Phytophenomenology

This article provided no more than the prolegomena to the fruitful interdisciplinary combination of phenomenology, botany and population ecology—an approach we may term phytophenomenology.

This collocation, Marder posits, may have less to do with plants’ actual botanical mysteries and our human investigations into their biological truths and more to do with the ways that they inhabit and make sense of the world, what he calls their ‘phytophenomenology’, an extension of ecophenomenological work by scholars such as David Wood.

Intertwined with Michael Pollan's thesis in The Botany of Desire on plant agency reversing traditional anthropocentric causation, Jitterbug Perfume encourages a closer look at plant biology as well as what Michael Marder names phytophenomenology, accentuating the superficiality of plant-thinking as an unexpected strength that might also benefit human comportment.