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Paper short abstract:

This paper tells the culinary and environmental life story of the saline plant Salicornia, investigating its agency in shaping the tensions and continuities between foraging and farming, commons and commercialization, and underwater and above water across three European coastlines.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we focus on the culinary life of the saline plant Salicornia and its agency in shaping the entanglements of culture, nature conservation, and market dynamics across three European coastlines. A succulent native to salt marshes, beaches, and other brackish ecosystems, Salicornia has a long history of being foraged that has in recent years evolved into a gourmet trend driving its commercial cultivation. Cooked or raw, whole or powdered to produce “green salt,” the succulent has inspired many recipes and answered to many names: salicornia, glasswort, samphire, salty fingers, pickleweed. Yet its growth, harvesting, and commercial availability are all threaded through with complex interrelations between coastal communities, their environments, and their envisioned futures. Using case studies from Venice, the UK, and Bulgaria, we illustrate how salicornia embodies and enables a series of tensions and continuities: foraging and farming; underwater and above; culinary commons and commercialization. By highlighting how salicornia’s slipperiness in tandem with its saltiness challenges hegemonic understandings of environmental management, nature conservation, and even sustainability, our paper contributes to the panel’s aim to discuss and learn from the entangled histories of humans and aquatic nonhumans.