Abstract
This article explores how empirical observations of trees' asexual reproduction challenged conceptions of plant individuality in eighteenth-century naturalist texts. The plant's ability to grow a whole individual from a cutting is the starting point of a dialogue between a Traveler and a Lady in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre's earliest publication. Rejecting the mechanistic model of the plant as a machine, the Traveler presents a fictional narrative echoing his vitalist and providential understanding of nature. After contextualizing the debate on vegetal uniqueness via analyses ofVallemont, Pluche, and Fontenelle, this study shows that Saint-Pierre temporarily reinvests the libertine imaginary of animate plants as a means of revivifying the vegetable kingdom.
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