This dissertation examines how the vegetal ecosystems of the Caribbean continue to enact the material afterlives of plantation slavery hundreds of years after its abolition. Indeed, the introduction of foreign plants, deforestation of native ecosystems, and depletion of soil nutrients that took place during the colonial era make the Caribbean islands some of the most radically altered landscapes in the world. While a small number of cash crops significantly enriched European empires, the diverse flora at the edges of plantations offered culinary, medicinal, and spiritual resources to enslaved Africans. Today, many of these once-peripheral plants are being commodified by global capital as “superfoods,” cosmetics, and biofuels. Understanding this recent trend as the latest incarnation of the plantation system, my project tells the stories of plants such as guinea grass, hog plum, and breadfruit from the colonial period to today to trace how their cultural meanings have shifted as their matter has been repurposed. I draw upon the Hispanophone, Anglophone, and Francophone traditions, including works by Miguel Barnet, Merle Collins, Édouard Glissant, and others, to understand how these plants figure in local knowledges and literature. This work responds to Kathryn Yusoff’s call to historicize the notion of environmental apocalypse by recognizing that the end of the world has already happened for some subjects. Knowing that ecological devastation has shaped Caribbean identity since its invention, my dissertation asks how people and plants have survived the catastrophes of the past to envision how they might creatively inhabit the altered landscapes of the future.