👈🏽
Episode 1. Upon a leaf: In the community of clones
On a July night in Berlin in 2019, we gathered together an assemblage of plants known colloquially and quite gloriously as the ‘Queen of the Night’. Their Latin scientific name is Epiphyllum oxypetalum. E. oxypetalum blooms once a year, and for one night only – its beautiful, pale and heavily perfumed flowers wilting before the break of dawn. The plant has other names: Orchid Cactus, the Night-Blooming Cereus, Gekka Bijin - meaning ‘Beauty under the Moon’ in Japanese. As she lures our worship and admiration, so we choose to bestow upon her the title of Queen.
The genus name, Epiphyllum, translates from the Greek as ‘upon the leaf ’. Upon the leaf is where the journey of this elusive flower begins, and ends. The Queen of the Night plant is cultivated from and passed between human caretakers through leaf clippings, which are then pressed hopefully into the soil. The flowers for which this plant is prized grow from stems that themselves resemble leaves. Flower upon leaf upon leaf upon leaf upon flower.
These plants we assembled were all cultivated from the leaves of a single plant body. They are clones, plant bodies that also express the impossibility of absolute mimesis – each plant performatively expressing its diff erence from the other, in the curl of its limbs, the drape of its leaves. Life proceeds through such differentiations.
Full text essay available as PDF:
![]()
The genus name, Epiphyllum, translates from the Greek as ‘upon the leaf ’. Upon the leaf is where the journey of this elusive flower begins, and ends. The Queen of the Night plant is cultivated from and passed between human caretakers through leaf clippings, which are then pressed hopefully into the soil. The flowers for which this plant is prized grow from stems that themselves resemble leaves. Flower upon leaf upon leaf upon leaf upon flower.
These plants we assembled were all cultivated from the leaves of a single plant body. They are clones, plant bodies that also express the impossibility of absolute mimesis – each plant performatively expressing its diff erence from the other, in the curl of its limbs, the drape of its leaves. Life proceeds through such differentiations.
Full text essay available as PDF:
Sonic Essay
👂🏽 Upon a Leaf: sonic essay prepared for the event, In the Community of Clones
Texts for an expanded reading practice
📖 Marder, Michael (2013). Plant thinking: a philosophy of vegetal life.
📖 Gagliano, Monica (2018). Thus spoke the plant.
👂🏽 Monica Gagliano, Listening to the Plant
📖 Mancuso, Stefano (2018). The revolutionary genius of plants.
📖 van Neerven, Ellen (2013). Heat and Light.
📖 Johann von Goethe (1790). The Metamorphosis of Plants.
📖 Gagliano, Monica (2018). Thus spoke the plant.
👂🏽 Monica Gagliano, Listening to the Plant
📖 Mancuso, Stefano (2018). The revolutionary genius of plants.
📖 van Neerven, Ellen (2013). Heat and Light.
📖 Johann von Goethe (1790). The Metamorphosis of Plants.
📖 Carla Hustak and Natasha Myers (2013). Involutionary Momentum: Affective ecologies and the science of plant/insect encounters.
📖 Natasha Myers (2018). How to grow livable worlds: Ten not-so-easy steps.
📖 Natasha Myers (2014). A kriya for cultivating your inner plant.
👀 Baldessari, John (1972). Teaching a plant the alphabet.
👂🏽 Antoine Bertin, The Edge of the Forest
📖 Kohn, Eduardo (2013). How forests think.
📖 Natasha Myers (2018). How to grow livable worlds: Ten not-so-easy steps.
📖 Natasha Myers (2014). A kriya for cultivating your inner plant.
👀 Baldessari, John (1972). Teaching a plant the alphabet.
👂🏽 Antoine Bertin, The Edge of the Forest
📖 Kohn, Eduardo (2013). How forests think.