Deep in the weeds of India’s lantana problem

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Editor's note: Ten years before Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, a motley group of botanists had already unleashed monsters upon the world. Like Shelley, they were English, but unlike Shelley, they had no concerns about the repercussions of their science. They’d come to India in the late 1700s and set up the East India Company Botanical Garden in Calcutta, trading in plants with the same fervour their colonial friends traded in spices, opium, kingdoms and slaves. From the time the East India Company Botanical Garden was established, the botanists introduced 3,200 alien plant species. Many of these came from South and Central America, and the Caribbean islands. Two botanists stand out here: garden superintendent Nathaniel Wallich, who wanted exotic species to line every garden and every fence of tea-drinking, scone-eating English bureaucrats; and William Hamilton, a cigar-toting American landscapist so obsessed with trophy-hunting rare, tropical plants that he’d bore guests until 1.00 am on the subject. His obituary read: “The study of botany was the principal amusement of his life”. These alien plants—fertilized by Hamilton’s quirk, Wallich’s obsession, and an army of Victor …