The way I was taught history, in discrete segments that usually had big gaps between eras and places, means that it’s only now that I’m an adult that I’ve started to wonder about what I’ve missed. A few years ago, I read an amazing article by Paul M. Cooper (the brilliant creator and narrator of the Fall of Civilizations podcast) in The Atlantic (paywalled, unfortunately, but Open Culture has a brief overview) about what happened to the Colosseum after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Without the empire to continue to use it for its original purpose, it fell into disrepair. Romans took stones to build other things. Weather took care of a lot of the rest. Centuries later, natural philosophers, scientists, and botanists discovered that the ruin had become home to hundreds of species of plants, some of which weren’t native to the area and only managed to grow in Rome because of the Colosseum’s unique microclimates. Katy Simpson Smith’s virtuoso novel, The Weeds1, brings us two botanists, in two different centuries, to the same place to explore questions about the nature of science, resilience, anger, and preservation.
Both of our primary narrators are unnamed but Smith makes it easy for us to distinguish between the two with references to texting, tenure, chaperones, and betrothals. Our 1854 narrator has been placed with Richard Deakin, an English botanist who is working on a survey of plants growing in the Colosseum. (Published in 1855, Flora of the Colosseum of Rome identified 420 species.) Being an Englishman, Deakin doesn’t do well under Rome’s blazing summer sun so our narrator has been engaged to do the legwork. This work, though liberating in many ways, is a punishment. This narrator was caught having an “unnatural” relationship with another woman. Working in public in the Colosseum means that everyone can keep an eye on her. Our contemporary narrator is also doing the legwork of identifying species in the Colosseum so that a man—a potential thesis advisor—doesn’t have to. Her job is to find out which species listed in Deakin’s Flora are still growing there and which ones aren’t. A third narrator pops up partway through The Weeds. We only learn who this male, ghostly voice belongs to near the end of the book.
Each of the chapters in The Weeds is named for a different family of plant species. The sections within the chapter are headed by the name of a specific plan found in the Colosseum in 1854. The 1854 and contemporary narrators take turns telling us how they ended up at the Colosseum, what they’ve found, and their thoughts about the people in their lives. Unlike the men ostensibly in charge of these surveys, our women narrators are much more expansive in what they choose to record. In addition to sketching plants and providing their Latin names, they will include folklore, remedies for various ailments, and their own memories of the first time they encountered a particular plant. Their notes are much more interdisciplinary than their supervisors are usually willing to tolerate. I was deeply charmed by these recordings, however. Like the narrators of The Weeds, I agree that a sketch, a name, and a few notes about the plant aren’t enough to really capture a species.
There are plots to follow in The Weeds—plots that surprised me—but I found the questions raised by the narrators and their tasks more interesting. Education in the United States puts up firm boundaries between the sciences and the humanities. Interdisciplinary Studies departments feel like afterthoughts in most universities. This is a pity, I think, because interdisciplinary scholars do fascinating work that bridges this artificial divide. For example, history might show that a plant was used in folk remedies for centuries. Folklore might record important information about dosage or when to collect the most useful part of the plant. Biology and medicine can use the history to find out if this plant offers new medicines. Ignoring the humanities means overlooking important knowledge. The protagonists of The Weeds are rebelliously interdisciplinary.
I recommend that readers take The Weeds slowly. Rushing through means missing important details not only about the plants the narrators find but also the tandem plots. If you find yourself racing through the book to figure out what happens next, take a moment to look up Deakin’s Flora and the plants mentioned. Sure you might fall down some internet rabbit holes but falling down rabbit holes is very much in the spirit of The Weeds.
- I might be wrong about this, but I think the cover of The Weeds is a reference to another overlooked woman in science. In the 1840s, Anna Atkins began to photograph and create cyanotypes of different plants, later publishing them in different catalogs of native and imported or invasive plants growing in the United Kingdom. The New York Public Library hosted an exhibition of her work in 2018-2019. ↩︎
