The Lost-and-Found Case of Silphium: Towards entangled understandings of extinction and biodiversity

Abstract

How can the case study of an ancient plant, lost and found, change the way we conceptualize extinction? Millenia ago, a wild plant called Silphium had significant medical, economic, and symbolic value to ancient Greek and Roman societies. According to Pliny the Elder and Theophrastus, the plant was either resistant to cultivation, lost potency when cultivated, or both. Said to have appeared suddenly after a “black rain” near Cyrene, Silphium was harvested and traded for centuries before disappearing nearly 2000 years ago. This has since frequently been cited as possibly the first historical account of extinction, especially in late-20th century scholarship. However, in recent years a group of researchers and farmers in Turkey, led by botanist Mahmut Miski, claim to have reidentified the ancient Silphium with a rare plant called Ferula drudeana, a member of a diverse, shrubby genus related to fennel which grows in rocky, weedy farm outskirts.

The case study of Silphium, its disappearance and reappearance, presents a challenge to dominant, 20th-century ways of thinking about biodiversity loss in terms of itemized species extinction. This thesis synthesizes literature from multiple disciplines in order to assesses three intersecting issues central to the above case study. The first is whether and to what extent Silphium’s loss can be considered a species extinction event. The second issue is the criteria of epistemic commeasurability between the ancient plant and the modern one, Ferula drudeana. These issues both relate to the third and most general issue: how to judge plant identity. In this way, the case study connects to larger debates about biodiversity measures and conservation efforts.