We should be careful what we say
Biodiversity artist Andrea Ku at Sefton Park Palm House, The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool
If you haven’t yet got tickets for Alexandra Wood’s stage version of Hilary Mantel’s short story The Assassination of Margaret Thatcher then I would highly recommend you book before word gets around.
Brilliantly acted by Anita Reynolds and Robbie O’Neill, and directed by John Young, it is funny and concerning and threatening and hopeful. I love a two-hander where the script and the actors are given space to do their best work - although I loved the detail in Ceci Calf’s set design (right down to the bottle of Jif on the draining board), and there’s an unexpected bit of staging that I won’t spoil. It’s at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool until Saturday 23 May. Tickets here.
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We should be careful what we say
It’s no secret in Liverpool that many of the plants we enjoy in our gardens were brought here from abroad. The city’s famous Botanic Collection - established by the Victorians and controversially scattered to different locations by the Militants in the 1980s - was made up of specimens collected abroad including from the Caribbean, India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia and China.
And Sefton Park Palm House, which we take such pride in, displays statues of pioneers in botanical study alongside those of historical explorers.
As part of a programme of events marking its 130th anniversary, the Palm House is acknowledging its problematic connections through a talk by biodiversity artist Andrea Ku: Decolonising the Colonised - The Journey of the Non-Native Plants. As well as considering how in taking plants from the colonies botanists stripped them of their indigenous identity, she is interested in the way we describe so-called “non-native” plants today.
No effort was made to preserve plants’ original, indigenous names - they were given standardised Latin names or were named after the people who “discovered” them - or after their family members.
Ku says: “You’ll see some plants with a woman’s name after it, and they’ve disregarded the indigenous species and thought, ‘I’ll name it after my wife.’ Or they named them after each other .
“They brought the plants back here because it showed power and wealth - ‘Look at us - we can travel around the world and collect all these plants and animals’.”
An example is the Butterfly Bush, with its insect-attracting flowers, which has the official name Buddleja Davidii - the first part of which is after English botanist Rev Adam Buddle and the second is for the French missionary and explorer Father Armand David, who was the first European to report its existence. In China, according to the EPPO Global Database, it is called the more poetic “dà yè zuì yú cǎo” or “large-leaf drunken fish grass”.
After an introductory talk, Ku will guide visitors around the Palm House, looking at some of the plants in its collection and showing some “invasive” samples she has brought along. These could include floating pennywort, which she collects in the Litherland to Bootle stretch of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal.
She says: “It spreads very quickly and it chokes out a lot of the water and oxygen so the fish can’t get water. It takes over around and stops other species from growing. But it’s a tough subject because it does do all of those bad things as it’s trying to survive.”
“If you go to the garden centre and you find an echinacea, you wouldn’t say, ‘It’s not native’. You’d be like, ‘That’s lovely. I’ll have that.”
Ku points out some of the problematic everyday language used to describe plants and insects, and how it parallels racist descriptions of people. Referring to a plant as “non-native” and “invasive” might seem innocuous to some, but we saw how linking the Covid-19 pandemic to China caused an increase in racist incidents against Chinese and East Asian communities in the UK and US.
“In Liverpool, I noticed it - even in Sefton Park, people shouting stuff, in Asda and in town,” says Ku, who is dual heritage - her dad is Hong Kong and her mum is from Prescot.
The term “non-native” tends only to used to describe invasive plant species such as Japanese Knotweed, but does not appear on the labels of plants such as rhododendrons sold in garden centres.
“If you go to the garden centre and you find an echinacea, you wouldn’t say, ‘It’s not native’. You’d be like, ‘That’s lovely. I’ll have that.” Ku says.
“There’s a case of an experiment in South America where a researcher wanted to create the perfect strain of honeybee, so they got a European queen bee, and male drones from Africa. What they were after was the calmness of the European bee mixed with the ‘good’ traits from the African honeybee, which were hard working but defensive.
“But it turned out these bees were very, very defensive. So they called them ‘Africanised’ because they were very defensive and stinging people.”
Ku hopes her talk will help people be more aware of language used around non-native species, and “why we’re kind of pushed to use certain language around non-native and especially invasive plants. If something’s not native, it doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
Andrea Ku’s will present her talk Decolonising the Colonised - The Journey of the Non-Native Plants at Sefton Park Palm House on Thursday 21 May, 2pm and 6pm. Entry is free but you need to book in advance.
See your work featured in Stored Honey
If you’re an artist, actor, theatre maker, curator, director or producer, I’d love to hear more about your work. You can submit details of an exhibition, performance or cultural event by sending details and an image to laura@lauracdavis.com. If you would like to take part in Stored Honey’s regular Meet the Artist feature, please answer the questions in this Q&A or if you don’t like filling in forms I can send you the questions via email.
In case you missed it
Opening this week
A display celebrating how a group of people changed the future of Sefton Park Palm House opened at Liverpool Central Library this week as part of the glasshouse’s 130th anniversary year.
Save It! documents the decline and dereliction of the Palm House from the 1950s to the 1980s, and the journey towards its restoration and reopening 25 years ago in 2001.
Featuring archive material from Liverpool Record Office, including photographs, fundraising material and personal stories, Save It! shows how the tenacity and generosity of the local community and core team of campaigners saved the building following years of damage and neglect. Ends Thursday 27 August.
Last chance to see
A major solo exhibition from Steve des Landes, the gallery’s artist-in-residence, closes at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead, Wirral, this month. Loyalty includes new artwork created on site and more than 40 paintings from his recent practice focusing on representations of figures in the landscape. Ends Saturday 23 May.
One for all the family
Bluey, Bingo, Mum and Dad are back in Salford by popular demand in the Olivier Award-nominated live stage show Bluey’s Big Play. Featuring puppets and the original voices from the beloved TV series, it’s at Lowry from Friday 22 to Sunday 31 May 2026.
Thank you for reading the 178th edition of Stored Honey. I’m off now to read about the incredible pioneering art collectors and social reformers Gwendoline and Margaret Davies, from Wales, for a heritage project I’m involved in.
Have a great week,
Laura
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