DIVERSITY OF OUR ROOTS

On Thursday 28 March I attended the opening workshop of the Exorigins project, https://exorigins.hypotheses.org, at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. The project, which brings together anthropologists studying plants and their relations to people across the globe, will trace the biocultural diversity in Parisian gardens. The project brings together the National Museum of Natural History, the Institute of the Arab World, the Museum of Art and History of Judaism, and the recently reopened Museum of the History of Immigration, along with the gardens of each institution. How do the people of Paris establish diversity in their gardens? I was intrigued by how this project could add to our understanding of how nature circulates in cities, since the different species that people move with them, and the garden aesthetics that they reproduce, will affect how wild and domestic animals and plants and other species, can find their place in the urban landscape.