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THIS IS the history not of a great man or a great woman, but a great plant, one of the forgotten glories that deeply affected human lives for untold centuries, until about two hundred years ago. Plants seldom figure in the grand narratives of war, peace, or even everyday life in proportion to their importance to humans. Yet they are significant natural and cultural artifacts, often at the center of high intrigue, as in the nineteenth century when the Bolivian government tortured and executed Manuel Incra, an Ayrnará Indian, for his part in smuggling to the British seeds of the Cinchona officinalis (the source of alkaloid quinine), which cures malaria and other virulent fevers. Few people know that when the Nazis occupied the Netherlands during World War II, one of their top priorities was to seize the world's stores of quinine, leaving the Allies virtually none. As a consequence, more U.S. soldiers died from malaria during the war in the Pacific than from Japanese bullets and bayonets.2
I present this story in light of a growing interest in plants in history: Alfred Crosby's Columbian Exchange emphasized European agency in transporting plants, people, and disease between the Old World and the New; Judith Carney's recent Black Rice has expanded Crosby's account by highlighting Africans' bringing rice to the New World, oral histories having it as sometimes hidden in their hair. James McClellan and Richard Drayton have discussed the strategic importance of Europe's sixteen hundred botanical gardens, which at the end of the eighteenth century connected plant acclimatization, transfers, and experimentation around the world. And Richard Grove has rather outrageously argued that imperialism led to eighteenth-century environmental movements by making environmental degradation visible.3
This essay is drawn from my larger project on gender in the voyages of scientific discovery, which explores the movement, mixing, and extinction of botanic knowledge in early modern encounters between Europeans and the peoples of the Caribbean.4 It discusses how gender relations in Europe and its West Indian colonies guided European naturalists as they selected particular plants and technologies for transport back to Europe. The plant whose history provides the leitmotif of this story is the flos pavonis, literally the "peacock flower" (Poinciana pulcherrima L.).5 With flaming yellows and reds, this elegant...