Wild Plants of Palestine

A conversation with Alaa Abu Asad

Aug 01, 2025

There are some interesting exhibitions on currently at John Hansard Gallery in Southampton, as part of their New World Order programme this summer.

These include Alaa Abu Asad’s Wild Plants of Palestine - a short, thought provoking, video-essay made off the back of botanical research expeditions he took part in with the Palestinian Museum and professors from Birzeit University; and The dog that chased its tail to bite it off - a display of Alaa’s ongoing work looking at Japanese knotweed, a plant introduced to Europe as a botanical specimen and now demonised as an “invasive species”,

Also on are screenings of Jumana Manna’s affecting film, Foragers. The film mixes fiction, documentary, and archival footage and looks at how Israeli nature protection laws impact Palestinians attempting to carry out traditional practices of foraging for wild, native plants such as akkoub and za’atar.

I went along to visit the gallery at the beginning of July and afterwards spoke with artist Alaa Abu Asad over Zoom about his two exhibitions. You can read our conversation below.

The New World Order programme runs until 6th September. Go and catch it whilst it’s on. Entry is free.

A conversation with Alaa Abu Asad

[This interview between Sui Searle (SS) and Alaa Abu Asad (AA) has been lightly edited]

SS: I recently visited the John Hansard Gallery and it was great to see your video essay, Wild Plants of Palestine, being shown as part of their current programme of exhibitions.

AA: Yeah, after I printed and published the [written] essay I found some material online, which I felt could fit in the work. I liked how the moving images were taking shape and happening, so I decided to transform it into a video. I think it can reach a wider audience with the format of a video. I do like both of them. On a personal level, I prefer the printed matter. It’s closer to me. But they are both equally important in the way they speak to the outer world. It's work that I revisit all the time. I learn a lot from it, from that experience, because the whole work is based on an experience.

SS: When you say you're still learning from the piece now, in what ways do you mean?

AA: Sometimes I look at it and I have this feeling, okay, this could have been said differently, or this could have been addressed differently. But then, I'll just do it in other ways in newer projects. So I learn from this, the way of addressing matters. The video itself is quite atypical in a way, because it doesn't have credits. It's quite concise in the information it provides. Sometimes there's this feeling that it's not a film and it's not a movie. It's a video of an artwork.

SS: In the film you talk about coming across wild tulips and being so delighted by them and how you had this impulse to collect them, which you did. You described it as the instinct of ownership. This felt very self-aware and an interesting take. Do you think that awareness came to you in the moment or was it something that you thought about on reflection?

AA: I would say both. I never knew we had these big tulips in Palestine, really. I think because it's colder and drier there, so these tulips grow. I was quite mesmerised to find them and to encounter these tulips. They were very beautiful. Really fleshy. When I was a kid, we had a lot of anemones - they're smaller than tulips. So the encounter with the tulips was quite nice. I was like, “Oh, wow!”

I was with a friend and her family. They had this allotment they went to farm. On the way there were a lot of tulips and many edible herbs. I did collect some of these, and the tulips. I was collecting and then thinking, what if they're rare? But you know, there was an abundance of these tulips. And in a way, they offered themselves to me. So I did have that “oh”, but I also just allowed myself to, and followed my instincts and my feelings. I just wanted these tulips, to have them in my room. And they lasted for quite some time. They were very beautiful.

SS: I love that internal conversation that you had with yourself and the tulips.

AA: Yeah. I mean, now I live in the Netherlands and there are tulips everywhere but it's different. [The ones I came across in Palestine] were not cultivated. The tulips in the Netherlands have a history. They are considered one of the Dutch cultural symbols. But they're not Dutch. So when one thinks about the Netherlands, you think about tulips, cheese, windmills, clogs… and bicycles. But, yeah, tulips are not Dutch.

SS: How long have you been in the Netherlands?

AA: Nine years.

SS: Were you already in the Netherlands when you did the research tours?

AA: No, when I joined the expeditions, I was still in Palestine. And because the [Palestinian Museum] wanted these photos [for a catalogue] I did this. I got the museum the photos they wanted of the plants, and other photos which I kept for myself. Then I came to the Netherlands and I reflected on this material.

SS: When you were doing your research and you came across the Wild Flowers of Palestine… I think you said that you came across it in the Library of Congress? Is that the book that's on display…?

AA: The one I was referring to in the video, Wild Flowers of Palestine, it's 123 photos, black and white, mostly. They’re very beautiful. Yeah, and then others, like printed books, one which is a project from Al Qattan Foundation about the Flowers of Palestine and from a Swiss preacher, I think. A missionary person. She's the wife of a preacher. I think from the Catholic Church in Palestine. I think she was even in Nazareth, in my city. And she also collected specimens and flowers, and she painted them with watercolours. Very beautiful. And the other book [on display], it has real specimens of flowers of Palestine. And that’s from Massachusetts, in the States. Somebody from the States was spending time in Palestine and they collected the plants and they put them in.

SS: And so that book has actual dried specimens in it?

AA: Yeah, yeah, it does. It has real specimens.

SS: How did you feel when you came across those books? Did it bring up any emotions for you? What were your thoughts?

AA: Yeah, I mean a lot. I was quite happy. I mean, the first one, Flowers of Palestine, I was a bit sad because even the title was very similar. But then, I was happy because it's different. My approach…I wasn't presenting flowers and plants from Palestine as much as I was talking about the situation and the role of plants in the land and in the place. So I was quite happy to see that there were other resources and sources, where plants are the major character, the main topic. Wild Flowers from Palestine I was even happier to know, that one is quite old, you know, both of them actually, the practice of collecting plants and putting them in books. So I was quite happy.

But as somebody who studied photography and has a Masters degree in art praxes, you can't not be critical about this. Who are these people collecting these flowers and putting them in books and why? What reasons? These people who are foreigners to Palestine ... One is coming under the guise of God, the church, and religion. And the other one is probably like a scholar. Which is totally fine, but the question is about the time when this was done and why. And what did it serve? And today, would it only serve as a way of looking at Palestine as a historical, almost dead place only? So these feelings, of course, are there. And one should ask. I question these practices and why they were done. On the other hand, it's a beautiful work. Both the drawings and the collected specimens and pieces of plants, they’re very beautiful. There's something very empowering and powerful in looking at a dried piece of plant in a book which has been lasting for maybe 150 years, maybe longer… It carries a lot. It already carried a lot when it was alive and then picked and put in a book - it's just beautiful and it's amazing. I think plants carry a lot in them. There's the history, the stories, the time, place. The seen part of it, but there are also the hidden and the unseen part. Looking at plants allows you to look beyond what you see... And there's always this relationship between plants and people, which is embedded in the organism itself.

SS: They carry a lot of stories, don't they? They're an opening to stories that we might not consider otherwise.

AA: Yeah, exactly. And also, plants can tell us a lot about us, human beings… The way these plants were selected and picked and preserved. And not choosing other plants. That already says a lot about the person who picked them. But also in general, plants and the way we treat plants around us, says a lot about us, as human beings, individuals, members of groups, societies, communities, citizens of nation states. This is reflected in the way we look at and treat plants.

SS: What kind of messages did you receive from the kind of plants that had been chosen to be preserved and recorded?

AA: I also think it is because the time when they were picked, they felt quite wild because I think there was more land back then where plants and herbs and weeds could grow freely. They had more freedom, more options and less control. So they felt more liberated… Because if you look at plants or books of specimens, they feel more timid in a way… Because they're probably picked from gardens or, you know, like from places where they are supposed to be picked. You know what I mean? And the others are just… they were really wild. And this is not because the person who picked them made so much effort to reach them, as much as they were everywhere, I think.

SS: They were more abundant?

AA: Yeah, also because there was more land, you know. I mean, land in terms of things just growing everywhere. There is a lot of urban development now. The world was different back then.

SS: There was more wild space and things were just allowed to grow?

AA: Yeah, exactly. So times like today, if you want to get something, you really need to go outside the city to find a specific plant. Probably back then you didn't need to do that.

SS: I found it interesting in the video essay, about halfway through you talked about how the thing that grabbed your attention more was the general landscape. So you started off with the tulips and then you were doing these wildflower tours looking for plants as part of the university explorations. And then you said that actually, the thing that grabbed you the most was the landscape. Can you explain that a little bit?

AA: Yeah, so I'm from Nazareth and then I moved to live and work inside the West Bank. But I'm from Nazareth, which is inside what is now Israel. And for some time my understanding and my experience of living in the West Bank was restricted to mainly around the city of Ramallah. So I’d never been to secluded, calmer, remote areas and joining the tours and being driven by taxi driver, a local person, who really helped us a lot and took us to places, passing through unchartered roads or off road, or just going to really remote areas and just being in a place with complete silence. And there's not much trees. But it's also not the desert, you know, so this really was quite a new experience for me in that place. And also because it was done in the earliest thing throughout the whole season, it was beautiful. Really beautiful. Like the colours, the light, the temperature, the grass, the earth. Yeah, so this is what really struck me. And also, because [of the] mountains and hills, then you can have a nice view. It's like you're in a different world. This, on the one hand. On the other, there was kind of tension because you couldn't know what to expect or where to expect what from. Because any car, any movement could be suspect, could be a threat, you know, like of soldiers or settlers. In a way, when you're in the city, this sounds terrible, but you feel safer.

SS: You feel less exposed [in the city]?

AA: Yeah, contained, exactly. And when you're out in nature, specifically in a place like Palestine, which is hyper-militarised, it can be scary. And it's not scary because of wild beasts, or encountering a snake or something. No. It's scary because of settlers and the soldiers. People are being shot dead, you know, randomly. So this was also scary. You're out there, this completely secluded, silent moment. But this could also be your last moment. You don’t know what might happen… Also, if something happened, where would we go to get help from…? So there was also this. I had mixed feelings.

SS: So that wasn't your local area, you're from Nazareth. Is that a feeling you were familiar with…?

AA: Not really, because it’s a special case in the West Bank. It's also segmented into areas of A, B, C under the Israeli division and control and some parts, I think, I don't know under which category, but you're not allowed to build. So there's a lot of these places that no one can do anything there, because Israel doesn't allow, basically. I never felt this before. I had spent, and I still do when I'm back… time in nature with my family in the north of Palestine and it's just different.

SS: When was the last time you went back?

AA: This March [Alaa’s face breaks out into a huge smile]

SS: How was it?

AA: I think I was quite lucky in a way, there was not much happening in the air. It was beautiful, because I went foraging with my father a lot. It was very beautiful. It was also beautiful and absurd. There were moments … it's complete silent. You know, you only hear the birds or humming bees and insects, and all of a sudden, this massive sonic effect from the sky [Alaa mimics the humming sound of aircraft]. And then you look and it’s like two military airplanes going in the direction of Lebanon... And they make a big sound, and it’s just absurd and weird. Because it's so peaceful and bland in a way. You know what I mean. Having a moment [and then] the sky is so violent. The sky is so loud. The military vehicles make it very loud. And for me, because I don't live there anymore, it's quite startling. It makes my heart beat and it does disturb me. I think for people living there it’s more normal, sadly. They normalised this sonic pollution. So this is how it felt. It was beautiful. It was very beautiful, but also sad. Very empowering, as well.

SS: Empowering to be back?

AA: Yeah, to be back, to pick things from there to eat, from the land directly, to be with my father, to see my grandma, talk with her. Also discuss some plants. I mean, there's a nice thing about eating directly from the land, which I miss. Here in the Netherlands, everything is packed and parcelled and you only get it from the shop.

SS: Did you grow up eating food off of the land?

AA: I think Palestinians everywhere, whether they're from the cities or from villages, there's this tradition of, you know, like picking things? What it's called? Foraging. But also, you can buy these things from, you know, like farmers or women who do the foraging and then sell it in bigger cities. So we always ate this product which I later understood should be called in English, organic.

SS: Organic [laughs]

AA: Yeah. So everything I ate was organic, mainly. And yeah, this doesn't mean if you do foraging or eat from foraging that you, you know, it doesn't locate you in any specific socio-economic level there. This is just how it is. It is changing a bit now, but still, there's still awareness and people doing this. Because I think people can't just give up the beautiful taste of things growing on the land. Like, nothing can compete.

SS: Yeah, people are used to eating those kinds of wild plants. And so it isn’t a special ”organic” thing. It's just a natural thing that has always happened.

AA: Exactly, yeah, exactly.

SS: That connects nicely to Jumana Manna's film, Foragers [also showing currently in the exhibitions at the John Hansard Gallery]. That's what they do in the film, isn't it? They collect plants from the wild and then sell them to the locals.

AA: Yeah, you can do this. You can also just collect things because you want to enjoy nature and collect the things. You know, you can either buy it from people who collect it and just sell it to you. Or you just do it yourself, so both ways. It's quite traditional. Yeah, there's specific plants you can only get from nature - like za’atar, thyme? You know, like you never, buy... There is the processed, cultivated za’atar. It doesn’t taste the same at all.

And then, because also this plant, they grow en masse in Palestine, there's an abundance of specific plants that you only eat from the mountains and from nature.

SS: Plants are at the core of both of your exhibitions, so Wild Plants of Palestine in the video essay and then in your other exhibition that's also on at the gallery, The dog chased its tail to bite it off, that has Japanese knotweed featured in it. How did you first come across this plant? What was it that piqued your interest in it?

AA: Well, I’d never heard of this plant, of the Japanese knotweed, before I moved to study and live in the Netherlands. It's not a plant that grows in the Mediterranean area. I was just walking in one of the most prestigious national parks of the Netherlands called De Hoge Veluwe. It's a big one in the east of the country, naturally constructed. It's very beautiful. It’s known for its heather. …As I was there, and just near the visitor centre, I heard, I think it was a guide tour, talking with so much anger and aggression about the Japanese knotweed plant and pointing at it. I just had this moment of eavesdropping. And I was really amazed by the language that he used. And I looked, but I couldn't really distinguish the plant from other plants. You know, Japanese knotweed can also look like any other plant, especially if it's not in blossom or it's not late in autumn.

AA: So I went back home. I was like, what is this plant? And I started researching. And it just hit me, mainly the language that is used to describe the plant, to talk about the plant, to discuss the problems that can be caused by Japanese knotweed and other invasive species. This was in November 2017 and for many years I was just working with the language, with this offensive language. Because I was amazed that people can do this. To talk so badly about a wild plant. Only later I started doing some photographic work with the plant, trying to look at the material that the plant could give. For many years, I collected terms, words, adjectives, that were negatively charged, describing the plant. And then I also collected research material and paraphernalia from the history and the story of the Japanese knotweed. It's now five, six years already? And it takes different shapes at times. I do also a performative reading on the Japanese knotweed.

SS: Is that the one you're going to do in September [at the John Hansard Gallery]?

AA: Yeah. And in a way, it's the story of the plant, but also the story of me, or any person that happens to be somewhere in this world and trying to live their lives. My interest in plants started in wild plants of Palestine but there I was looking at plants and studying them and their role throughout history, photography and the role of photography in shaping a place etc. The dog chased its tail to bite it off… I work with the Japanese knotweed because I don't feel like I'm doing a work on the Japanese knotweed. I really learn a lot from this plant. It taught me many things about the plant herself, but also about things in me and in general. And I say herself, because a female specimen of Japanese knotweed was brought to Europe originally, and this female specimen has been reproducing herself vegetatively, meaning asexually from a small piece, and then making a clone in northwestern Europe and North America. And also what I discovered and understood is that you can't talk about invasive species and invasion ecology without talking about other matters in the world. Whether ecological matters or human-related matters. You can't separate these things anymore.

AA: In a way, I see the work with Japanese knotweed and invasive species as liberating. It's quite a liberating tool, especially in a reality like nowadays, which is very much having a rising fascist politics and policies. Whether in politics between countries or controlling weeds and controlling people as well. And there's a lot to learn from invasive species. I think that the appearance of a plant in a place, whether this plant belongs to that place or not - I mean, was introduced, or is accidental - plants carry a message. And this message could be related to something in the present time, or in the future. You know, many plants, they appear in a place to be used later as a solution for a disease or a problem. So invasive species could be doing this work as well. There's a change in the world, right? There's a “new order” as the title of the exhibitions suggests. And this means that the Japanese knotweed could be one of the only future green companions that we might have. So we should learn to live with this plant rather than spending time, energy, money and resources, and technology, trying to kill and eliminate the Japanese knotweed and other invasive species. I'm not saying, I'm not promoting the Japanese knotweed as much as I'm trying to have us change the way we look at things and to also look at the information. Most people don't like Japanese knotweed because they don't know much about it. They don't even know how it looks like, right?

SS: They're more frightened of the idea of it than the reality of it.

AA: Exactly. And my work is an invitation to people to question what they know about Japanese knotweed - just to try to change also the way they treat plants but also the way they treat themselves and other human beings. I mean, I'm aware that the plant could be problematic. Like, any other plant, to be honest. But the solution doesn’t lie in killing and eliminating invasive species and Japanese knotweed as much as in changing the way we coexist with more-than-human beings.

SS: Thank you. There was a lot in there. And I think it kind of answers one of the questions that I had because the question of language and narrative and the way we talk about invasive species comes up a lot in the area of decolonising. This subject can get quite heated and it recurs. There's always this question about native plants and “alien” plants and one of the arguments that people often give is one of ecology - that we should be protecting and promoting and looking after native plants because it has a negative impact on our biodiversity to not do that. But you're not saying that knotweed doesn't necessarily have a negative impact, you're asking us to change the way we're questioning things, the way we're looking at and speaking about things and the way we're understanding things.

AA: I mean, on the one hand, we can't blame Japanese knotweed and other invasive species for the problems whilst we provide them with the perfect conditions to thrive. And these conditions, these perfect conditions are also killing other plants, right? So on the one hand, we heat the temperature and we pollute and this kills many other plants. And then heating the temperature also makes the rain fall in big amounts in a very short time leading to soil erosion. And consequently killing other plants and making the Japanese knotweed thrive. And then we say the Japanese knotweed is the problem, is the cause of this. It's not true. It's really not true. Japanese knotweed doesn't cause soil erosion. It doesn't cause blocking of the water ditches or small rivers. It's us. We do something somewhere, this changes the balance, leads to some plants being stronger than other plants. Because of us.

SS: Yeah. It's a complicated idea and topic, I think, to sometimes get heads around what it is that's being asked of them, because they don't see the complexity of the way all of this intertwines and reflects other systems that are going on.

AA: I mean, I’m all for interference when we can and when it should be done to preserve other species, whether native or not. In a way, it's also funny, because we created culture. Which, in a way, destroyed nature. Nature existed way before culture. And then we use this culture to preserve nature. It's a paradox in a way. So instead of saying this, we should look at the both as completing each other, like coexisting. I mean, if you just want to preserve indigenous or local plants, because you want to keep the UK the same way it looked 100 years ago, that's a stupid argument. That's meaningless. It doesn't mean anything. Because nature is all about change. It's in flux of, you know, like dynamic changes all the way. Whether with or without us. So what is more important than preserving indigenous species is stopping pollution. And people should be more active and aware, and request their governments not to support war, not to manufacture weapons, which are very polluting, not to participate in genocide. Also, when you have genocide, you also have ecocide. You also kill everything, you know what I mean? So if you do this, if you stand against racism, fascism, capitalism, and Zionism, this will allow a better, more diverse reality that is more liveable.

But we're driven, we live in societies, which is governed by governments that are driven by capitalist factors and interests. So all the efforts to save local plants and to save, to preserve nature, will be futile.

SS: One of the things that is complicated, is that the history and situation is different in the UK to the US. So when we have this conversation in the UK, what we're asking the coloniser to do in the UK is to look at it from the perspective of: look, you created these conditions, you stole and destroyed people’s homelands and people from abroad end up coming here and they thrive here and then you have a problem with it, and the person you blame is the immigrant.

AA: Exactly. I mean, stop supporting wars and let people live in their homelands.

SS: But then the angle of the conversation is slightly different from, say in the US. Often we're having these conversations in parallel with our US colleagues and friends… And from their perspective, they find it difficult to access the conversation from this angle because for them, protecting or uplifting the indigenous and the native is their focus. For them, the invader, the person invading, is the coloniser. And so it's a flip of the conversation. I’m just acknowledging that complexity and difference in where the power lies.

AA: Yeah. I mean, again, I'm not against working with land and, you know, saving species. Not at all. Like, it's good. We should spend time with plants and working with the land. But we shouldn't separate things. We shouldn't say, okay, I'm working with land, I'm preserving the area around me. I don't care what's happening somewhere else because this assumes it does not have any kind of influence on my garden, or my forest, or my backyard. It's not true.

Alaa’s exhibitions, Wild Plants of Palestine, and The dog chased its tail to bite it off, as well as Jumana Manna’s film, Foragers, are showing at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until the 6th September.

The written essay in booklet form of Alaa’s Wild Plants of Palestine is available to purchase from the JHG shop (which is excellently curated and stocks some brilliant publications for sale).

On the 14th August there is an online event with artists Alaa Abu Asad and Jumana Manna in conversation with JHG Director, Woodrow Kernohan.

Alaa Abu Asad will also be at the gallery on the 6th September for a performative reading of “In the absence of the invasive: Can we finally look at the Japanese knotweed as a green future companion?”.

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