Paper short abstract:

I approach botanical gardens as remains from the past. The paper will address transfer of seeds, plants and botanists from former empires to Egypt; the effects on contemporary landscapes, human and other-than human socialities in and around the gardens.

Paper long abstract:

Without diminishing botany to nothing more than an supplement of colonial rule, the significance of empire in the rise of botany as a formal science - in the Middle East and Europe - is the point of departure of this paper. It was in the process of dealing with the problems of transfer of plants and seeds - stolen, appropriated or otherwise - across very different ecological and social contexts that natural history was transformed into formal botanical science in both regions. This paper will approach the garden as remains from the past through which imperial powers continue to assert influence - implicitly and explicitly - on plants and people in contemporary Egypt. In particular I will address the mobility of seeds, plants, and botanists between France, Britain and Egypt; the scientific network that "plants of empires" (Baber 2016) created, and the effects on landscapes in relation to ideas of health to the gardens ecosystems, threats to extinction and extermination, human and other-than human socialites in and around the gardens.