100. Plants to the Rescue!

What's up, Plant People! After a much longer-than-expected hiatus, I'm finally back with Episode 100! It's been a wonderful 4(ish) years, and I thought the perfect way to celebrate the past and look forward to the future was to talk about a project that's so close to my heart and that I haven't really had a chance to discuss much on the show. My first book, Plants to the Rescue, came out in July of 2023 and is something that means so much to me. Join me as I walk through the process of writing a book like this, from the basic ideas to publishing, and read a few excerpts of text with me! I also talk a bit about what's coming down the line for Planthropology in 2024, from interviews with a climatologist to a video game producer, and so much more! It's going to be an exciting year, as the show gets going again, and I can't tell y'all how much it means to me that you hung in with me through such a long break. I love all of you Plant People out there, and can't wait to spend more time with you this year! 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:10

What is up? Plant people it's time once more for the Plant Propology podcast, the show where we dive into the lives and careers of some very cool plant people to figure out why they do what they do and what keeps them coming back for more. I'm Vikram Maliga, your host and your humble guide in this journey through the green sciences and, as always, my dearest friends. I am so excited, so very excited, to be with you today. Y'all has been far too long since I've gotten to say that, like six months, maybe more, I don't know. It's been quite a while and I do owe you an explanation for that. If you're a long-term listener, if you're new, this is as good a place to start as any. In as far as you know, I had never took a break at all, so welcome back from last week or today or whenever you're listening. Y'all, this one's going to be a little bit different. I'm trying some new things with the podcast as we sort of get back into it and get it rolling again, and this officially, officially is episode 100. Episode 100. Y'all, I started the show in 2019 in what? November of 2019. I think the first real episode came out 2019, in November, and so it's been over four years, like four years in change, and it's just incredible how many cool people I have gotten to meet and how much I've gotten to do as a result of this show, and I'm just so excited that we get to do it again and that we're trying new stuff. If you are listening on your normal favorite podcast device, welcome back.

Speaker 1: 1:43

I'm glad to be in your earphones or in your car speakers once more, but now we're going to add a video element to this podcast, so you may be watching this on YouTube. You may be watching clips on social media of the show. I don't know, I'm just trying some new stuff. We're going to see how it goes. The reason I'm doing video now is we've got some really, really, really, really very exciting guests coming up. I'm probably not going to video every episode. I'll do quite a few of them, but I don't know. I just wanted to try something new and I hope that you will bear with me as I figure it out. I don't really know how to look at the camera for this. I do tons of social media and stare at my phone all the time, but this is a very different ordeal. So if you're watching online, if you're seeing my mouth move. I'll get better at this.

Speaker 1: 2:30

If you're listening, feel free to disregard the last 30 or 40 seconds, but I was trying to decide what to do for episode 100. And I've got some great guests coming up. I've got, I think, five recordings scheduled in the next three or four weeks, and actually more than that. I'm really excited. But one thing I've never gotten to do a full episode about, because I took a hiatus as it was sort of all happening and coming out, is I want to discuss my book, plants of the Rescue. That came out in July of 2023. So, as you listen to this, it's been out actually about six months, and I just wanted to reflect on the experience of writing this book and what the process looked like, how I came up with the ideas and just what that looks like and what it means, I think, for the way that I'm approaching science, communication in my life and approaching even parts of my career, because it's fundamentally changed the way I think about some things, and also I'm very proud of this book. I'm very proud of this book and I want you to maybe be excited about it too. I wanted you to hear a little bit more about it, so we're going to talk about Plants of the Rescue today and I'm going to play some music at you. We're going to come back and talk about publishing and talk about talking to kids about plants. I love you, I'm glad you're here. Let's talk some more. All right, we're back.

Speaker 1: 4:09

So, first off, I do owe you an explanation, I think, especially if you've been someone who has been with me since the beginning and there are kind of a lot of you. I posted on social media a couple of days ago that I was about to start recording doing this again. I posted a picture of my new setup in here which you can kind of see. I'm in a new office. I've had some career and life changes recently which I'll talk about in a minute, but people were excited, like, what's that about? I'm glad you like listening. I'm glad that you've stuck with me through all of this. If you're keeping score, it's been about seven months or six and a half months since I put out an episode. I released a great interview with Sarah Sutherland, who is the absolute genius behind the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Social Media, and if you haven't listened to that, go back and listen to it.

Speaker 1: 4:59

It was episode 99. It's so good, it's so good, and I was like I'm going to take this is a great point to kind of like put a pin in it for a minute. I was going to take the summer off and like get through July and August because I was doing some travel from work and some other things. So I'm going to start right at the beginning of the semester, and about three days before the semester started we had some staffing changes at my university. I ended up with two extra classes that I had not planned on, as well as some other stuff that I ended up having to do sort of last minute and because of that I just did not have the time or the band with to record this show and I really in some ways regret that, like I wish I had had the time to do it. But it was a good opportunity for me to reset a little bit. I've been doing this every week or every other week more or less for four years, and it gets to be a lot. So I've kind of stepped back and re-evaluated how I want to approach the show. We'll talk at the end of the episode about what the future of plantarology looks like, but it's coming back probably every other week-ish and I'm just really excited about where it's going.

Speaker 1: 6:06

But again, as I was thinking about what to discuss for today's episode, maybe it's a shameless plug, maybe it is shameless self-promotion and if you know me, that's my only skill is shameless self-promotion I wanted to talk about plants to the rescue. This has been such a labor of love for me over the past couple of years in terms of the writing of the book, the promotion of the book, everything else, and it's something that I'm genuinely proud of. And also, if you know me, you know that's not something I say lightly or lightly. You know that's not something I say lightly Because I am rarely, if we're being very honest, proud of myself, and this is something that means a lot to me.

Speaker 1: 6:48

So, if you don't know, plants to the Rescue is a nonfiction kids book that I wrote and it's titled the Plant's Trees in Fungi. Yes, I cheated a little bit. They're solving some of the world's biggest problems and it's about things like the climate crisis, about pollution in our environment, about hunger and food supply. But it's also a hopeful take, I think. I hope I want it to be, on what the future of plant science and natural science look like. We discuss a lot of maybe partially speculative science things I don't think most of them are, because there are data and there are articles about what's happening in all these different fields but we talk about current technology and how it's helping us face our issues, as well as future technology and what future technology may look like and how us, integrating plants more and more into our lives again, can help with climate change and help with a lot of the things that we struggle with as a global society, as a species.

Speaker 1: 7:53

So I was approached about this book. Actually, thanks to you folks, in some ways, an editor, sam, who is just the best guy he's been so good to work with From NeonSquid, reached out to me in March I want to say February, march of 2022. So a couple of years ago, almost two years ago now. Wow, that's a little upsetting, it's been almost two years already but he reached out and said hey, we found the podcast, we listened to Plant Apology, we found some of your social media stuff which, again, you all have promoted and you all have been out there telling the good word of Plant Apology and said we've got an idea for a book and we're looking for an author to contract with which you'd be interested in doing it, and I missed the first email because of course I did. That's how my life goes. And thank goodness, sam had the grace to follow up a couple of weeks later and say hey, you know, I hope that you saw it. I, you know, I hope that you're interested. And I was like, oh my goodness, yes, absolutely I am.

Speaker 1: 9:00

I've wanted to write a book since I was probably I don't know a junior high. I grew up reading voraciously as a kid, as a teenager, even through college. It wasn't really till grad school that I shifted the things I read from fun stuff to journal articles and textbooks and stuff and my brain decided to start dissolving, as a grad school will do if you have been to grad school. But this opportunity was not necessarily something I was looking for and it's not how I saw myself or anticipated writing a book. I think I always wanted to be a fiction or science fiction author.

Speaker 1: 9:38

But my son, bradley who, if you go back and if you've been a long time friend of the show, you have heard his little voice on this show more than once and we're going to do that again this year. I can't wait to get Bradley back on the microphone because he's hilarious and my favorite little chaos Gremlin. But he was six when I started the process of writing this book and as we were going through the process of trying to figure out who, what age group it was for it was really for like eight to 10, eight to 12 year olds, so sort of what third through fifth grade, third through sixth grade, somewhere in there these middle readers, older elementary students and I was thinking about it I was like, well, you know, he's going to be in this target market Really by the time the book comes out. He's eight now. He just turned eight and he's always been a good reader and he's a great reader now and I was like how cool would it be for, at the age that he is, if I get to write a book for him and I'm going to, I might get emotional during this. I'm going to try not to. He's such a smart kid and he's so curious and he loves plants and he loves animals and he loves nature and I thought what a cool opportunity for me personally, just as a father and a scientist and a science communicator, to get to talk directly to my own kid through the process or in the process of writing a book for other people's kids, for kids that literally around the world now, and I said, yeah, let's do it, let's do it.

Speaker 1: 11:03

So we went through this process. They had a few of the sort of topics picked for the book already because they had to sell the book and they were looking again to contract with me as an author and then a separate illustrator, which, by the way, brian Lambert fantastic Our illustrator was so good for this. I cannot say enough about Brian and if you're watching online, you'll get to see some pictures from the book and hopefully, if you have the book if you don't have the book, you can get the book. We'll talk about that later. And so the way it kind of worked is this was not a chapter based book. It didn't have like set sections.

Speaker 1: 11:41

We wanted to talk about cool advancements in science, things that are happening now, things that have happened in the past with the planet, with scientific advancement, but also where we were headed in the future with plant science. So we picked about 30 different topics. This book's about 80 pages long. I picked like 30 topics and each of those topics gets like two pages, so it's a little bit more than that. There's some early material and end material maybe 33 topics and each one of them is fairly short. But they're intended to get kids interested in science, get kids interested in plant science and things like. Can spinach send emails? And if you hear these sounds in the mic, I'm sort of flipping through the book a little bit.

Speaker 1: 12:31

But just a few of the topics we covered. We talked about some of the challenges that we're facing as a species. We talked about what it means to grow plants and for plants to grow in a hotter climate. We talked about what we called super plants and picked a few super plants like bananas and aloe vera and a few others. We talked about plants that can glow in the dark and plants that can produce electricity for our cities. We talked about living bridges in greener cities and what growing plants for pollinators might look like and the value of prairies and all these different things. And they're all just short, little bites that are not extensive and they're by design not extensive because we didn't want this to be a textbook. I did not want this to be a textbook. I'd give enough textbooks in my life. I wanted it to be something that gets kids and readers excited about some of the topics so they can go do their own inquiry, so they can look into it more, so they can go to the library and check out a book about ficus trees and living bridges or go find articles on it or talk about how plants can clean the air. It's just supposed to be a jumping point in an overview of some of the things that are happening in the world of plants.

Speaker 1: 13:49

My wife, alana, for a long time was an education director at our local science museum and she actually retired we're going to say retired this summer to be able to spend more time with Bradley and pursue some different things and that's been awesome. But one of my favorite stories she tells is about this dad who would come in with his daughter to the museum and every time they would come in they would be sort of sort after something else. I don't know if that's the right way to say it, but this little girl would be pursuing a new area of interest and Alana got to talking to this dad and he said, yes, she gets excited about, say, physics or astronomy and they'll go to the library and check out a book or a couple of books about physics and astronomy and they will deep dive into it for a while. Right, they will learn what there is to learn about it. And then, when she's interested in something new, they go find that new thing to dive into.

Speaker 1: 14:50

And I think about that a lot, in the way that we chase our interests as people, with scientists, as people who want to learn about the world around us, because I think we silo ourselves a lot and it's like this is the thing I have to do and I have to learn about. This is the only thing I can learn about forever and I'm going to spend 30 years in school. These are, you know where my scars live, you can tell, studying them and figuring them out, when really it's like, oh, this thing is cool this week. What if I spend a week learning about this and the next week, this thing is cool? And then eventually we drill down into what our interests are and where we're passionate and what we want to chase after in our lives. So as I wrote this book, I was thinking about this little girl who I've never met, this dad who I've never met but who threw a lot of me, such a big impact on my life, because I want that kid to be able to be like. You know what? I think it's so cool that we can build buildings out of wood. I'm going to go study that for weeks. I think it's amazing that we can propagate plants by taking cuttings of them. I'm going to go take some cuttings from my yard and propagate plants for a week or two. I want that kid to have some new ideas and I want them to find things to dive into and learn more about. So if this one book is all they ever read about plants, that's cool too. I hope that they get a lot out of it. But I hope that this book is the first of dozens or hundreds of books and articles and pieces of information and classes and a lifetime of learning in the plant sciences that that a lot of kids get. That's my goal. That's why I wrote this. That's why I said yes to this and it's been so much fun. It's been so much fun.

Speaker 1: 16:32

This was like a year long process. I thought I'd talk a little bit more about the publishing side of it, kind of what we did and what that looks like, where some of the ideas came from, and then I actually, after the break, want to read a couple of excerpts of this to you in case you're interested, okay, and so we'll talk now, I think, about the publication process and the ideas for this book. So, like I mentioned, they contacted me and this was not a traditional, maybe publishing relationship. This was more of a freelance, like contract style Publishing relationship, which I was cool with. I think that that's not a bad way to approach it. I was a first time author. I didn't really know what I was doing in. It kind of takes some of the pressure out that if it does really well, great, that's awesome, it's good for everyone. If it Flops, then I still kind of get a lot out of it and get the experience. You paid something for it and that was cool.

Speaker 1: 17:30

And so we went through the the year of sort of the writing process. I think I started writing In March of 2022 and the final draft was due in like November, so not quite a year, but I think before like a final product was done. It took about a year and it came out July 11, 2023, a Week or so after my birthday, which was kind of a cool birthday present. I got to do a book signing Y'all. I got to do a book launch. Who gets to do that and whose life is this. I think that was so cool. So a local bookstore hosted us for a book signing when the book came out and that was just one of the coolest experiences, one of the coolest things.

Speaker 1: 18:08

But we went through this process. We it was interesting because they had the idea for the book, they had the title for the book Plants to the Rescue and the general concept of we want to do little bites of scientific things that will kind of make this larger story about plant science. And they, like I said, written the first couple or come up with the first couple topics. But beyond that they were like, okay, go, we need this many pages, we need this many additional topics, let's figure it out. And so I came up with a list and I got the topics for one by talking to Bradley about maybe things he thought was interesting. I went through popular science magazines and like current news and plant science and I even read some interesting publications on like speculative plant science.

Speaker 1: 18:56

But I also started thinking about, as someone who teaches college students intro horticulture students, what questions do they ask at 18, 19, whatever years old? What do they think is interesting? What questions do they have about plant science? What are the little like factoids that stick with them. I was like, oh, I've got limitless content, limitless content, and so not everything worked.

Speaker 1: 19:22

Obviously there were some things that didn't quite fit the brief well enough and maybe we had to pivot on some things. But so many of the ideas for this book and a lot of the discussion points came directly from one talking to Bradley, doing research on my own online, but just questions that I was asked by my students. And okay, if these 18, 19 year olds had seen this for the first time in the third grade, at nine, 10 years old, what would that have meant for the course of their studies in their life, what they have like grabbed onto one of these things as a kid and been more of a sort of plant and nature conscious young adult. And those were my thoughts as we formed some of these topics and you know again, going back and forth all of that, we figured out okay, these are our topics. We organized and reorganized and reorganized them over and over and I saw a review of the book, which I don't know.

Speaker 1: 20:21

The reception has been really good. People have been very, very kind about plates to the rescue, online and everywhere else, but I saw a review from a so I guess, professional or sort of bigger name book reviewer that said, like the content's good, it's very hopeful, all that, but it's sort of like scattershot. It jumps around a lot, it does and again, sort of by design, we didn't format this in chapters or anything, it's just all these different topics we're talking about and this is, if you actually look at this book, it's just kind of a good or scary or something picture of how my brain works, or better or worse, and so that's sort of how it was formed. And you know, with the process, I turned in my final draft, I think, november of 2022. Oh, one thing I was going to say, too, is that in the process, all the artwork that you'll see in the book, all the illustrations and I'll hold this up for the online folks and I'll hopefully have some some things that you can see on social media as well and find a good one. Where's a really good one? I mean, they're all good. This is cool.

Speaker 1: 21:29

And so this, this chapter or this spread, is called cactus bags and it talks about how some scientists have found ways that we can make like bio plastics out of prickly pear and other types of cactus, and these illustrations are honestly just gorgeous. Just just beautiful. And the way it sort of worked is that our illustrator, brian, I gave sort of text based like I wrote out my ideas for what I thought the spread should look like, the artwork on the spread should look like, and maybe included some reference pictures, and then he came up with just the most amazing product. Just incredible, honestly, like I envisioned how they would look in my brain and Brian just took it like 1020 leaps and bounds past that. I don't. I'm not creative in that way. So thinking about how to take like words on a page to the gorgeous illustrations is so foreign to me and I'm so impressed. And one thing you'll notice as you read through this book and look at the illustrations is how diverse it is. It represents a ton of cultures and peoples and it shows the folks with disabilities, that shows mixed and blended families, that shows all kinds of things that are such cool representations of how our world is. And I think there are so many kids that could see themselves in this book because they'll see a piece of our work in here. But that looks like me and my family and I love that, that I am as proud of that in this final product, as I am probably in my own writing and Brian's incredible work of turning this into something beautiful and fun and accessible is just. I cannot say enough about that. Cannot say enough about that. It's just just incredible.

Speaker 1: 23:17

And then we went back and forth. I started to be able to promote the book, I believe in March of 2023. So I started talking about the book on social media. We did pre-order, we did all that. It finally launched on July 11th and, like I said, I got to do a book signing and then I got to do like a virtual book signing and seminar through a bookstore in New York City as well, called Books of Wonder, and the bookstore here locally that I worked with was called Books of Second Chance Books and both of them were just so wonderful, it was so wonderful and it's just so wonderful and it's. I've had some cool opportunities to talk about the books on on the book, on podcasts and on social media and different things.

Speaker 1: 23:55

But I realized that again, I have not done an episode of the show since this book came out. I know I talked about it a little bit before the break, or my big long break, hiatus, whatever we want to call it hibernation, um, but never really in a lot of detail. So, again, I wanted to do a whole episode on this and I will say that working with neon squid was an absolute dream come true for a first time author. They were kind and flexible and generous with feedback and ideas and, um, they have been rock stars in terms of the whole publication process, the promotion of the book, just supporting me as an author and as a first time author, and the scientists and everything else. Just just really wonderful, really really genuinely so wonderful. I can't say enough about them. And um, also, neon squids is an imprint or a subsidiary of mcmillan kids international. Mcmillan books are the biggest publishers in the world and and the publication team from mcmillan as well that worked with us to promote the book and set up the book signings and things like that.

Speaker 1: 25:04

Just again, I'm new to publishing. I've got maybe some more things coming out in the future. Stay tuned. I've got some ideas and some feelers out for stuff, but I don't know what the publication process is normally like. I I hear mixed things and some horror stories and some really good stories, but I have to say that my experience, start to finish, was fabulous. Couldn't have been better. I I'm so happy to have been a part of it, so happy to be been a part of it.

Speaker 1: 25:35

Um, let's take a quick break. We'll go to a midroll. I'll say some different words that you. It's still just me. There's no guests this week, and then I want to read a couple of excerpts from the book, a couple of different spreads, and I want to talk about the future of plant apology, just a little bit before we wrap up, and I'll tell you about some of the upcoming guests. I want to keep some of it sort of a secret, but I'm really excited about some of the interviews I've got lined up and and then we'll go from there. So let's take a break and I'll be right back. Well, hey there, welcome to the midroll. My friends, I haven't gotten to do that creepy voice in a while and it brought me a little bit of joy. I'm not going to lie to you. Um, not too much to cover today at the midroll.

Speaker 1: 26:17

Find me on social media. I am plant apology pod on instagram. Plant apology underscore on whatever it is. The twitter is now x. I guess I'm not on there very much anymore. Plant apology on facebook um, I am also the plant prof and I've done started doing since the last time we met uh or spoke a lot more with my plant prof outlet. So instagram, youtube, hit, talk, others, I you can find me as well as of the plant prof if you want to send me an email. You've got tips for the show, ideas for topics or guests or whatever else. You can reach out to me at plant apology pod at gmailcom.

Speaker 1: 27:01

I was going to tell you that you could go to plant apology podcom and find all things plant apology, including old episodes and merch and everything else. But in the six months of out of sight, out of mind I had with the podcast, I apparently forgot to change my billing info with my website host and so now if you go to plant through policy podcom, it is an indonesian gambling website which is less than ideal, right? Yeah, not great. So I'm thinking about ways to approach that. I don't want to have to go pay an indonesian gambling website to get my domain back. So probably what I'm going to do is I'm working on my uh personal professional website, vicrambeligacom, and it'll probably be a slash plant apology where you can find all of those things and merch and stuff like that. Stay tuned. For now, just go hit me up on social media or send me an email. You can subscribe to plant apology anywhere you like to get your podcasts now, I guess including youtube, assuming that this video thing works. I'm trying very hard and I'm being very awkward and you probably can't hear it in my voice, but you can see it in my face. So yay for that.

Speaker 1: 28:16

Thanks so much to the texas tech department of plant and soil science for continuing to support the show. Thanks to the davis college of agricultural science and natural resources for also doing likewise. I've got some great guests from my college and from my department coming on the show over the spring and summer. And thanks to you most of all for listening and for sticking with me and for being my friends and for the great engagement and conversation and all the love you've shown me over the past four years and change um y'all. It has meant the world to me and I mean that more than I can tell you. And, uh, just thanks for being a part of it. So, uh, I'll start rambling about that. We will listen to some more music for just a second and then we'll be back with a couple of readings from the book. Okie dokie, we are back.

Speaker 1: 29:13

So I picked three spreads from the book, or three topics from the book to read, and I'll tell you why I picked them, as as I do and I don't know exactly how to facilitate this, because the way that this is is format is it's not just like a block of text, there's little text blocks and, again, if you're watching this clip somewhere, if you're watching online, you can kind of see that there's just areas of text, but I think it'll still read, ok in this venue. And, um, if you want to see some of the images, all it'll probably do is in the show notes or in the blog post that goes with this episode. I'll just take pictures of the spreads so you can look at them and sort of follow along. If you'd like, I will give you a second. Okay, good enough.

Speaker 1: 29:58

So the first one that I'm going to read is called spinach emails. Spinach emails, and the reason I wanted to read this one is because when neon squid reached out to me about writing for them, they wanted a writing sample, and so I don't know how to do that. So they asked for like 250 words or something on a topic that would be fun for kids and I had just read an article on this, and so what you read here it's changed a little bit from the original form, but this is the actual pitch, or a writing sample. I sent into neon squid to get approved to write this book, so that was kind of cool. So spinach emails and, if you can see this, there's a picture of spinach, the spinach emails, and there's little envelopes like they're sending emails. So scientists at the massachusetts institute of technology or mit have created spinach the consent emails. You read that right? This, of course, leads us to two important questions how and why? The answers are all to do with the spinach plants.

Speaker 1: 30:59

Roots and the spinach roots are very sensitive to their environment. It shows roots from a spinach plant establishing out through the soil the root of the problem. Spinach plants grow big root systems. These roots suspend their time exploring the soil, looking for water and nutrients to help them grow. Turns out they can find many other things than that as well, things that can teach us more about their environment too. From microorganisms to harmful chemicals, spinach roots can provide us with lots of information. Nanotechnology, by the way, is defined as the science of really tiny things, so nanotubes are used to make most of the information spinach roots can provide.

Speaker 1: 31:42

Scientists had to figure out a way of getting inside spinach plants with their technology, and the way they did it was by implanting tiny carbon nanotubules inside the leaves and it's kind of it's hard to see, but there's a very happy little spinach right there Seeing very happy little spinach. There's a message from spinach that says spinach, something here you should see, guys and inside to say nice work agent spinach. And there's a bunch of emails from spinach to say from spinach, pollution detected from spinach all clear today from spinach worm problems. From cabbage we need to talk. If you ever get an email from your cabbage that says we need to talk, you should be concerned. Those conversations never go well, especially with cabbage. They're infamous for really hard conversations. And then another section says you've got mail. When the spinach plants pull up water with toxins or other harmful chemicals dissolved in it, the tube sends signals back to a monitor that emails the information back to scientists. This technology could be used to record changes in soil, warning us about pollution, climate change and other problems. At this moment in time the technology isn't being in the used in the real world, only in research settings. But give it time. And then these scientists are high fiving and everyone's very happy. I would be very happy to if my spinach sent me an email. Again. I would be concerned if I got a cryptically worded. We need to talk email from my cabbage, okay, another one that I was very excited about. That I really like.

Speaker 1: 33:15

This is some of my favorite artwork in the book actually is glow in the dark plants. So again, glow in the dark plants. And it shows a variety of different house plants and some other things basil and watercress and a few other things that are glowy, and there's a squid that is also glowy and a firefly who you guessed? It glowy. And in the top right corner there's a woman reading a book by plant light. So, glow in the dark plants. We've all used bedside lamps and nightlights, but what if you could be reading this book by plant light?

Speaker 1: 33:52

Scientists have discovered they can make plants glow in the dark. How it works to make a plant grow scientists inject its leaves with nanoparticles that can absorb light energy and release it slowly at night. In the future, genes from glowing animals can be added to plants so they would be able to naturally grow. Bioluminescence is lots of fun. There's a whole nature cat song about it. You should look it up. It's very good. What a bright idea. Scientists have managed to make water crest glow as well as basil. So what's the point? Glowing plants may sound silly, but they can have a huge impact.

Speaker 1: 34:27

Electric lights use a lot of energy and they can mess with animals that navigate by starlight or the dark to hunt. Imagine roads lined with glowing trees, bright enough to see where you're going, but soft enough to be wildlife friendly. Also, how cool would it be if your favorite houseplant was also your lamp? I think that would be very cool. I might take better care of my favorite houseplants. I'm not a good houseplant caretaker. I don't know if I should admit that to y'all, but it's the truth. I kill a lot of houseplants. I'm not. I'm not good at glowing in nature.

Speaker 1: 34:59

Plenty of things in nature already glow. This is called bioluminescence and it's caused by chemical reactions. Deep sea squid and anglerfish use their ability to glow to hunt in the dark, while fireflies light themselves up to attract mates. By studying these animals, scientists have a better idea of how to make plants grow. This is scientists from MIT made plants that glow for more than an hour. That's pretty cool If you look this up and read into it a little bit more, you'll see that they didn't glow very brightly for an hour. But the fact that we can make a plant glow for a full hour, that's incredible to me. That's so cool. They don't normally do that. If you didn't know, if you weren't aware, if you don't spend a lot of time around plants at night, they typically don't glow.

Speaker 1: 35:47

The last spread I want to read to you is called Save the Prairies. I like this one because I live on a prairie. West Texas where I live is native short grass prairie. So yes, if you walked around where I live today, it's a lot of agricultural land and cotton fields and pastures and things like that. But if you were to go back, even a couple of hundred years, this was all short to medium grass prairie, one to three to five foot tall grass, about as far as you can see, really an endless sea of foliage, and there were natural springs and there were large animals.

Speaker 1: 36:20

Prairies are so important to me personally because I think it's just one of the coolest ecosystems out there, but on a grander scale. To us as a global ecosystem, as a planet, we really need prairies, and so this spread is called Save the Prairies and I love this artwork too. It shows a prairie with bison and a number of wildflowers and bumblebees and all kinds of other things, and it's really cool. And, by the way, if you're in a very national park, don't pet the fluffy cows. A bison however big you think a bison is, you're wrong. I promise they're twice the size that you think they are if you've never seen one in person. An unimaginably large beef right Big animal. Okay, anyway, I digress Save the prairies.

Speaker 1: 37:09

Prairies are unique ecosystems made up mostly of grasses. They also contain a huge mix of flour shrubs, herbs and other plants that you normally won't see many trees. When we talk about ways to fight climate change, prairies often don't come into the conversation, but they're incredibly important. As prairie plants grow, die and decompose year after year. They feed and shelter wildlife, take CO2 out of the atmosphere and add nutrients back into the ground. If we take care of them, these amazing ecosystems can help us save the world Globally. Prairies trap about as much carbon and produce as much oxygen as all the trees. And then it shows a picture of a non-native prairie grass, or like a landscape grass with a short little root system, and then a picture of a native prairie grass that has a deep, powerful, far-reaching root system, which, by the way this is an aside, but that's really important you want. It creates root channels for water to get down into and adds nitrogen to the soil all kinds of things, anyway, home on the Prairie.

Speaker 1: 38:11

Prairies are homes to many different animals. It's common to find hundreds of different insects, rodents, birds, lizards and even big mammals such as bison and antelope. The rich diversity of plants provide food for the big animals and plenty of places to live, hide and hunt for the small ones. Medicinal plants Many medicines we use today come from plants that live in the world's prairies. The grasses, flowers and shrubs of these incredible places are extremely valuable to our health, from echinacea that boosts our immune systems and helps us keep from getting sick, to yarrow that can help to treat wounds.

Speaker 1: 38:46

Native plants are those that naturally live in an area or country. They tend to be well suited to the environment and can grow and thrive with very little care, often sending roots farther down into the ground and producing bigger plants than non-native species. And then, finally, there's a tiny little section on prairie style gardening. Although city landscapes are not natural, there are many things we can do to make them more environmentally friendly. Picking prairie plants that are well-adapt to deer climate means they require less watering and fertilizer. Plus, you don't need to use pesticides, because the plants will attract bugs and birds that will take care of the pests for you. So this is an appeal, along with a couple of future sections in the book, to use native plants and pollinator friendly plants. But those are just a couple of sections I thought that it'd be fun to talk about on this podcast and read to you.

Speaker 1: 39:35

And again, if you look at the cover of this book, like it's just, it's just so pretty, it's so pretty and I know I'm biased, but it's so pretty. And as I was trying to decide which spreads to read to you today, it was a little bit like trying to pick a favorite child. For me that's easy because I only have the one, but I imagine if you had multiple children you're not really supposed to have a favorite. But the three I read, I think, mean a lot to me for a variety of reasons that I explained a little bit, but all of them, I think, were such good information. It was a lot of fun to write and I hope it's something that if you have bought it, that you and your family are enjoying.

Speaker 1: 40:08

I've had some wonderfully kind feedback from friends and even people I've never met internet acquaintances, people I'm not connected to directly in any way, that have said just the most wonderful things about the book. A couple of things about it. If you'd like to pick up a copy of the book, it's available on Barnes, noble and Books of Wonder and Amazon and pretty much everywhere online, and you're welcome to go pick it up there. I'm working on getting set up so that I can directly sell signed copies of the book if you would like that, along with maybe some anthropology stickers and some other swag to go along with it. I'm not quite done with that. I'm hoping to get that set up over the next two or three weeks and I'll let y'all know how and where you can purchase a signed copy directly from me when that gets sorted out.

Speaker 1: 40:55

But if you want to buy it before that, by all means please go to a local bookstore and request it or check out an online book seller Amazon or anything else that's available. I believe right now it's on sale for about $14, something like that, and again, I hope that it's something that if you do buy it, and no pressure to buy it. Please don't misunderstand me. I would love for this to be on your bookshelf at home, but I just also am so appreciative that you listened to me talk about it for the last I don't know 30 minutes or so, 40 minutes or so. So, again, plants of the Rescue out for the past six months. It's available everywhere and I hope that it's something that you will add to your bookshelf. If you think that it's something that you and your family would enjoy, and do go pick it up one of these days. Let me know what you think, send me some feedback, email it to me or review it online somewhere or post a picture on social media. It would mean a lot just for helping promote the book and just letting me know that maybe I hit the mark, or even if I missed the mark in some places. I would love to know your thoughts. Finally, as we wrap up here in the last couple of minutes, I just want to talk about the future of plant apology, because this is again something that's very important to me and, as far as I'm concerned, we're back at it.

Speaker 1: 42:13

It is likely never going to be a weekly podcast again. That just really got to be a lot for me and with all my other teaching responsibilities and things in my role here at Texas Tech has changed a little bit. You'll know, if you're a longtime supporter of the show or friend of the show, that I have for many years ran the greenhouse and horticultural gardens on campus as well as teaching, and I've actually hired a new greenhouse manager to take over the day to day at the greenhouse and gardens. I am still overseeing there, I'm still very involved there, but I've sort of stepped out of that role and I've turned it over and I'm into full time more or less teaching now. So I'm still teaching intro horticulture but also be teaching sustainable vegetable production, starting in the fall, as well as some other stuff. So there's some other content that will come from that as well.

Speaker 1: 43:00

But as part of this I'm probably going to try to release an episode every other week. So you know 25 episodes a year, something like that. 26 episodes a year. There may be times when there's extra content that I put out, so it may be closer to 30. But through 2024, I'm going to commit to doing at least every other week and I've got some really cool interviews lined up from faculty that I work with in viticulture and analogy, in weed management, in communications and other things in the green sciences. I have a super exciting interview with a guest. I've been trying to get on the show for like two years and I don't want to ruin the surprise, but she is a top notch climate scientist, communicator and one of just the nicest people I think out there. I'm talking to someone later this week who has been working to produce a gardening video game and all kinds of stuff. Award winning florists and some of the other folks from sort of the podcast, the nature podcast universe, will be popping up throughout the next few months of plantarology, so really good stuff coming up.

Speaker 1: 44:13

If you've been enjoying the show, if you're just discovering the show and you think you like what you hear, go, drop me a rating and review wherever you can, whether that is on pod chaser or Apple podcasts, anywhere in between. Let me know what you think. Again, send me an email at plantarologypod at gmailcom, connect via plantarology or the plant prof online and just just be involved. I am so grateful to you for again engaging with the show, for listening to the show and just being a part of what we're doing here at plantarology, so it's good to be with you again. It's good to be back at it. You know I love you. Keep being kind. If you have not been kind to date, maybe give that a shot. It's pretty cool. Keep being the coolest plant people I know and I will talk to you very, very soon.