The Fragmented Afterlives of Plants: Protecting Elm Trees From Disease in Brighton

The main contribution of this paper is to highlight the need for a conceptualisation of plant life that persists after the process of fragmentation, and therefore, is not restricted to the whole. I make this point through an examination of the ways fragments of elm trees lost to Dutch elm disease continue to circulate in Brighton, posing a threat to the management of the city’s remaining elm. This fragmentation is caused by the coming together of the elm bark beetle (Scolytus scolytus and Scolytus multistriatus) and a fungus (Ophiostoma novo ulmi) that causes the death of elm trees. While Dutch elm disease killed most of the UK’s elm, Brighton’s remaining trees are protected as the most significant mature elm population in the UK. Following McFarlane’s work attending to fragments as ‘overlooked bits and pieces’ (McFarlane 2021: 63), I highlight how fragments of once valued elm wholes are variously valued and unvalued, discarded and salvaged, ignored and attended to. Elm logs and regenerating elm suckers are a persistent presence in this urban space, both aiding the spread of disease and resulting in the need for continued protection of the city’s elm. These fragments of elm illustrate how plants continue to shape urban space after the death of the whole. This persistence, resulting from the ways plant bodies are radically different from animal bodies, confuses neat binaries between part/whole and life/death. Mae'r papur hwn yn ymchwilio i natur dameidiog Gardd Diwedd—gardd guerrilla y mae'r awdur wedi'i meithrin o wastraff a deunyddiau sydd wedi cael eu tipio'n anghyfreithlon ar ddarn o dir sydd wedi mynd yn angof ac yn edrych dros Fae Abertawe. Ar lwybr ar ochr bryn, mae'r ymchwil hon sy'n seiliedig ar ddull cydosod yn mynd i’r afael â sut y gallai daearyddwyr fabwysiadu 'broken world thinking' (Jackson 2014: 221) i ymwneud yn greadigol ac yn feirniadol â chreu gofod trefol. Drwy drin darnau a luchiwyd yn weddillion ac yn ddeunydd crai adfywio, mae'r papur hwn yn ystyried sut y gall gweithredoedd adfer o'r fath ddychmygu gobaith ar ei newydd wedd. Dros gyfnod o flwyddyn, roedd yr awdur wedi helpu i gasglu ac ailddefnyddio'r hyn y mae Haraway (2016: 57) yn ei alw’n 'excrement of the Capitolocene,' gan ei gompostio—yn llythrennol—fel 'garddwr gwallgof'. Wrth wneud hynny, mae'r cyfraniad creadigol hwn yn myfyrio ar gynnig Latour (2004: 246) 'the critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who assembles,' gan awgrymu bod ymwneud yn greadigol ac yn faterol yn cynnig ffyrdd diriaethol a gwahanol o wybod a pherthnasu ym maes theori ofodol.