We so often think of plants as stationary creatures—they are rooted in place, so to speak—that it can be easy to overlook the biological ingenuity that allows them to thrive in many locations at once. Plants are in fact anything but sedentary. Throughout human history we've moved them with us intentionally and unintentionally, and that adaptability can appear menacing when we no longer see a benefit to having a plant in its adopted home.

Some of these botanical movements may have happened too long ago to remember, or perhaps they were too sudden to stop, but Jessica J. Lee slows time down to explore all sorts of connections between humans and plants in a series of meditative essays compiled as Dispersals: On Plants, Borders, and Belonging. Lee wrote these essays during a time of personal upheaval, which coincided with the general social re-examination of the early pandemic...