The social life of seeds: the role of networks of relationships in the dispersal and cultural selection of plant germplasm

Humans play an important part in the dispersal of plant seed and other propagative material, either inadvertently or deliberately. We expand on this observation to demonstrate how the form of dispersal reflects different patterns of human interaction and relationship, and how the opposite is also true: that patterns of human exchange modify the properties of plant germplasm subject to further co-evolutionary selection. While these patterns are reported in the ethnobotanical literature for rural tropical and subtropical regions, there has been little work on comparable patterns for industrial and post-industrial Europe. We review the subject, and illustrate the issues with reference to recent data on the management of germplasm in British allotments in East Kent and West London.