倾向南部的植物 Plant Leaning to South
This is a creative writing to speculate the mediation and agency of an anonymous economic plant, which will remain unknown to the readers throughout the article, to avoid the illusion of knowledge. We will call the plant H tree in the writing below.
(maybe) Intro
I find myself hesitant about whether to continue studying the H tree. Research on it already feels exhaustive—its various names, its significance to people deeply connected to living ecosystems, its history as a so-called "economic plant," and its cultivation and utilization have all been meticulously documented.
Through archives, I’ve traced its planting, harvesting, and transportation. I’ve seen photographs of tools, laborers working the land, and letters wrapped around its seeds. I’ve learned of its close ties to national botanical gardens and war, how experiments led by botanists transformed it into a material central to military purposes. Its waterproof and heat-resistant properties have allowed it to be repeatedly reimagined—woven into the fabric of everyday objects and embedded in national infrastructure.
I’ve mapped its migrations from South America to Southeast Asia, including Laos, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Sanya, and Yunnan. Despite being a species favoring southern climates, it has steadily moved northward, expanding its cultivation range as it follows the path of human migration.
Yet, despite all this accumulated knowledge, I feel I still don’t truly understand the H tree. I don’t want to remain merely a hunter and messenger of information—I want to move beyond information to perception, to uncover something more essential.
Among the wealth of academic research, archives, and scientific papers, I notice what is often missing: oral histories, songs, and stories about the H tree. These perspectives—those rooted in lived experience, cultural narratives, and memory—seem absent.
It leads me to question: why continue researching what has already been so thoroughly studied? Perhaps the answer lies not in accumulating more facts, but in seeking new ways of seeing and knowing, ones that connect the plant’s history with its emotional, cultural, and spiritual resonances.
Sepculative Resistance between Fungi in the Plantation
The H tree naturally produces deciduous leaves, which accumulate as litter on the plantation floor. While this litter results in lower microbial activity in the soil compared to other crops, it paradoxically supports high species richness and fungal diversity.
However, the relationship between the H tree and fungi is highly complex. Studies reveal that the development of symbiotic fungi on the tree’s roots is unusually slow. This delay may be caused by the H tree itself, which secretes antifungal compounds like hevein from its roots. These compounds inhibit pathogenic fungi but also hinder colonization by beneficial fungal species. Attempts to apply fertilizers to plantations have often had negative effects, further disrupting fungal populations and complicating this relationship.
At the same time, certain fungal pathogens pose significant threats to H tree plantations. Some fungi attack the roots, damaging the tree’s ability to absorb water and nutrients, which leads to substantial losses. Others target the leaves, making the H tree vulnerable to devastating diseases, including one that has caused widespread destruction in other regions and remains a looming threat.
In plantations far from the H tree’s native environment, additional challenges arise. For example, small mites infest the leaves, causing defoliation and a loss of productivity. However, in the wild forests where the H tree originated, such pests are kept in check. Antagonistic interactions in these natural ecosystems prevent pest populations from becoming excessive. On the surface of leaves and even within the tree as fungal endophytes, naturally occurring fungi appear to regulate these pests. One particular genus of fungi, Trichoderma, dominates as a foliar endophyte in wild populations of the H tree and is negatively correlated with other, potentially harmful fungal species. This suggests that fungi play a crucial role in maintaining the ecological balance disrupted by plantation systems.
Fungi, in this context, emerge as secret saboteurs of the plantation. They rot, infect, and destroy—often invisibly—forcing plantation managers to attempt elimination or remediation. These actions can be seen as a form of resistance, where fungi work silently alongside the H tree to disrupt the efficiency and control demanded by monoculture.
Despite decades of research, there remains no effective way to control fungal diseases attacking the H tree’s roots, nor have resistant clones been successfully bred. Through their persistent and destructive actions, fungi seem to assert their sovereignty, sending a message to the systems of human cultivation: your efforts are a failure.
The Tapping of H
While examining the archives at Kew Garden from a plantation on Rhodes Island, I noticed wooden barrels scattered along the site. In one set of photographs, skilled enslaved artisans were shown applying mulch from the H tree’s bark onto pieces of its wood. Their tools appeared to be simple wooden sticks, roughly the size of mallets.
In another set of photographs, an artisan held an intricately crafted bark vessel or container filled with a glittering, translucent gel-like substance. In subsequent images, this gel transformed into a white, milky fluid, with a flat sheet hanging from the side of the container. The barrels remained visible in the background, suggesting their role in collection or storage.
An archived document titled "Further Methods for the Preparation of Wild Latex" detailed some of these processes. It described how the milky fluid from the H tree could be collected in a bark trough carved from a log, with the bark left intact and the interior hollowed out. A wooden handle was often added to the trough, likely to make it easier to carry from the fields to the house. The document also explained how the liquid would dry into a thin, transparent sheet that could be peeled off once fully cured.
Beyond the labor of extracting the fluid, the production of containers, tools, and vessels used for its collection and drying revealed an additional layer of skill. These items required careful craftsmanship, embedding technical knowledge and bodily gestures into their creation. Those who made such tools but did not participate in the collection process relied on others to transport the filled troughs from the fields to designated drying areas. These artefacts—bark troughs, wooden handles, and drying sheets—served as mediators between people, plants, and environmental factors such as humidity, wind, and sunlight.
The Tree and constellation
In the Northwestern Amazonian region where the H tree grows, a group of people living along the Middle Tiquié River observe correlations between plants, animals, weather events, and astronomical phenomena. A visiting astronomer who lived there for two years and facilitated workshops on constellation mapping and time-keeping techniques recorded their practices.
"For them," he wrote, "constellations are not only tools for reckoning the passage of time but also for revealing complex correlations between star positions and natural phenomena as a whole. The stars are integrated into an expansive ethno-natural landscape.”
Constellations align with the rhythms of the H tree. For example, when the stars signal the readiness of the milky fluid, it is collected with gratitude and care. The celestial cycles guide planting, harvesting, and periods of abundance for other natural resources, such as edible fish or crops. This alignment reflects a deep ecological awareness that weaves the H tree into the broader constellation of life, stars, and sustenance.
A Tukano constellation of the Viper, represented during the first workshop in 2005.
H Tree, do I know you?