What Plants Were Called Before They Had A Name

European colonialism in South Africa (and elsewhere) was both preceded and accompanied by expeditions that aimed at charting the territory and classifying its natural resources, in turn paving the way for occupation and exploitation. The supposed discovery and subsequent naming and cataloguing of plants disregarded and obliterated existing indigenous plant names and botanical knowledge and imposed the Linnaean system of classi cation and its particular European rationality. What Plants Were Called Before They Had a Name functions as an oral plant dictionary of indigenous South African languages including Khoi, SePedi, SeSotho, SiSwati, SeTswana, xiTsonga, isiXhosa and isiZulu.