In Defense of Plants Podcast

By In Defense of Plants

Natural Sciences Science & Medicine

What's In Defense of Plants Podcast about?

Plants are everything. They are also incredibly interesting. From the smallest duckweed to the tallest redwood, the botanical world is full of wonder. Join my friends and I for a podcast celebrating everything botany.

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Ep. 312 - The Importance of...

04.11.2021

Humans have been seed banking in one form or another for millennia. Whereas historically, seed banking has largely focused on agriculturally important plants, the practice has been expanded to protecting a multitude of species from extinction. Joining us in this ...

In Defense of Plants Podcast episodes:

04.11.2021 Ep. 312 - The Importance of Seed Banking Humans have been seed banking in one form or another for millennia. Whereas historically, seed banking has largely focused on agriculturally important plants, the practice has been expanded to protecting a multitude of species from extinction. Joining us in this ...
04.04.2021 Ep. 311 - How Oaks Get Around This episode is all about the fascinating world of oak seed dispersal. Many of us have undoubtedly enjoyed watching frenzied squirrels and jays hurriedly collecting and stashing acorns. But such observations are only the tip of the extremely complex iceberg ...
03.28.2021 Ep. 310 - Plants & Cities Cities are usually designed with only humans in mind, but that doesn't mean myriad other forms of life aren't adapting to live in these human-dominated landscapes as well. My guest today is Jasmin Green, a PhD candidate at UC Davis ...
03.21.2021 Ep 309 - Plants, Pollinators, Nature, and Society Pollination is arguably among the most important ecological processes on our planet. Entire careers have been devoted to trying to understand the countless nuances to plant pollination and yet we have only uncovered the tip of the iceberg. In this ...
03.14.2021 Ep. 308 - The Street Life of Trees What do street trees and oceanic islands have in common? It turns out a lot, at least from an ecological perspective. I sit down with Dr. Robert Warren to explore questions like do street trees constitute a functioning forest or ...
03.07.2021 Ep. 307 - Sleuthing to Save Plants A lot of detective work goes into saving plants from extinction and that is what we are discussing in this episode. Dr. Anne Frances joins us to talk about all of the plant sleuthing she does as NatureServe's lead botanist. ...
02.28.2021 Ep. 306 - The Art & Science of Rock Gardening Rock gardening is so much more than gardening with rocks. No one knows this better than Panayoti Kelaidis. A self-proclaimed acolyte in the cathedral of chlorophyll, Panayoti has spent a lifetime steeped in plants and gardening. As you will learn, ...
02.21.2021 Ep. 305 - In Defense of Plants In Defense of Plants is now a book! Hitting shelves on February 23rd, "In Defense of Plants: An Exploration into the Wonder of Plants" explores my introduction to the world of botany and the amazing ways plants make a living. ...
02.14.2021 Ep. 304 - Proteas: Protecting These Botanical Shape-Shifters For those with even passing familiarity, the proteas represent something akin to botanical royalty. This family of plants exhibits a bewildering array of forms, lifestyles, and habitat preferences, which is why they were named in honor of the shape-shifting Greek ...
02.07.2021 Ep. 303 - Lessons in Biogeography from Conifers This episode occurs at the intersection of botany and geology, two inseparable components of the natural world. For Dr. David Charlet, what started with curiosity about a seemingly out of place population of conifers has developed into a life-long obsession ...
01.31.2021 Ep. 302 - Community-Based Oak Conservation We expand further on the topic of oak conservation in this episode by looking at two examples of in situ oak conservation projects. Joining us from the Morton Arboretum is Tree Conservation Ecologist, Dr. Silvia Alvarez-Clare to discuss her amazing ...
01.24.2021 Ep. 301 - Oaks in Trouble Oaks (genus Quercus) are among the most culturally and ecologically important trees wherever they are native, which is what makes the next sentence so alarmingly depressing. The IUCN currently estimates that nearly 41% of all oak species are of conservation ...
01.17.2021 Ep. 300 - Reconstructing a Cretaceous Flora Imagine being able to travel back 120 million years to the Early Cretaceous and scoop up handfuls of the forest floor. The amount you would discover in that material would be mind blowing and, amazingly, this is essentially what my ...
01.10.2021 Ep. 299 - Aquatic Plants & Phytoremediation Grab your snorkel and goggles because this episode takes us underwater. I sit down for a conversation with Assistant Professor Dr. La Toya Kissoon-Charles about the ways in which aquatic plants both impact and are impacted by their watery environment. ...
01.03.2021 Ep. 298 - Living the Gypsum Life: How Geology Can Drive Speciation You may have heard of the mineral gypsum through its use in making plasters, chalks, and drywall, but are you aware of its influence on plant speciation? Indeed, soils heavy in gypsum present unique challenges to plant growth but that ...
12.27.2020 Ep. 297 - A Deep Dive on the Cashew Family What do cashews (Anacardium spp.), mangoes (Mangifera spp.), pistachios (Pistacia spp.), and poison ivy (Toxicodendron spp.) have in common? They are all members of the family Anacardiaceae! In this episode, I sit down with Deputy Executive Director at the United ...
12.20.2020 Ep. 296 - Expanding Your Barberry Horizon In this episode, we do a deep dive into the barberry family, Berberidaceae, with environmentalist, author, and garden designer Lyndon Penner. Many of us will be familiar with the Mahonias or the prickly barberry shrubs, but they overshadow some of ...
12.13.2020 Ep. 295 - Sniffing Out Solutions: How Dogs Can Help Us Save Plants Dogs are among our oldest companions. Our propensity for cohabitation and collaboration leads to unique bonds that are rare in the animal kingdom. In this episode we sit down with members of Rogue Detection Teams to talk about how some ...
12.06.2020 Ep. 294 - Herbaria: Past, Present, and Future This episode takes a deep dive into the past, present, and future of herbaria. I sit down with Director of the William and Lynda Steere Herbarium, Dr. Barbara M. Thiers about her new book "Herbarium: The Quest to Preserve and ...
11.29.2020 Ep. 293 - How Plants Fight Disease From plant conservation to food security, we desperately need to understand how plants fight disease. As you can probably imagine, the world of plant-microbe interactions is vast and complicated but that's where people like Dr. Kevin Cox Jr come in. ...
11.22.2020 Ep. 292 - Investigating the Black Market Trade in Dudleya farinosa Plant poaching is abhorrent and we can't work towards a solution without a proper understanding of the motivations behind it. That's where people like Dr. Jared Margulies come in. In this episode we sit down to talk about what he ...
11.15.2020 Ep. 291 - Tales from the Cliff: Preventing Brighamia Extinction From feral goats, pigs, and deer, to the extinction of it's suspected pollinator, the ʻŌlulu (Brighamia insignis) has a lot stacked against it. Yet, despite being extinct in the wild, the ʻŌlulu is surprisingly common in cultivation all thanks for ...
11.08.2020 Ep. 290 - The Chemical Symphony of Plant Perception Plant perception: few topics are the subject of more pseudoscience and misinformation than this one. Luckily there are people like Dr. Lauren Erland who exist to shine a scientific light on the topic. Dr. Erland studies, among other things, the ...
11.01.2020 Ep. 289 - The Personal Journey of Gardening Writer, naturalist, and gardener Dan Hinkley returns to the podcast to talk about his new book "Windcliff: A Story of People, Plants, and Gardens," which is a touchingly honest tale of his own journey in creating his own personal garden. ...
10.25.2020 Ep. 288 - Doin' Good by Grasses Whether we realize it or not, this planet and all life on it are influenced by grasses. Among the most important are grasses belonging to the tribe Andropogoneae. Members of this group include crops such as corn, sugarcane, and sorghum, ...
10.18.2020 Ep. 287 - Invasion Meltdowns Invasive species are second only to habitat destruction in causing loss of biodiversity on this planet. Moving one species to a habitat where it didn't evolve or even giving native species a new advantage can cause ripples that spread throughout ...
10.11.2020 Ep. 286 - Grappling With Plant Extinctions This episode is all about one of the most difficult topics in natural history - extinction. Plants set the foundation for nearly all life on Earth and yet they receive a mere fraction of the attention and effort needed to ...
10.04.2020 Ep. 285 - Eyes in the Sky: Plant Conservation's Aerial Assistant Treacherous topography can often serve as a safeguard for rare plant populations. Being difficult or even impossible to reach can protect plants from the myriad pressures that threaten them. Imagine what we could find tucked away among cliffs and ledges ...
09.27.2020 Ep. 284 - Trees in a Changing Climate Climates have always changed but thanks to human activity it is happening at an ever-increasing rate. For sessile organisms like trees, this often means either adapting in place or risk going extinct. However predicting the outcomes of climate change on ...
09.20.2020 Ep. 283 - The Cultural and Ecological Implications of the Salep Orchid Trade This episode is dedicated to the trade of a culinary ingredient that involves multiple orchid species. Salep is derived from the tubers of many terrestrial orchids and no one really understands how modern demand for this ingredient is affecting their ...
09.13.2020 Ep. 282 - The Rosid Radiation When we think of biodiversity and evolution, the tropical regions of our planet are frequently touted as hotspots for speciation. Indeed, the tropics house more species than most other regions, however, that doesn't mean that temperate areas haven't contributed to ...
09.06.2020 Ep. 281 - Sustainable Recreation & Plant Conservation There are many ways to make hiking one of the most sustainable and environmentally friendly activities on Earth, but building trails on rare and unique plant communities is not one of them. Sensitive plants and habitats can be destroyed in ...
08.30.2020 Ep. 280 - At the Intersection of Conservation and Horticulture In this episode we are joined by Conservation Horticulturist Emma Neigel of the Atlanta Botanical Garden to talk about the intersection of horticulture and conservation. When it comes to plant conservation, it isn't enough to just study why plants are ...
08.23.2020 Ep. 279 - A Pollinator Plant of the Year Program There is a lot of information out there on which plants to choose for your garden. Often this information is geared towards a wide audience living in vastly different climate zones. As such, it can be extremely difficult to figure ...
08.16.2020 Ep. 278 - Glossopteris: Resloving a Mystery 299 Million Years in the Making The Glossopteris flora is one of the most important links that we have to the Permian Era. These trees dominated the supercontinent of Gondwana from around 299 to 230 million years ago and their fossilized remains have dazzled the human ...
08.09.2020 Ep. 277 - Pitcher Plant Symbioses In this episode we look at what's going on inside the pitchers of carnivorous pitcher plants. Besides functioning as organs for prey capture and digestion, these highly modified leaves also serve as miniature ecological communities that have a lot to ...
08.02.2020 Ep. 276 - A Native Bee-nanza! With insects on the decline around the globe, the need for native bee understanding and appreciation has never been more apparent. While some native bees are super charismatic and well known,many more are cryptic and poorly understood. That is where ...
07.26.2020 Ep. 275 - Saving Sonora: The Green Desert The human population of the Sonoran Desert is growing quickly, developing the surrounding landscape at an alarming pace. At the same time, botanists are racing to understand the fate of this so called "green deserts flora." In this episode we ...
07.19.2020 Ep. 274 - Hollow Trees = Habitat Move over raccoons and squirrels, hollow trees have some additional residents to support. Joining us on this episode are Dr.'s Lary Reeves and Andrei Sourakov to talk to us about how hollow trees are proving to be great spots to ...
07.12.2020 Ep. 273 - Revolution in the Garden This episode we are joined by Colah B. Tawkin, host of the incredible Black in the Garden, a podcast that "resides at the intersection of Black Culture and horticulture." For Colah, gardening has been revolutionary in many ways. Join us ...
07.05.2020 Ep. 272 - Restoring the American Chestnut This episode is all about the work being done by The American Chestnut Foundation and their partners to save the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) from extinction. Ravaged by an invasive fungal pathogen, this tree went from a dominant species in ...
06.28.2020 Ep. 271 - The Ecological and Evolutionary Mysteries of Cannabis Cannabis - few plants have captured the attention of our species as these have. Both celebrated and demonized, our sociopolitical views on Cannabis have greatly hindered our understanding of this genus. From its origins to its chemical ecology, there are ...
06.21.2020 Ep. 270 - A Native Plant Based Life This episode is all about celebrating native plants both in the wild and in the garden. We are joined by environmentalist, author, and garden designer Lyndon Penner to talk about his life-long obsession with Canada's amazing diversity of native plants. ...
06.14.2020 Ep. 269 - Cultivating Peace One cannot overstate the power of gardening to calm the mind, reinvigorate passion, and bring people together. Understanding and growing plants is one of life's greatest joys and that is exactly the sentiment our guest this week wants to share ...
06.07.2020 Ep. 268 - How Small Flies Made A Lot Of Orchids In this episode, we are joined by PhD student Melissa Díaz-Morales and director of the Lankester Botanical Gardens Dr. Adam Karremans to look at how flies have managed to influence the evolution of the largest subtribe of orchids in the ...
05.31.2020 Ep. 267 - Describing & Protecting Palm Diversity Historically speaking, palm taxonomy has been a bit tricky. This is due in large part by the difficulty in collecting and preparing proper specimens. Thankfully, with the advent of affordable DNA technologies, botanists are gaining new insights into palm diversity ...
05.24.2020 Ep. 266 - After the Blast: The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens In May of 1980, Mount St. Helens erupted, creating a path of destruction for hundreds of miles. No one thought life would return to that stretch of mountain for decades but they were wrong. In only a few short weeks, ...
05.17.2020 Ep. 265 - Ancient Trees: Living on the Edge What does it take to live many hundreds or even thousands of years? For trees, it often means growing in places like cliffs where few other things can. My guest today has studied ancient cliff dwelling trees from all over ...
05.10.2020 Ep. 264 - The Longleaf Alliance Speaks for the Trees Longleaf pines once covered 90 million acres of southeastern North America. Today, human development has seen that number reduced down to 3 million acres. The decline in this tree has come at great cost to the ecosystems it once comprised. ...
05.03.2020 Ep. 263 - Earthworm Invaders This week we are joined by director of The University of Minnesota Center for Forest Ecology, Dr. Lee Frelich to discuss an invasive species problem that threatens plant diversity and ecosystem functioning wherever it occurs. Earthworms are very powerful ecosystem ...

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