A tale of two genera; or, how plant specimens from Japan contributed to the greatest legend in American botany

This article investigates how the materiality of plant specimens influenced scientists’ practice, network-building, and the imagination of professional identity through Asa Gray’s encounter with a fragmented specimen. We highlight how the incomplete specimen prompted Gray to create the genus Shortia and mobilize his network of collectors to locate the plant in its natural habitat. We then turn to a parallel network emerging in Tokugawa Japan among scholars of honzōgaku (Japan’s materia medica), who were similarly amazed by the materiality of specimens. Plant fragments thus gained a central role in the collaboration between honzō scholars and European botanists, leading to the naming of a new genus, Schizocodon . Finally, as specimens of Schizocodon traveled to the United States, Gray used them to corroborate his classification of Shortia and his biogeographical theory of disjunct distribution. This article delineates how the materiality of specimens inspired, connected, and frustrated the scientists, while simultaneously being modified, translated, and redefined. Putting together these fragments allows us to rediscover the contested yet entangled relation between the two genera, between the multiple transpacific networks, and ultimately between scientists and specimens.