People have studied the language of plants for a variety of other reasons, but the most important may be simply that plants are medicine. According to a famous Cherokee origin story, a council of animals, chaired by the grubworm, was called to deal with the problem of human cruelty and injustice toward other animals. After unanimously condemning humans as guilty, the assembly held a session at which they devised the idea of disease as a just revenge. The members of the council named diseases “one after another,” with the grubworm hailing “each new malady with delight” and finally falling over backward in a fit of vengeful joy. (This is why, the narrator informs us, grubworms have crawled on their backs ever since.) The animals were plotting nothing less than extermination.

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