The gift of the peculiar

I DID not expect a banana and a papaya plant to make me emotional.

Inside one in all Kew Gardens’ glasshouses, surrounded by plants gathered from world wide, I got here across banana and papaya plants growing vigorously, in flower and bearing fruit. I had seen each, countless times, in Indonesia, where they grow in gardens and yards, along roadsides, and on small plots of land. They were a lot a component of the peculiar landscape of home that I had rarely stopped to note them. Yet here, in London, seeing these familiar plants to date from where I knew them best, I discovered myself unexpectedly near tears.

At Kew, tropical plants survive because people rigorously manage temperature, humidity, irrigation, and soil. Seeing such attention dedicated to plants that I had taken without any consideration made me realise how casually I had received the abundance of the place from which I got here.

I went to Kew and expected its collections to fascinate me. What I didn’t expect was that the visit would turn into a lesson in gratitude.

KEW also led me back into the botanical history of Indonesia, which has its own long tradition, including the Bogor Botanical Gardens, established in 1817. The connections between European botanical institutions and the Indonesian archipelago are old and sophisticated, belonging partially to the histories of exploration, science, and empire. Plants from Indonesia entered European scientific collections, where they were named, classified, cultivated, and displayed. Some became famous far beyond the places where they originated.

One of them is the titan arum, Amorphophallus titanum, native to the rainforests of Sumatra, where the Italian botanist Odoardo Beccari encountered it in 1878. Kew succeeded in bringing one into flower in 1889. Its immense flowering structure and notorious smell have since made it one in all the best-known plants in botanical gardens.

Seeing a titan arum at Kew stirred an unexpected sense of recognition in me. I used to be a plant from my very own country, being cared for 1000’s of miles from its natural habitat. Its presence was a scientific achievement, but for me it was also strangely personal. It made Indonesia’s biological richness visible to me in a way that familiarity at home had not.

THAT experience modified the best way I checked out the remainder of the garden. At Kew, plants are usually not simply attractive objects. They are studied, compared, named, preserved, and classified. Taxonomy gives scientists a approach to discover species and to grasp how living things relate to 1 one other. To someone trained in biology, the method can sometimes feel painstakingly technical. Yet it is usually an exercise in attention.

I remembered my undergraduate years, once I struggled to discover plants growing inside a small patch of ground. Several grasses could appear almost equivalent until I learned to note the form of a leaf, the structure of a flower, or the pattern of growth. What looked like “just grass” became a community of various species, each with its own form. That gave me a lesson: careful looking changes what we predict we’re seeing.

PSALM 104 praises God for a creation whose abundance exceeds easy comprehension: “How many are your works, Lord! In wisdom you made all of them.” The psalmist doesn’t flatten creation into scenery. He pays attention to the moon, the sun, the clouds, springs, mountains, trees, grass, herbs, cattle, and creatures beyond counting.

Praise begins with noticing. Jesus asks his listeners to “consider how the wild flowers grow”. The invitation is strikingly easy. Consider them. Look again at what’s already there. Perhaps gratitude often begins in this fashion. We don’t necessarily have to be given something latest. Sometimes, we want to see anew what has been with us all along.

FOR me, distance made that possible. Living in England had already modified my relationship with the landscape of home. At Kew, the change became sharper. The banana and papaya plants were now not merely plants related to childhood, food, gardens, or the tropics. They became signs of a richness I had scarcely known learn how to value.

Indonesia is probably the most biologically diverse countries on the planet. But abundance can have a wierd effect — what surrounds us each day can turn into almost invisible. We may notice what’s rare before we notice what’s near. We may protect what seems exceptional while assuming that the familiar will at all times remain.

A botanical garden challenges that assumption. Its conservation work is determined by the popularity that living things might be vulnerable, that habitats might be lost, and that knowledge and care matter. For a Christian, this work may also illuminate something about stewardship. Creation is a present, but receiving a present gratefully doesn’t mean merely admiring it. Gratitude carries responsibility.

THIS is where my visit to Kew moved beyond nostalgia. When I saw the banana and the papaya, I used to be not simply homesick: I used to be being shown something about my very own habits of seeing. I had considered certain plants as peculiar because they’d at all times been available to me. I had confused familiarity with insignificance.

Yet the Christian story gives us little reason to treat the peculiar as insignificant. Much of Jesus’s teaching begins with things close at hand: seeds, soil, fish, flowers, bread, water. The created world isn’t simply a backdrop against which spiritual life takes place. It is one in all the places during which we learn to concentrate, to receive, and to offer thanks.

It is simple to talk about “creation” within the abstract, especially when the environmental challenges before us are so large. But creation can be encountered particularly things: a grass we’ve never learned to call, a tree outside the window, a plant carried across continents and thoroughly kept alive, banana and papaya plants flourishing 1000’s of miles from home.

Kew taught me that gratitude can begin with such particulars.

TO NOTICE a plant properly — its form, its history, its vulnerability — is already to withstand taking it without any consideration. But gratitude cannot end with noticing. If creation is received as a present, it also asks something of us. The plants that seemed peculiar to me in Indonesia aren’t any less precious for being familiar, and their abundance can’t be assumed to last for ever.

Kew Gardens made me learn to look more rigorously at what had at all times been near home. My visit also helped me to grasp that gratitude for creation carries with it the responsibility to take care of what we’ve been given.

Halvina Saiya is a doctoral researcher in ecology and evolutionary biology on the University of Sheffield. She worships at Christ Church, Fulwood, and St Andrew’s United Reformed Church, Sheffield.