Plant and Swamp: The Biocultural Histories of Five Australian Hydrophytes

Many Australian plants are well adapted to the demands of swampy living. Tolerant of variable degrees of swampiness, these plants are indispensable to wetlands and other ecosystems. Permanent inundation, periodic saturation, and oxygen deficiency are the primary challenges negotiated by aquatic flora, or hydrophytes. The root hydro- denotes an individual plant specimen, botanical species, or vegetation community that lives in water or saturated earth. In their adaptation to the exacting yet changeable conditions of swamps, plants display substantial plasticity over time and from season to season. To be certain, many hydrophytes can also be found in non-wetland environments. In addition to soil and hydrology, floristic character provides a means to differentiate swamps from other types of habitats and thus to enhance the implementation of conservation strategies specific to wetlands.2 Nonetheless, whereas botanists and hydrologists have emphasized the ecological functionality of aquatic vegetation, the biocultural value of hydrophytes in Australia and elsewhere has received much less consideration by scholars. How has water-loving flora been integral to Aboriginal Australian societies as food, fiber, medicines, totems, and fellow-beings? During the nineteenth century, how did hydrophytes galvanize the botanical imagination of Anglo-European artists, writers, naturalists, travelers, and colonists? In what ways do aquatic plants continue to innervate Australian culture as emblems of adaptability in the era of global biodiversity degradation recognized increasingly as the Anthropocene?