Three ghostly white plants float suspended atop the Prussian-blue background of a 27 x 21 cm print (fig. 1). Their leafy fronds are so exquisitely fine that in some places the blue bleeds through their tissues to expose delicate quiltings of veins and willowy inflorescences. Opaque white patches mottle each of the plants to signal where multiple layers of plant flesh overlap. The interplay of shapes, color, and textures in the image captures an atmospheric effect of alien beauty, nearly incomprehensible. That is, until the small label at the bottom of the print in meticulous penmanship informs us that we are looking atDelessaria sanguinea,a type of red algae commonly known as “Sea Beech.” This is one in the thousand-plus body of images that comprises Anna Atkins'sPhotographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions. Dedicated to documenting England's native seaweed, ferns, and flowering plants, Atkins's photographic botanical project ranged about a decade (October 1843–53) and resulted in multiple editions she would give to friends and cultural institutions. While she primarily helmed the project herself, she occasionally included her father, zoologist and photography enthusiast John Children. For the last couple albums, she enlisted as a co-creator her “like a sister” Anne Dixon, who collected, arranged, and developed the images alongside Atkins.

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This essay introduces the figure of Victorian “plant mother” whose houseplant amities provide an alternative model of motherhood within nineteenth-century colonial archives. I argue that compiling instances of her dispersed presences across archival documents reveals a flexible avatar of motherhood who restores maternity’s embodied and emotional dimensions. Not simply an agent of colonialism, the plant mother and her plants provide moments of transformation that coax out of colonial archival structures more inclusive models of domesticity, family, and belonging. To access these moments, I build a framework for interpreting nineteenth-century archival materials that braids feminist and critical plant studies perspectives that share commitments to expanding understandings of archives in their theoretical and material forms. This essay reconstructs the lives of Victorian plant mothers from plant births to deaths. Through these archival reconstructions, I insist that Victorian houseplant mothers show us how to locate nodes of loving resistance within colonial archival structures.