The Imagination of Plants: A Book of Botanical Mythology by Matthew Hall

Author:Matthew Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Published: 2019-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

BLACK BLOOD FROM THE BARK

In Homer’s Iliad, the wounding (and suffering) of human beings is invariably accompanied with vivid descriptions of arterial blood issuing forth from human flesh—“Thereat shuddered the king of men, Agamennon, as he saw the black blood flowing from the wound.”16 This human possession of blood is also intimately connected with human kinship relations in the Iliad. In Book 6 the text states, “[T]his is the lineage and the blood whereof I avow me sprung.”17 Homer also explicitly draws parallels between human kinship and plant life.

Even as are the generations of leaves, such are those also of men. As for the leaves, the wind scattereth some upon the earth, but the forest, as it bourgeons, putteth forth others when the season of spring is come; even so of men, one generation springeth up and another passeth away.18

For our purposes, it is interesting that blood, this most animal/human of characteristics, is linked strongly to plant life. But not only does plant mythology connect the kinship of plants with blood, but in the myths of plants that bleed when they are cut, blood is used to portray the vulnerability of plants and their capacity to suffer. This ability to bleed is a significant aspect of the plant sentience found in botanical myths.

In Virgil’s Aeneid, a text heavily influenced by Homer, the hero Aeneas lands at Thrace, on a mission to found a colonial settlement, and there he begins to cut back the vegetation, only to find:

For from the first tree, which is torn from the ground with broken roots, drops of black blood trickle and stain the earth with gore. A cold shudder shakes my limbs, and my chilled blood freezes with terror. Once more, from a second also I go on to pluck a tough shoot and probe deep the hidden cause; from the bark of the second also follows black blood.19

The myrtle tree that Aeneas wounds is the transformed human being Polydorus, son of Priam, who had been sent to Thrace on to be protected by the Thracian king. Although the tree is Aeneas in a different form, the pouring of blood from roots and bark connotes an ability to suffer on the part of the myrtle. Polydorus’s botanical blood also has strong parallels with the suffering of the oak tree in the myth of Erysichthon. Once the tree is hit by the axe:

blood came streaming forth from the,

severed bark, even as when a huge sacrificial bull

has fallen at the altar, and from his smitten neck

the blood pours forth.20

This idea of plants that bleed/suffer is clearly connected to the ability of trees to produce sap when cut. In the Mayan sacred text the Popol Vuh, there is a description of the tree Chuh Cakche, also known as the dragon’s blood tree (Croton gossypifolius) because of the bright red sap it produces when injured:

The red sap gushing forth from the tree fell in the gourd and with it they made a ball which glistened and took the shape of a heart.

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