Plants Always Win

If you’re looking to build a relationship with the land that feeds you, you can start by embracing the wisdom of the Internet’s Mushroom Auntie.

Gabrielle Cerberville, a.k.a. your new Mushroom Auntie, a.k.a. The Chaotic Forager, has spent her academic life collecting degrees in music. If you catch her in the forest, however, she’s more likely to be collecting mushrooms and plants for cooking and preservation. She’s known online as a mycologist and foraging educator, and—more recently—as the author of the book Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life – An Illustrated Adventure in Wild Food, Self-Discovery, and Honoring Earth. Part memoir, part field guide, part cook book, and part guided nature meditation, Gathered is 100% an invitation to connect more deeply and authentically with the earth. This week, Gabrielle joins Erin and Sean to discuss its writing, the deeply collaborative process of its editing and fact-checking, and the interconnectedness of nature, food, politics, and community.

ChaoticForager.com 

Instagram: www.instagram.com/chaoticforager

TikTok: www.tiktok.com/@chaoticforager 

YouTube: www.youtube.com/channel/UC0LqNI92KujRLCj-247ve3w

Facebook: www.facebook.com/chaoticforager

Purchase a copy of Gathered: www.harpercollins.com/products/gathered-gabrielle-cerberville?variant=43429934661666

Email us, reach out over social media, or get Q&A priority by supporting us on Patreon. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/K6wF9dY4Ja
Bluesky: @plantsalwayswin.com
TikTok: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
YouTube: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
Website: www.plantsalwayswin.com 

Can you forage on Crown land in Canada?

Using wood from Crown land for personal use. (2025, May 26). ontario.ca. https://www.ontario.ca/page/using-wood-crown-land-personal-use

Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays

License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

00:14 Introduction
01:10 Gabrielle Cerberville, Your Internet Mushroom Auntie
03:20 The Chaotic Forager and ADHD
05:16 The Myth of Being a Self-Taught Forager
08:29 Community Sufficiency, Not Self-Sufficiency
11:55 Gabrielle’s Music Education
14:35 Marrying Music and Foraging: The Deep Ecology Project
19:01 How Gabrielle Develops Recipes with Foraged Foods
21:40 Foraging and Seasonality
23:30 The Honourable Harvest
26:37 Building a Relationship with the Land
31:04 Foraging on Public Land (Food Is Political)
40:48 The Process Behind Gathered
48:51 Gabrielle’s Shout-Outs
53:45 Outro and Contact Us

Feeding humanity doesn’t need to come at the Earth’s expense. Elspeth Hay is here to talk nut trees, ecosystems, and humans as keystone species. 

In 2019, Elspeth was a local food writer who felt despondent about humans’ need to tear up nature in order to feed ourselves. When she discovered that acorns are edible—that they had, in fact, once been a central pillar of an abundant North American food system—she was electrified. This week she joins Erin to talk about the book that resulted from her all-consuming research into that subject, Feed Us with Trees: Nut Trees and the Future of Food.

If you have ever felt like human beings are rootless and adrift without our own habitat or wild food that can sustain us, this conversation will open your eyes and seize your heart. Erin and Elspeth discuss the oak savannas and chestnut trees that, managed by Indigenous peoples’ understanding of succession ecology, once fed the human and more-than-human life of a continent. They look at the still-living food culture of chestnuts in Switzerland, grieve over the politics that deliberately erased abundance at home, and embrace hope at the re-emergence of traditional land management practices in agroforestry and restoration agriculture. 

Join us in re-discovering our habitat and home. Who knows—maybe acorns will change your life, too. 

Website: https://elspethhay.com/
Instagram: @elspethhay
The Local Food Report: https://www.capeandislands.org/podcast/the-local-food-report
Feed Us with Trees: https://newsociety.com/book/feed-us-with-trees/?aff=65 

Email us, reach out over social media, or get Q&A priority by supporting us on Patreon. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/K6wF9dY4Ja
Bluesky: @plantsalwayswin.com
TikTok: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
YouTube: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
Website: www.plantsalwayswin.com 

Credits
Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays

License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

00:14 Introduction
01:00 Feed Us with Trees: Nut Trees and The Future of Food 
01:48 Elspeth’s Career in Food and the Environment
02:41 The Lightbulb Moment: Humans Can Eat Acorns
03:27 It Never Made Sense to Me That We Didn’t Have a Habitat
07:39 The Chestnut Huts of Switzerland: A Living Food Culture
09:46 Our Grief and Homesickness for Connection to Place and Species
10:43 The Land of Opportunity Myth
13:07 Oak Savannas and Chestnut Groves: Pillars of an Indigenous Food System
14:39 Food is Politics: The Deliberate Dismantling of Abundance in North America
19:40 Trespass Laws Were Created to Control Formerly Enslaved Foragers
22:00 How Capitalism Makes Food Political
23:47 The Movement to Revive Perennial Food Ecosystems
26:50 Ecological Succession and Embracing Traditional Land Management
30:41 Oaks as the Tree of Life, Biodiversity Champions
32:00 Nature Preserves Are the Wrong Approach. The Land Needs Us.
34:17 Hazelnut Basketry and Kuruk Culture to Elspeth and Erin’s Willow Basketry
37:42 The New Forest in England: An Unenclosed English Farm
40:20 Elspeth’s Recommended Resources
41:50 Elspeth’s Shout-Outs
44:26 Parting Words of Wisdom
45:12 Outro and Contact Us

For this episode, a class of elementary-school students prepared a list of questions about plants for Sean and Erin to answer. The best part, of course, is that these are questions few adults would think to ask, and they let our hosts explore all sorts of fascinating topics. How did plants come to be the way they are? Why did they evolve to have roots (or no roots!) and leaves and fruit? What makes one tree grow big leaves while another one has narrow needles? We talk evolutionary niches, the tree of life, food chains, and even how plants move water and sugar through their cells. 

Step into our plant-life classroom and see what you can learn from the curiosity of children!

Email us, reach out over social media, or get Q&A priority by supporting us on Patreon. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/K6wF9dY4Ja
Bluesky: @plantsalwayswin.com
TikTok: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
YouTube: @plantsalwayswinpodcast
Website: www.plantsalwayswin.com 

Credits
Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays

License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

Bryophytes and Tracheophytes? Categories of Plants With and Without Roots
Plant diversity. (n.d.). NatureWorks. https://nhpbs.org/natureworks/nwep14b.htm 

The Parts of a Leaf
Libretexts. (2022, May 4). 13.1: Leaf parts and arrangement. Biology LibreTexts. https://bio.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Botany/A_Photographic_Atlas_for_Botany_(Morrow)/13%3A_Leaves/13.01%3A_Leaf_Parts_and_Arrangement 

Making Paper from Plants at Home

Quillen, K. (2023, October 3). How to make paper from plants – Mother Earth news. Mother Earth News – the Original Guide to Living Wisely. https://www.motherearthnews.com/diy/making-paper-from-plants-zm0z17jjzqui/

Lipman, B. (2024, October 16). Paper from Iris and Daylily. https://www.handpapermaking.org/post/paper-from-iris-and-daylily 

00:13 Introduction
01:13 What’s Growing On: Sean’s Seed Saving
02:56 What’s Growing On: Erin’s Season Extension
05:53 Do All Plants Have Roots? Let’s Talk Bryophytes
06:08 Plants’ Vascular Systems: Xylem and Phloem
08:40 Why Do Plants Need Roots?
11:15 Many Types of Roots
12:29 What is the Blade on a Leaf?
14:40 Why do Oak Leaves Get So Big?
20:22 How Fast Can Some Flowers Grow?
26:17 Why Do Plants Grow Food?
32:51 How Do Plants Survive the Winter?
41:38 Erin’s New Picture Book: If You Go Walking
42:58 How Do You Make Paper with Plants?
46:10 Paper Recycling Tangent
47:06 Making Paper from Daylilies and Iris
54:33 Outro and Contact Us

This episode is what happens when two people’s loves for venus flytraps, spooky season, and movie musicals collide. 

Yes, we’re doing nerdy Halloween horticulture by analyzing the representation of carnivorous plants in the classic musical Little Shop of Horrors—specifically the 1986 movie version. If you  haven’t seen the show, don’t worry; we set the stage for you and save any late-story spoilers for the very end. For the most part, we’re interested in one question: based on our knowledge of real-world carnivorous plants, how reasonable were Seymore’s guesses when he first tried to care for Audrey II? This requires, of course, an exploration of Venus flytraps’ habitat and habits, how they reproduce, and of the care they need to thrive in our homes. 

The movie does raise one more hypothetical, and I’ll put this in code for our listeners who still need to watch it: that ending. Would it really have worked? We get a buzz out of exploring the idea.

Email us, reach out over social media, or get Q&A priority by supporting us on Patreon. 

Discord: https://discord.gg/K6wF9dY4Ja

Bluesky: @plantsalwayswin.com

TikTok: @plantsalwayswinpodcast

YouTube: @plantsalwayswinpodcast

Website: www.plantsalwayswin.com 

Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays

License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

Little Shop of Horrors

Oz, F. (Director). (1986). Little shop of horrors. The Geffen Company.

Venus flytrap Overview

Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula). (n.d.). iNaturalist. https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/52666-Dionaea-muscipula

Venus flytraps benefit from fires

Venus Flytrap. (n.d.). National Wildlife Federation. https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Plants-and-Fungi/Venus-Flytrap

A chemical signal from the flytrap’s prey stimulates the secretion of enzymes.

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center – the University of Texas at Austin. (n.d.). https://www.wildflower.org/plants/result.php?id_plant=dimu4

Overwintering your venus flytrap

Little Shop of Horrors. (2025, January 12). Overwintering Venus flytraps. Littleshopofhorrors.co.uk. https://www.littleshopofhorrors.co.uk/over-wintering-venus-flytraps/ 

00:39 Introduction

01:35 What’s Growing On: Sean’s Winter Prep

02:20 What’s Growing On: Erin’s Tomatoes and Greenhouse Build

03:10 Sean’s Pumpkin-Deer Showdown

05:48 Water Break

06:00 Setting the Scene: Little Shop of Horrors

07:44 How Carnivorous Plants Eat

11:26 Can a Carnivorous Plant Survive on Human Blood?

12:46 Venus Fly Trap Etymology

15:50 How the Venus Fly Trap Grows

18:35 Audrey II’s Structure vs. Venus Fly Trap Structure

21:39 Taking Care of Audrey II vs. a Venus Fly Trap

32:24 Overwintering Your Venus Fly Trap

34:51 SPOILER WATER BREAK

35:20 Propagating a Venus Fly Trap vs. Audrey II

41:28 Ethical Purchasing of Venus Fly Traps

42:49 Buying Cool Cultivated Varieties

43:33 Can You Kill a Plant with Electrocution?

47:29 Conclusion and Contact Us