Jak przeczytać drzewo? Literackie i pozaliterackie znaczenia roślin

In recent years there has been a growing interest in the representation of plants in literature. This article explores the modalities of the transfer of meaning of physical plants to its literary counterparts. Drawing on neurobotany and cultural studies, the paper analyzes a number of real and metaphorical herbaria to demonstrate that the meaning of plants in literature is a product of both biosemiotic and discursive processes. The analyses are rounded off with a survey of two complementary models of the plant--oriented ecocriticism, Patrícia Vieira’s phytographia and John C. Ryan’s phytocriticism, arguing that the text-inscribed plant meaning is always co-produced by the author and the reader, while the multiplicity of forms it can take is potentially infinite.