Taey Iohe excavates this moment of cultural and political struggles and acts of resistance in the world of the garden; how plants and their knowledge are passing through a violent age and surviving through variegated migration and other temporalities. 

In this piece, Taey examines the peacock flower, first grown in Madagascar in East Africa, and travelled to the Caribbean islands. During the horrific colonial period, women used the flower and its roots as an abortion facilitator to retake control their bodies, rejecting having to give birth to future slaves. Even though colonial botanists brought this flower to Europe in the 18th Century, the knowledge of its use as an abortifacient did not transfer over, as it did not fit with their motivation for profit through the collection of food, medicine or agricultural economies. Abortifacient medicine as a protective for womens’ health was not in scientists’ interest, and abortion became criminalised in the 1800s. 

Taey opened a potential poetic space for the words of the protagonist to resonate; she dreams of the passing on of solidarity and intimate knowledge to peer women; Taey aims to re-envision how non-fetishised botanical drawings could carry the story of violence behind botanic science.

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