Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants: A Tour of His Botanical Legacy by Ken Thompson (review)

In Darwin's Most Wonderful Plants: A Tour of His Botanical Legacy, an engaging, readable volume, Ken Thompson aims to resuscitate Charles Darwin's reputation as a botanist by guiding readers on a "tour" through all of Darwin's books about plants. During his lifetime, Darwin studied plants ceaselessly and indefatigably, conducting countless ingenious experiments that often involved his children in the family garden at Down House. While these experiments provided the empirical foundation for his theory of natural selection, they also demonstrated Darwin's prowess as a practical botanist. "Darwin startles us by the surprising discoveries he now makes in botany," wrote the renowned Victorian botanist Joseph Hooker (qtd. in Thompson 166). These advances solidified the reputation that Darwin achieved with On the Origin of Species (1859) and, Hooker continues, "raise him without doubt to the position of the first naturalist in Europe," perhaps "as great as any that ever lived" (qtd. in Thompson 167). A naturalist himself, Thompson seeks to confirm Hooker's assessment by placing Darwin's work in the context of current botanical research, demonstrating that Darwin's hunches and early innovations have been repeatedly validated and even showing how he anticipated many of today's most striking breakthroughs. Although Thompson largely positions Darwin among contemporary botanists, this book nonetheless speaks as well to present-day Victorianists who are interested in knowing more about Darwin's plant books and interpreting them in light of critical plant studies and recent posthuman theory.

The structure and organization of Thompson's book confirm its subtitle as a "tour" through Darwin's "botanical legacy." In a brief introduction, Thompson states his goal "to share at least some of the wonder and excitement that Darwin experienced, and to appreciate the originality and remarkably enduring value of his research" (16). He carries out that goal by surveying each of Darwin's plant books in succeeding chapters: On the Movements and Habits of Climbing Plants (1865) in chapter 1; The Power of Movement in Plants (1880) in chapter 2; Insectivorous Plants (1875) in chapter 3; On the Various Contrivances by which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, and on the Good Effects of Intercrossing (1862), The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876), and The Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species (1877) in chapter 4; and The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868) in chapter 5. For Victorianists unfamiliar with Darwin's plant books, this structure is very useful because it highlights the central points of each volume, often relating them to the concept of natural selection. The non-chronological arrangement also suggests Thompson's sense of the most exciting directions in recent botanical research. Although Thompson does not discuss his organization per se, he emphasizes new discoveries in plant intelligence and aligns these with Darwin's own studies of movement in plants—the topic of chapters 1 and 2. While Thompson considers Darwin's obsession with sundews (Drosera rotundifolia) and other carnivorous plants at some length in chapter 3, and his interest in orchids and other flowering plants in chapter 4, he seems more intrigued by Darwin's experiments with movement—where he also, in my view, does his best analysis.

Not surprisingly, these strengths are exemplified in chapters 1 and 2 by Thompson's clear and accessible discussion both of current botanical research and of Darwin's two books on plant movement. In one instance, he augments his examination of Darwin's work by summarizing botanical research from 2015 on the ability of the climbing vine Cayratia japonica to distinguish between its own species and a living but nonrelated support—and to choose the latter to climb. This research, says Thompson, not only extends Darwin's work on movement in plants but also models the kind of experiment that Darwin himself might conduct. In another example, Thompson amplifies Darwin's work by...