The Morris Arboretum & Gardens Lecture Series brings together expert voices to explore ideas that connect people, plants, and the natural world. Through conversations, talks, and presentations, participants can engage with new perspectives and current research.

Offered throughout the year, lectures create space to learn, reflect, and connect with others in a welcoming setting.

Plant Politics: Images, Knowledge, and Power
A Virtual Lunchtime Conversation

Tuesday, October 13  • 12 – 1 pm 
Members: $10 • Non-members: $15 

REGISTRATION OPENS SOON

Every picture of a plant tells a story...

From botanical illustrations and herbarium specimens to illustrated manuscripts and contemporary photographs, images shape how plants are named, understood, and valued. They also reveal deeper stories about exploration, colonialism, science, and whose knowledge is preserved. 

Join Tracy Qiu and Catherine Seavitt for an interactive lunchtime virtual conversation that uses four images to explore how botanical knowledge is created, shared, and challenged. Together, they will examine the colonial legacies of botanical gardens and plant science, consider how terms like native, exotic, weed, and invasive influence our thinking, and highlight the contributions of Indigenous communities and other often-overlooked knowledge holders. 

Held the day after Indigenous Peoples' Day, this timely conversation invites participants to reconsider the stories we tell (and the ones we don't) and discover how the ways we picture plants continue to shape our relationships with the living world. 

 A Zoom link will be emailed to all registrants in advance of the program. 
 

Speakers:

Tracy Qiu is a post-doctoral researcher at Concordia University in Montreal, specializing in the colonial history of botanical gardens and their roles in contemporary society. With over a decade of experience as a researcher, consultant, and artist, she applies decolonizing and inclusion-focused practices to help public gardens address issues of racial diversity, colonial legacies, and community belonging. Tracy is a former Longwood Graduate Fellow and has worked with Niagara Parks and the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. Her interdisciplinary approach combines qualitative research, visual art, and horticulture to explore how gardens can reconcile their colonial pasts while fostering inclusive futures. 

Catherine Seavitt is professor and chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture, the Martin and Margy Meyerson Chair of Urbanism, co-executive director of The Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism & Ecology, and creative director of LA+, the Weitzman School’s interdisciplinary journal of landscape architecture. She joined Penn in July of 2023, after more than a decade on the faculty at the City College of New York, where she served as professor and director of the Master of Landscape Architecture program. Catherine’s scholarship and design work examines the entanglement of public space and public health through the lens of ecology, policy, and novel plant science.  

Endowed Lectures

An annual series of lectures held from late fall to early spring that explore a wide variety of fascinating topics. Lectures are supported in part by the Klein Lecture Endowment given in memory of Dr. William M. Klein, who served from 1977 to 1990 as the Morris’s first full-time director; the Laura L. Barnes Lecture Endowment of the Philadelphia Foundation, given in memory of Laura Barnes by students and alumni of her school of horticulture; and the Byron Lukens Lecture Endowment, given in memory of educator and Morris volunteer Byron Lukens and his wife Elizabeth.