Sorting Volodine’s Plants

Antoine Volodine’s Radiant Terminus (2014, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, 2017) names dozens of plants growing on its irradiated steppe. A few are real. Most are not. The list below is an exercise in botanical glossolalia: French folk-naming, Russian loanwords, mock-Latin coinages, and invented hagiography. The real ones A few genuine herbs to establish credibility, so that the rest of the list reads as belonging to the same botanical register. Absinthe is the bitter wormwood. savory sage white sage absinthe mint The Slavic and Siberian-sounding These sound borrowed from Russian. kvoina iglitsa chugda majdahar ashrangs bouralayans zabakulians lovushkas / Lovushkas-du-savatier The mock-French folk names The most beautiful and most clearly fabricated. French popular botany is full of compound names. Jeanne-of-the-Communists Marche-sept-lieues (seven-league-march) mère-du-lépreux (leper’s-mother) dame-exquises midnight Jeannes Damsels-in-flight prance-the-ruins pugnaise-des-errants…