things we’ve talked around but haven’t specifically touched on yet. So I wonder if you might talk about the value of psychodiversity, especially when it comes to our relationships with plants.

I tend to use the term ‘psychodiversity’ as a parallel or complement to the concept of biodiversity. We really emphasize the biodiversity of places, but in doing so we tend to reduce everything down to the ‘bio’. But scientific research and animistic traditions both point towards trees as being much more animate and sentient than we give them credit for. So there’s this other aspect to consider about plants beyond biodiversity itself. After all, when we lose biodiversity, it’s not just biological stuff that we’re losing. It’s also other-than-human cultures, ideas, and worldviews other species have created to adapt to their local environments. 

When you look at ecological systems developing over time, they move towards increased diversity. So you might start off with a blank, barren planet. And eventually life forms emerge that enrich the environment, making it viable for other organisms. And that increased complexity continues until you get rainforests and such. I think the same process also underscores consciousness as well. We can also imagine minds that have evolved or adapted to or embedded into other kinds of niches, like within rocks or rivers. So all in all, psychodiversity suggests that we might see minds in many different places—much more than just within the biological realm. Ultimately, psychodiversity is an opportunity to pay better attention to the sentient capacities of the world.

It strikes me as an invitation to nurture deeper relationships. For example, it’s one thing to use plants—to grow them or eat them or pulverize them for medicine and so on. It’s another thing to think about plants. And another thing entirely to think with plants, say through meditation or even psychedelic conversation. From your perspective, why is it important to engage with plants on these different levels? 

We have led to this current ecological crisis that threatens all kinds of different life across our planet. And we need to look to other ways of thinking about the world in order to rectify it. The dominant models we’ve been using have led us down this path. And I think part of that process of evolving includes looking to different human cultures, but especially other-than-human cultures. We have a lot to learn from the ways plants do what they do and the systems they’ve set up to help other species flourish.

I’m curious: in your research and experience, is there anything you’ve learned directly from plants? What have they taught you?

In different ways, yes. There have been times that I’ve consumed certain types of plants and have had things to revealed to me. But I personally don’t have experiences of plants talking to me. Or that I hear a voice or have any kind of explicit communication. But there are other, more subtle types of communications and learnings that take place through observing plants and tending gardens. For the most part, those are the kinds of teachings that I get. And they’re things like patience and priorities and how to work with different time scales. Plants also help me think deeply about the purpose of what we do. For example, there’s ongoing debate on whether plants intend to be altruistic. I think they might do. But regardless of intention, they nonetheless lay the groundwork for other species to emerge and continue that cycle towards greater diversity of life, mind, and so on. If we emulated plants in that way—if our culture was geared towards leaving the planet more fertile and diverse instead of increasingly depleted—that would go a very long way. 

I think that’s about as good as any way to punctuate our conversation. So looking ahead, what is the best way for people to find and support your work? 

You can find me online quite easily on my website. It’s a bit old fashioned, but it has everything you need on it; lists of things and such. But I’m also on Facebook and Instagram, so people are of course welcome to follow me there as well. And my books are available from most good booksellers, so if you make some enquiries you can get them in real shops, or you can find them online.

***

About the Author
Beyond his role as the Contributing Editor of Ecological Thinking at Plantings, Jake Eshelman is a photo-based artist and visual researcher exploring the complex relationships between humans, the environment, and everyone we share it with. You can learn more about his work, writings, lectures, and publications online and via Instagram.

Within 10 minutes of entering the Hoh Rainforest in Washington State, I began to understand why this place was so beloved. As one of the largest old-growth temperate rainforests in the world, the Hoh did not merely look different than its younger neighbors—it felt different. Inside its borders, air seemed to stand still. Light took on a chlorophyllic hue. And the scent of wet earth and lush vegetation pooled around me.

Soon I was ensconced in enchanted groves and hallowed hollows steeped in every possible shade of green and so lavishly pillowed with moss that I could not find a speck of bare bark. I encountered ancient bigleaf maples whose contorted bodies formed living archways and Douglas firs so wide and tall that I struggled to capture their scale on camera. Doused in 12 to 14 feet of rain every year, and long protected from logging, the Hoh is home to trees that stand more than 200 feet tall and have lived for centuries. Some pockets of the forest possessed such a primeval atmosphere that they might have been plucked from the Jurassic.

When it comes to biological superlatives, we typically focus on individuals: The largest tree in a forest, the oldest organism on the planet. After visiting the Hoh Rainforest, however, I began to wonder about superlative communities. What are the oldest existing ecosystems on Earth, and what can we learn from them?

Like the Hoh, some old-growth forests have survived for centuries. But it turns out that certain ecosystems and biomes on the planet today have persisted for hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of years, preserving, somehow, their defining characteristics despite undergoing major changes. 

To make an analogy to a famous thought experiment: If every component of a ship is gradually replaced with a sufficiently similar replica, the vessel retains its essential form, even though it is no longer identical to its previous iteration. Similarly, most of the cells in our bodies have died and been replaced many times over since we were born, yet we still recognize the continuity of our overall anatomy. And some cities have maintained a distinct topography, infrastructure, and culture for millennia, even with a continual turnover of buildings and inhabitants. The changes that ecosystems endure through geologic time are even more dramatic, but the principles are similar. 

Precisely what it means for an entire living system to be so old, and what makes such astonishing longevity possible, remain open questions, in part because they challenge our very notions of what it is to be alive. When we adopt a deep time, holistic perspective, some ecosystems take on an almost organismic quality, shifting across the planet’s surface like giant amoebae, expanding and retreating in response to environmental fluctuations, yet persisting as coherent entities. 

Scientists have not yet agreed on a precise definition of life, but many experts have phrased it more or less like this: Life is a system that actively sustains itself. The laws of thermodynamics dictate that everything in the universe will inevitably fall apart, dissolving into a homogenous mush. Living systems use available energy to temporarily evade this outcome and maintain their improbably organized structures. More than genetics or reproduction, it is this capacity for self-preservation that unites life at every scale, from protist to prairie.

In this sense, ecosystems are very much alive. The feedbacks between ecosystems and the organisms within them, and their reciprocal evolution across great spans of time, culminate in an emergent capacity for extreme longevity that eclipses what is possible at the level of the individual. Although ecosystems are not organisms, they nevertheless demonstrate growth, resilience, and self-regulation.¹ Those systems best able to recover from major disturbances, and maintain the processes, relationships, and infrastructure that define them, will endure the longest. Ecosystems survive and evolve not through differential reproduction, but through differential persistence.

The tenacity of the planet’s longest-lived ecosystems reveals an essential characteristic of life at any scale: interconnection. By definition, all living things are systems made of smaller interrelated parts. Those systems are themselves inextricable from the larger networks that surround them. Every individual tree is a universe of mineral, water, and cell harboring sprawling communities of microbes and fungi. At the same time, a tree is a vital component of the larger forest, landscape, and even the very weather systems on which it depends. 

In the Anthropocene, however, many of these fundamental relationships are now faltering. Some of these ancient ecosystems are being pushed to the brink of collapse—fracturing so thoroughly that they may effectively die.

One of our planet’s oldest ecosystems is a vast meadow currently about the size of Manhattan. You will never see any bees or butterflies flitting through it, however, nor can you nap in its greenery. The meadow in question grows along the seafloor between the Spanish islands of Ibiza and Formentera.² Like all meadows, it is composed primarily of plants, in this case seagrasses: a group of formerly terrestrial plants that returned to the sea nearly 100 million years ago and now inhabit sheltered waters around every continent except Antarctica.

In 2010, marine ecologist Sophie Arnaud-Haond and her colleagues swam through this underwater meadow, collecting genetic samples of Neptune grass (Posidonia oceanica) from dozens of different sites. Like all seagrasses, Neptune grass can multiply by cloning itself. Within the meadow, the scientists found numerous clones, some as far as 9 miles apart. Given the grass’ slow annual growth rate, they calculated that these clones must have been spreading through the region for somewhere between 80,000 and 200,000 years in order to form a meadow so large. They speculate that as global climate changed and sea level rose and fell, the meadow repeatedly shifted its range. At times, large swaths of it likely died due to unsuitable conditions. But presumably, a sufficient number of clones survived each climatic upheaval to continue their lineage to the present day. 

Elsewhere in the ocean, there are even bigger and older ecosystems formed not by a single clonal species, but by symbiotic colonies of tiny gelatinous animals, photosynthetic plankton, and microbes. We call them coral reefs. Spanning 133,000 square miles, and visible from space, Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is not only the largest coral reef system in the world—it is often regarded as the largest living structure on Earth. Just as impressive is its age. Scientists think the Great Barrier Reef was born about 500,000 to 600,000 years ago and that it has survived—in one area or another—to the present day.

Scientists have revealed a similar long-term persistence of coral reefs in Papua New Guinea. And during particularly stable periods within the greater course of Earth history, there were reef systems that likely endured for several million years. 

To form reefs, corals first need to attach to a rocky surface. When a reef suffers a calamity, such as a hurricane, the calcified remains of dead corals can become the foundation on which survivors build anew. 

“Reefs are fascinating things,” says Gregory Webb, a paleontologist who has extensively studied reefs through geologic time. “The resilience of a community that can reform and regrow and do its thing, even when faced with severe disruption—it’s magic.”

In 2018, marine geoscientist Jody Webster and his colleagues published a landmark study reconstructing the past 30,000 years of the Great Barrier Reef’s evolution—a span of time entailing considerable climactic fluctuation.³ When sea level dropped, much of the reef was exposed and died. Conversely, when the seas swelled, large parts of the reef drowned in turbid water. In response, the Great Barrier Reef repeatedly and gradually migrated seaward or landward, maintaining its continuity through time.

Perhaps the oldest currently surviving ecosystems, however, are on land. Some tropical rainforests have likely persisted in the same general region with the same essential characteristics for tens of millions of years. This is partly due to geography. In some respects, the equatorial zone has long been one of the more climatically stable parts of the planet, even as continents themselves have moved in and out of its bounds. 

Based on detailed studies of climate records and fossils, paleobiologist Carlos Jaramillo and his colleagues have traced the origin of the modern tropical rainforest—defined as being perpetually warm and humid, multi-storied with closed canopies, and dominated by flowering plants, lianas, and epiphytes—to the beginning of the Cenozoic era, shortly after the asteroid impact that contributed to the demise of non-avian dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.⁴ By roughly 60 million years ago, with the continents in relatively similar configurations as today, the Americas had rainforests characterized by the same basic structural features and plant families as the ones that live there now. Given this type of evidence, Earth system scientist Mark Maslin and his colleagues have written that the Amazon rainforest has “prevailed relatively intact” as a “permanent feature of South America for at least the last 55 million years.”⁵

Scientists have unearthed a parallel story of rainforest longevity in Australia. “Many plant families that are now common in extant rainforests and form their basic structure and most of their diversity have had a consistent history on the Australian continent for the past 40 million years,” says Darren Crayn, a botanist and director of the Australian Tropical Herbarium. As he and his colleagues write in one study, “The endurance, survival, and persistence of these rainforest lineages provide one of the Earth’s greatest biological and evolutionary success stories.”  

Putting bounds on these amorphous, ancient entities is challenging. How, exactly, do we determine when an ecosystem—with all of its complexity and fungibility—was born, or when it dies?

The oldest ecosystems on the planet today are undoubtedly different from their earlier versions. Their borders, regional topography, and species composition have all shifted through the millennia. Although the fossil record is spotty, the Great Barrier Reef almost certainly had a different biodiversity profile 400,000 years ago, for example, including species that no longer exist. And the Amazon River—such a defining feature of today’s Amazon rainforest—did not form until about 11 million years ago. Nevertheless, if we could travel back hundreds of thousands or millions of years, these ecosystems would be uncannily familiar because they have maintained their essential characteristics—the relationships and frameworks that define them—for an astoundingly long time.

To better understand such longevity, we must identify what underlies it. Seagrass meadows, coral reefs, and rainforests share several key qualities. They all inhabit the tropics, which tend to be less climatically volatile than more extreme latitudes. They are all founded by organisms that are themselves highly resilient and adaptable. And, to some extent, they all create or reinforce the very conditions they need to survive. By slowing waves, trapping sediments, performing photosynthesis, filtering and oxygenating water, and sequestering carbon in their structures, both seagrass meadows and coral reefs make their environments calmer, clearer, less acidic, more nutrient-rich, and all around more habitable.⁶ Corals also produce more of the rocky substrate they need to grow.

Likewise, rainforests generate much of the rain on which they depend by dramatically accelerating the water cycle. Cloud formation relies on two essential ingredients: water vapor and particles on which that vapor can condense. Rainforests provide both by expelling huge volumes of water into the atmosphere, along with numerous tiny airborne particles, such as pollen grains, fungal spores, microbes, fragments of insect shells, and various organic compounds. The result is a self-reinforcing feedback loop: The more it rains, the more the forest grows; the more the forest grows, the more it rains. Scientists have calculated that the Amazon rainforest generates about half of the rain that falls on its canopy each year. 

The capacity of ecosystems to regulate and sustain themselves—to have some degree of agency in their own survival and evolution—is an echo of more self-contained living organisms. Scientists have made such analogies, and debated their validity, for more than a century. 

In the early 1900s, American ecologist Frederic Clements proposed that forests and other botanical communities underwent a series of discrete developmental phases similar to those of individual organisms, maturing from a juvenile stage into a stable “climax community.” Eugene Odum, another 20th-century American ecologist, thought that ecosystems, like organisms, demonstrated homeostasis, the ability to maintain a set of chemical and physical conditions essential for their survival. More recently, a cohort of scientists, including some who study coral reefs, have argued that every complex multicellular organism and its symbiotic microbes should be regarded as a community known as a holobiont—and that the true unit of natural selection is this community’s collective genetic information, the hologenome. In other words, a coral and its symbiotic partners are so interdependent that we should regard them as a cohesive evolving entity. By extension, one could make a similar argument about the entire coral reef ecosystem. Ideas like these remain highly controversial. 

The extreme longevity of ecosystems underscores the importance of the bonds between such large-scale systems and their constituent organisms. Ecosystems may not have singular genomes or participate in standard Darwinian evolution, yet they are capable of growing, surviving, and evolving because they are inescapably intertwined with the growth, survival, and evolution of the organisms that comprise them.⁷

Wherever life emerges, it dramatically changes its environment. These changes inevitably influence any subsequent evolution within that environment. Given enough time and opportunity, this coevolution can contribute to an emergent capacity for persistence on the scale of hundreds of thousands to millions of years.

Yet even living systems as ancient and resilient as rainforests and reefs are neither impervious nor immortal. Most of the periods of climatic turmoil that the planet’s extant ecosystems have survived so far unfolded much more gradually than the rate at which humans are polluting and transforming the air, land, and sea today. By the end of the century, warm-water coral reefs may be all but destroyed by global warming, reduced to fragmentary refugia. And the Amazon’s self-reinforcing rain cycle is getting terrifyingly close to breaking.

Even faced with these dire possible outcomes, however, there is a kind of solace in looking at ecology through the lens of deep time and recognizing the remarkable tenacity of Earth’s longest-lived communities. Humanity’s power is outsized, but not infinite. As a whole, life’s tendency is to endure and recover, discovering new forms over thousands to millions of years.

Toward the end of my hike on the Olympic Peninsula, after meandering along a riverbank bordered by giant ferns, I came upon a forest within a forest. One of the Hoh’s giants had fallen, most likely decades earlier. Its colossal body, recumbent and fractured, had become the foundation for a new population. Here was both grave and nursery: a decaying trunk sheathed in moss and bristling with ferns and saplings. Its massive upturned root ball, 10 feet tall at least, was now the pedestal for a copse of young Douglas firs. By germinating in the remains of their elder, they had begun life high above the shady understory. Now, they glowed gold in the sun, the newest members of a persistent living collective. 

References 

1. Barabás, G., Michalska-Smith, M.J., & Allesina, S. Self-regulation and the stability of large ecological networks. Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, 1870-1875 (2017).

2. Arnaud-Haond, S., et al. Implications of extreme life span in clonal organisms: Millenary clones in meadows of the threatened seagrass Posidonia oceanica. PLOS One 7, e30454 (2012).

3. Webster, J.M., et al. Response of the Great Barrier Reef to sea-level and environmental changes over the past 30,000 years. Nature Geoscience 11, 426-432 (2018).

4. Jaramillo, C., et al. The origin of the modern Amazon Rainforest: Implications of the palynological and palaeobotanical record. In Hoorn, C. & Wesselingh, F.P. (Eds.) Amazonia: Landscape and Species Evolution: A look into the past Blackwell Publishing, Oxford, U.K. (2009).

5. Maslin, M., Malhi, Y., Phillips, O., & Cowling, S. New views on an old forest: Assessing the longevity, resilience, and future of the Amazon Rainforest. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 30, 477-499 (2005).

6. Cheund, P.-Y., Nozawa, Y., & Miki, T. Ecosystem engineering structures facilitate ecological resilience: A coral reef model. Ecological Research 36, 673-685 (2021).

7. Lenton, T.M., et al. Survival of the systems. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 36, 333-344 (2021). 

Lead image: Roman Khomlyak / Shutterstock

Ferris Jabr is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life. He has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Outside, WIRED, and National Geographic. His work has thrice been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing series.

This article previously appeared in Nautilus.

I t is often challenging to recall the sensations of a calm body and mind, yet entering a lavender field in Provence facilitated an immediate sense of peace and clarity. Upon selecting a suitable location, I became acutely aware of the lavender’s aroma, the vivid colors, and the gentle buzzing of bees. Various species of bees were actively foraging for nectar and pollen while pollinating the flowers to enable seed production. The lavender’s fragrance appeared to have a calming effect on the bees, which worked harmoniously around me, optimizing their pollen collection. The vibrational frequency of the bees’ natural buzzing and humming, along with their synchronized activity, resonated with my body, producing a deeply relaxing effect through this symphony of sound and scent.

The fields of Lavandula angustifolia in Provence, France, are not just a visual and olfactory delight but a symbol of the region’s rich cultural heritage. The rolling purple landscapes have captivated artists, poets, and travelers for centuries, symbolizing the unique blend of natural beauty and human cultivation that not only defines Provence, but its significance as a heritage symbol extends to all of France.  Understanding the cultural history of these iconic fields involves delving into their agricultural roots, their role in local traditions, their influence on art and literature, and their significance in contemporary times.

The day before, I visited the Lavender Museum and Conservatory in Luberon and took an audio tour of Provence’s history of Lavender cultivation and distillation, and why this botanical icon still holds its place in the landscape today. Lavender has been cultivated in Provence since Roman times thriving in optimal conditions: full sunlight, perfect warm temperatures, and well-drained soil. Initially valued for its medicinal properties and use in perfumery. The Romans introduced the plant to the region, recognizing its potential for various applications, from healing wounds to warding off insects. The word “lavender” itself is derived from the Latin “lavare,” meaning “to wash,” reflecting its historical use in baths and personal hygiene.

In the Middle Ages, monasteries in Provence played a crucial role in the cultivation and study of lavender. Monks grew the herb in their gardens, utilizing its antiseptic and therapeutic properties. By the Renaissance, lavender had become a staple of Provençal agriculture, with its uses expanding into culinary and decorative realms.

Lavender’s significance in Provençal culture extends beyond its practical uses. It is deeply embedded in local traditions since Roman times and ancient folklore links the plant to the Greek Goddess Persephone. Lavender was harvested mainly by women of all ages early on and the museum displays the various sizes of sickles they used. The annual lavender harvests, which typically take place between late June to August, is a time of communal celebration. Festivals, known as “fêtes de la lavande,” are held in many towns and villages, featuring traditional music, dancing, and markets selling lavender products.

The striking beauty of the lavender fields has inspired countless artists and writers. The vibrant purple hues against the backdrop of the Provençal landscape have been a favorite subject for painters like Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cézanne. Van Gogh, during his time in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, created several works that capture the essence of the region’s natural beauty, with lavender fields often featured prominently. While I once thought Van Gogh’s bold skies around these Cypress trees came from his imagination, this photograph of the sunset taken after a day in the lavender fields shows how much reality was in his work.

In literature, Provençal lavender is celebrated for its evocative power. The scent and sight of lavender are frequently used to convey the region’s charm and tranquility. Writers like Marcel Pagnol and Jean Giono have woven the presence of lavender into their narratives, painting vivid pictures of the Provençal countryside and its inhabitants. Giono’s “The Man Who Planted Trees” (1953) is a story of hope and one person’s power to change the world for the better.  

Today, the lavender fields of Provence continue to be a major cultural and economic asset. They attract tourists worldwide, contributing significantly to the local economy. Lavender’s therapeutic and curative properties and ability to induce relaxation is scientifically established.

The cultivation of lavender also plays a role in sustainable agriculture. Many farmers in Provence practice traditional farming methods, emphasizing the importance of maintaining soil health and biodiversity. Lavender farming supports a range of other local industries, including beekeeping and organic cosmetics, reinforcing its importance to the regional economy.

Moreover, the fields serve as a living testament to Provençal heritage. They represent a continuity of agricultural practices that have been passed down through generations, blending tradition with innovation. Efforts to preserve and promote lavender cultivation are a testament to the region’s commitment to the cultural and natural heritage of this iconic aromatic plant that represents France in World Sensorium.

French lavender essential oil, harvested and distilled at the end of its flowering period when its quality is highest, is now used worldwide in pharmacy, perfumery, aromatherapy, and culinary practices, and is valued highly for its pharmacologic properties.

The lavender fields of Provence are more than just a picturesque landscape; they are a symbol of the nation’s cultural identity. From lavender’s agricultural beginnings in Roman times to its contemporary significance, the fields encapsulate the essence of Provençal life. They reflect a harmonious relationship between humans and nature, celebrated through festivals, immortalized in art and literature, and sustained through traditional farming practices. As long as the lavender fields continue to bloom, they will remain a vibrant testament to the rich cultural history of Provence and France, and there will be a balm for overworked psyches.

When and Where to See Lavender Fields

June through July is the best time to see Provence lavender in bloom. The most famous lavender fields are in the Valensole plateau and Luberan Valley. Both areas have stunning fields that can also be viewed from high-perched historic villages with breathtaking views of the landscape. In the area around the Sault plateau, the lavender flowers bloom and are harvested later in the season.

Gayil Nalls, Ph.D., is the creator of World Sensorium and founder of the World Sensorium/Conservancy.