QUEER PLANTS AND WHERE TO FIND THEM

Between lessons in queer botany and plants with superpowers

MAY 2024 - SCENT

"Plants are queer because they are flamboyant, slightly exhibitionist, non-binary, gender-fluid and not always recognizable, able to enjoy life, open to experimentation, connected with the stars, victims of prejudice and violence."

Ulisse Romanò / Demetra

Those who usually frequent city parks may have come across them, a large group of heterogeneous people who attentively follow a drag queen in bright clothes. In fact, we are here on purpose to unravel the mystery of these colorful tenants of the green bubbles of our cities. And we will do it together with Ulisse Romanò, aka Demetra, of Nina’s Drag Queens, the collective behind the happy idea of Botanica Queer.

And since The MRV Magazine investigates reality starting from the five senses plus one, to Ulysses, a.k.a. Demeter, first of all, we ask you to tell us about the sensory part of the traveling show.

The Senses of Plants The Senses of Plants

“Carrying people around offers a very strong aesthetic and visual dimension, but also tactile, if we think of the fabrics chosen, which are strictly non-synthetic. The olfactory component is perhaps the most represented: the path is made in the flowering period, so the scent is pervasive. In any case, the whole project aims to inform about the senses of plants, and about the differences with ours, thus bringing attention to the consideration of organisms in their complexity. Plants smell for a number of reasons: mainly to communicate and attract, both insects and animals that have to pollinate or eat the fruits and then distribute the seeds, so scents are one of the tools used by plants to interact with the environment and with other species. Then plants also use volatile compounds, substances that travel in the air: they are not scented, so we do not perceive them, but they are used to communicate with other plants or with different parts of the same plant. You can see how the olfactory sector is very developed in the plant world, and it is also essential to interact with us.”

Among the first statements that strike, reading the description of the show, is the one that postulates that plants are queer. And since we have in front of us the only person able to clarify the meaning of it, let’s turn the question around.

“Plants are queer because they are flamboyant, slightly exhibitionist, non-binary, gender-fluid and not always recognizable, able to enjoy life, open to experimentation, connected with the stars, victims of prejudice and violence.

“They use colours and scents to attract and seduce, to communicate, they are slightly exhibitionist because they introduce elements of discontinuity, at least seasonal, into the landscape to attract attention. Three-quarters of the plants on the planet are hermaphrodite or monoecious and their genus is not immediately perceptible: you have to wait for them to flower, for example, to manifest their genus, and some change genus during their lifetime, such as badgers. So they have a very wide range of possibilities, far beyond the male/female duality. They have a very open sexual and reproductive life, each plant has thousands of partners, and moreover in plant reproduction there must always be three: a male plant, a female and someone to carry the pollen. The vectors are usually insects, so-called pollinators, but sometimes the wind has a hand in it. We mistakenly think of them as lacking in characteristics such as intelligence or senses, but the discourse is much more complex. And despite the fact that they perform a fundamental task for life with photosynthesis, we consider them inferior. In terms of biomass they are the most important component of the planet, they have evolved better and adapted to the environment. They are connected with the stars as drag is with the stars of cinema, theater, literature. We see them at our mercy, we think we can dispose of them, and we use violence against them, exploiting and weakening them. The trees in the city, the plants we have on the balcony, are organisms in captivity, so they are mistreated. Finally, both queer people and plants are marginalized realities that are not fully subjective.”

When we want to criticize “gender theory” we are talking above all about the presumed “naturalness” of the relationship between man and woman: we ask Ulysses to help us dispel the myth.

“We need to broaden the field: there would be a lot to say about the term ‘naturalness’. Life has developed through the modulation of different solutions and skills, there is not a single path but several, variability is a key principle. So arguing that heterosexual relationships are natural and homosexual relationships are against nature makes no sense at all. The only difference is cultural and perception. Assumptions that we must continue to question. Using the term “natural” is sometimes a dialectical ploy, it serves to give strength to an ideological and partial vision of reality. The meaning of this path of queer botany is to use plants as tools to change the gaze, perception, and question some of our certainties. And realize that discrimination often starts precisely from the inability to relativize one’s point of view, while botany and biology are a tool to question the dogmatic paradigm and realize that nature is much more complex. Plants provide a philosophical example, but carried out with practical solutions: they have a non-hierarchical and cooperative organization, they are communal.

Plants provide a philosophical example, but carried out with practical solutions: they have a non-hierarchical and cooperative organization, they are communal. Plants, like queers and like all marginalized cultures, have within them a germ of revolution, of transformation of the existing, because they experience dynamics of exclusion on their skin. And if we want to overcome these dynamics, it makes sense to look at the experience of individuals, whether they are plants, queers, disabled, immigrants, who have found a way to resist. So for us Nina’s it makes sense to speak also and above all to people who are not queer, because the important thing is to tell the life of a significant slice of humanity, using a tool, an approach to reality. Which can be, as in this case, botany, but which also proceeds in other ways.”

by Enrica Murru

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