Location: Zoom. All OFNC members are welcome. Please first register by following this link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/7qP-1lynTjmplOqnvqI7PA

The Book: Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging (2024) by Jessica J. Lee, 288 pages

***Update!! The Speaker: We are excited to welcome Jennifer Doubt, Curator of Botany at the Canadian Museum of Nature. Jennifer will be talking about the National Herbarium of Canada, which she manages. A herbarium (plural: ‘herbaria’) is essentially a library for plants. The national collection includes over one million specimens of dried and pressed plants (and algae and lichen) collected over the past 250 years. Now, more than ever, herbaria are critical resources as we face a rapidly changing climate.

Description of the book from the publisher: “In fourteen essays, Dispersals explores the entanglements of the plant and human worlds: from species considered invasive, like giant hogweed; to those vilified but intimate, like soy; and those like kelp, on which our futures depend. Each of the plants considered in this collection are somehow perceived as being ‘out of place’—weeds, samples collected through imperial science, crops introduced and transformed by our hand. Combining memoir, history, and scientific research in poetic prose, Jessica J. Lee meditates on the question of how both plants and people come to belong, why both cross borders, and how our futures are more entwined than we might imagine.”

Dispersals is the OFNC Book Club Pick for April and May. It will be the focus of the book club’s meeting on Tuesday, May 27, 2025.

If you’d like to be added to the book club’s mailing list (which allows you to vote for future books), please email ofncbookclub@gmail.com with your name and email address.