Ep. 565 - Let's Botanize!

Do you like gardening and wish you could be better at it? Do you like gardening content to celebrate both the wins and the failures and everything in between? Well, you're in luck because In Defense of Plants has an entirely separate podcast all about our journey to become better gardeners. It's so much fun. We're learning a ton. And the only way to get access to that podcast is by supporting the show over at patreon.com slash In Defense of Plants. I can't do this podcast unless you support it. So why not get an entirely separate podcast for doing just that? And as of February of 2026, all of our bonus episodes are available on Spotify. So you don't have to just go to Patreon to be able to stream. As I said, it's a lot of fun and it helps keep this show up and running. So I hope to see you over there. But in the meantime, on with the show. Hello everyone and welcome to the InDefensive Plants podcast, the official podcast of InDefensivePlants.com. What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How is everyone doing this week? Do you like field guides? Have you ever dabbled in keys? Do some of the terms and concepts surrounding approaching plant identification kind of confuse you? You wish you had more resources? Well, you're in luck because that is exactly the topic of the show today. My guests today probably don't need an introduction. Many of you will undoubtedly be aware of their efforts to spread the love of plants and help teach people how to approach botanizing. I'm, of course, talking about Drs. Ben and Jacob from Let's Botanize. Today, they're here to talk about their book by the same name, Let's Botanize. And this book is all about helping people approach plant ID in a very fun and less drab way. They've put a lot of thought into how to best approach this topic because let's be honest, a lot of plant identification means focusing on the minutia. But this book is a great step and a great reminder for those of us that are in it day in and day out. I don't want to steal any more of their thunder, so let's just jump right into it. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Drs. Ben and Jacob from Let's Botanize. I hope you enjoy. All right, Drs. Ben and Jacob, welcome to the podcast. It is so great to have you both on here. For those that aren't familiar with their work, how about we start with an introduction? Tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what it is you do. Glad to be here. Thanks for having us. I'm Bengule Scott. I'm one half of Let's Botanize, which is sort of the context that we're here in today. But during the day, I wear another hat. I work at Harvard Forest, which is Harvard's ecology research station. And I don't actually actively do research myself anymore. I work on the education programs out there. So I spend most of my days trying to get college students involved in ecology research. Nice. Important work. Yeah. And I'm Jacob Suisa, the other half of Let's Botanize. And yeah, when we're not working on the organization in the evenings and weekends and other things like that, during the day, I work as an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where I study the evolution of plant form and function with a particular focus on the ferns. Excellent. Great groups. and really important work on both ends. We got to get people into it. We also have to understand what the plants are doing out there. What brought you both to plants? I mean, it's obviously, it's a twisted journey for many of us. There's no recipe for succeeding in this world, but how did y'all get interested? Were you nature kids growing up and plants kind of fell into place or was it kind of always about plants? Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah, sure. I'll go first. So I was a nature kid growing up. Absolutely. I loved being outside, but for me, was mostly fishing and bird watching those were my my big things i was an animal person first i would say yes so many of us were yeah i mean there there's something yeah really intuitively sort of charismatic about animals but um as i started getting into school and thinking about studying i absolutely wanted to do biology that sort of nature kid interest never left me um and i became really interested in evolution and i followed that interest i did not really start in plants at all and um in undergrad and right after undergrad i worked on fruit flies and i was just studying evolutionary genetics fruit flies really great lab animals you know you can keep hundreds and hundreds in a very small area they're quick generation times and we know a ton about their genetics. But by the end of undergrad, I was really getting curious about field work. And one of the species that I worked on was from the Seychelles. It was endemic to the Seychelles. Another one was from Madagascar. I was like, man, do we ever get to go to the field and collect these things and see them in the wild? And the answer was no. I was kind of bummed out, but I knew I wanted to do grad school. And going to grad school, I had that real curiosity to try to do field work and so i was asking around as i looked at labs hey do you guys get to do field work do you get to field work and that is kind of how i ended up in a plant lab um it was a lab that studied evolution the same sorts of questions i was interested in about speciation how species form um but really it was because it turns out it's a lot easier to do field work in many ways with plants than it is with a lot of animal groups and so i literally got to grad school and had to take intro plant biology. I didn't have the background yet, but totally fell in love when I was there. Did get to do a ton of field work. That was really rewarding. Working with plants in the lab was really rewarding. And yeah, I haven't looked back. The rest is history, as they say. Yeah, I think my trajectory is a bit different. So I grew up right outside of DC in sort of the suburbs of Maryland. Um, and I was always, I was out, I was outdoors, um, a lot. I liked nature. Um, you know, it sort of rip oak leaves off trees and crack open acorns, but it never really manifested right until, um, I went to, uh, the university of Vermont for, for my undergraduate degree. And I think maybe like Ben, um, I was a molecular genetics major for all of like a week. um and then i uh i i went to one of those um you know club fairs for freshmen and stuff and um i just i just fell in love with um uh well i'm getting ahead of myself i met the folks who ran the horticulture club okay and then i took intro to hort uh to horticulture um and i fell in love with plants. I think what sort of like got me really excited was, I mean, something super simple that we learned in high school, right? But it really sort of clicked, I think, then was, you know, just how plants build their bodies through breathing, right? That sort of crazy phenomenon, right? And then, so actually, a lot of my early sort of exploration academically into plants was from this horticultural perspective. And then I got the opportunity to go study plants in a tropical field botany course in Costa Rica. And then I just fell in love with biodiversity. And I think it was really, and then of course, when you fall in love with biodiversity, you got to start studying evolution. And so I sort of went down this route of thinking about, you know, how and why do we live in a world with 11,000 fern species, you know, 300,000 flowering plants. And, um, and I think actually something really, really interesting is, is horticulture, I think primed me for thinking about that kind of stuff because, you know, you're, you're used to thinking about, um, variation and sports and mutations and artificial selection and that kind of stuff. Right. So it was a really actually interesting trajectory there. Um, and then after, you know, uh, sort of transitioning and focusing more on botany in undergrad. I went to Harvard to study my PhD or to do my PhD. That's where I met Ben. We were in different labs. We were both based at the Arnold Arboretum. And then that's actually where Let's Botanize was born. Nice. What I like about both your journeys, and I think it really comes through in the work that you do is that I think there's so much more to plants than I think even early education in that world gives them credit for. You learn about the parts of a flower or the anatomy of a cell, the plant cell, which is important. It's really good stuff to learn. But I think we give plants the short shrift in the sense of adventure, going out into the field, understanding plants in situ, or understanding biodiversity and looking at plants at the variety level, which is bewildering when you really think about it. You know, that documentary that went around Lister is about birds is great. It's so much fun. But it's so easy to have a big year in the bird world. Try and have a big year in the plant world. Like, what do you do? Like, I could spend a year in my lawn, right? Like, yeah. So, you know, I think what you just described there is the sense of adventure and experience that comes with plants that I don't think it's talked about enough. But you guys really do a good job of translating that and trying to teach the world about that. Because part of even, you know, no matter what way you slice what you guys do professionally or doing it, you know, in the social media world, it's about educating. It's about people getting excited about this stuff. And when did you guys start to kind of crystallize this idea of let's botanize and kind of shining a light on plants in a different way than most educational outlets do? Yeah, I just want to jump in. I think before we go down the origin story of Let's Botanize, which is always fun. We love to talk about it. I mean, you've been doing this for a long time. And so I think we like when we started this, we were definitely like looking to you and your organization and defensive plants as a, you know, as this sort of beacon of what good botanical science communication looks like. So just want to say that before jumping in, because I appreciate that. I think and I think we need more people like like like us, right? All of us here sort of thinking about this, doing this kind of stuff, because as you were just saying, right? Yeah. Plants do get the short end of the of the psychom stick, right? For lack of a better way to put that. I think it I think it nails it. I mean, again, it's it's it's recognizing that the way we approach them is important. You should learn those things. But the way we talk about them, the way we get people excited and that idea, especially like you said, where you start to think about plants as like they're breathing and eating and building themselves out of gaseous material. Like that, that blows a freshman's mind. If it's presented in the right way, we just never do that at the academic level in many cases. I'm sure we're changing tides now, but I didn't have that. Yeah. Yep. Same. And I, yeah, I totally agree. I think it's, it's almost like we need a deeper bag of plant stories to pull from. There's just kind of just the same few that you always hear. Yeah, you've been doing a great job for many years at expanding that bag of stories. Like Jacob mentioned, we were grad students at the same time in the same place, but in different labs, but both at the Arnold Arboretum, which is a really cool institution. It's both part of Harvard University and a Boston public park that's free and open to the public every day of the year. So it has this great dual research and public facing mission. And I think, you know, in hindsight, that inspired us a lot. We were grad students, we were there to do the research, but we would see the fact that we were based at this public facing institution and they have an amazing public programs department. And they were always having these events to get the visitors who are living in a city seeking green space, paying attention to, hey, look at all the plant diversity that we're taking such careful care of here and that we've collected here um so i think that context you know has a lot to do with why we started doing this um but the other thing that has a lot to do with it is the pandemic so jacob and i yeah i think probably a lot of origin stories of a lot of different projects have have to do with 2020 um we were already good friends and you know plant nerds and spending a lot of time together We would just botanize together on the weekends, even before the pandemic. But it was especially during that year where it felt like hey the safest way to hang out with a friend is to be outside And we were really botanizing like almost every weekend just pick a spot in the city to go and just be outside and hang out and move about 30 yards in an hour The mark of a true botanizing experience right there. Yeah, exactly. You could still see the parking lot, like, okay, I guess we got to go home. Yeah, we move at a botanist's pace. Yeah, and it's a real thing. for those that aren't familiar with it like yeah yeah don't don't bring us along if you're trying to get to the top of them no crushing miles in this crew exactly exactly so but during that year we were really botanizing all the time and we were thinking this is keeping us sane like this is such a great way to stay connected with a friend um and it started to appeal to us like hey is there a community of other people who might want to sort of virtually join us as we nerd out about plants together because the way that we would botanize is we would just be kind of walking and the fact that there's two of us is such a big part of it too we sort of just tell stories back and forth about what we were seeing like oh hey this plant like oh i've never seen it here before or you know oh i just read a story about this this type of flower or something so the idea to just start capturing those on video arose, I think, pretty organically from all of those different influences at the time and wanting to share things. And then just our backgrounds. I've studied evolutionary biology as an undergrad, but I also studied photography pretty seriously and knew my way around a camera for still photography. Turns out I didn't know that much about video and our first few videos didn't really work at all, but I've learned quickly. And Jacob's a great teacher, a great presenter. So sort of fell into those roles pretty naturally. And yeah, we've learned a lot along the way. Oh, of course. Yeah. And so I'll add, you know, that was sort of the beginning and the origin, right? And so in the beginning, we just wanted to share our passion for plants with people around the world, right? And share not only, you know, our passion, but also these interactions that we're having, right? And then sort of slowly, right, things kind of change, right? As we grew a following to more than just our friends and families, you know, commenting how great, you know, my son is so cool. We started to, you know, ask ourselves, you know, do we have a broader, broader mission, right a broader goal with the organization and so we you know we thought about it and i think this mimics a lot of the things that you talk about in your book and and and also in your work but right like plants are the foundation to to all life on earth right with except for you know deep sea vents and things like that right but with but without you know plants right life as we know it could not exist and so a care for plants is a care for the planet and you know we started thinking well, if we could, you know, through botanical education and through sort of sharing plant stories, if we can get people excited about plants, get people caring a little bit more about these organisms, can we sort of shift perspective, shift culture and shift society in sort of towards this more, you know, environmentally minded sort of way of thinking, which we think could help, you know, with the climate and biodiversity crisis. So we started to realize like we sort of have these tiered goals, these tiered mission, many missions with Let's Botanize, right? One is maybe quantifiable, which is spreading the hobby of botanizing. But then, you know, sort of bigger one, right, is helping combat the climate biodiversity crises through botanical education. So with all of that like swirling and as we sort of developed over the last five, six years now, we incorporated as a formal nonprofit entity, a 501c3, yeah, which was a few years ago. And we are sort of trying to diversify the ways that we interact with people. And so that's where actually the book really comes into play. Nice. Nice. I love it because in so many ways 2020 was that year that the world through a virus kind of stole from so many people and there's a lot of really sad stories that come out of that but I'm really inspired by one of the lowest moments of global humanity people that could rise up and and did something with it you know within the means that you were given right but for so many of us that was a very outdoorsy year and for good reason right like it was a health thing it was also just a chance to kind of reconnect and unplug for a little bit. But to have this be born out of it, and in a way that can kind of keep its momentum, because you've amassed such an incredible following, you've got such an interesting way of looking at the world. And you're doing it, like you said, with all of these kind of different missions in mind, and these things evolve over time. To bring that to sort of the audience that you're now able to reach is really inspiring in so many different ways, because you are spokespersons for this less attentive, or less paid attention to, I guess, walk of life. And that's what all of us are united in this mission in trying to do in the plant influencer, I guess, world. But when you think about taking that next step, it's really important to kind of acknowledge the fact that people are so easily overwhelmed by plants. I get overwhelmed by it. There's certain groups, ferns being one of them, actually, that you start peeling back those layers and you're like, oh, I got a, this is like many years worth of journey to get my head truly wrapped around my region, let alone what's going on globally. And so what I really am excited about with Let's Botanize the book is that you're giving people the tools. It's so hard to kind of narrow this down and make it simplified enough that it's approachable. But this is a really good attempt at that, to put it out there and say, hey, here are the tools that give you the power to then go find whatever you find interesting. Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. That's sort of spot on of what we were trying to do is like lower that barrier to entry as low as possible to really make it not intimidating because there are a lot of plants out there and it's helpful. So botanizing is a natural history hobby. It's not one of the more popular ones at the moment. there are some really popular ones at the moment like bird watching took off after the pandemic too which is great you know it's a great silver lining as you pointed out that so many people are spending time outside that a lot of nature-based hobbies really took off after 2020 and we do sort of analogize botanizing to bird watching a lot because it helps people sort of wrap their head around it it's like bird watching is just paying attention to birds you know and being curious and interested in learning about them that's what botanizing is for plants but bird watching like you mentioned listers it's so much about iding to species and like really sort of collecting on a list and that's just so the the scale of the problem is so much bigger in plants and so we try to like id is super fun and it is like a really powerful way to get to know an ecological community it's a really powerful way to to learn more about an organism so intimately but you don't need to do it to like enjoy the hobby sure and so a lot of what we try to do is just have ways of looking and learning about plants we don't need to id to species it's often really helpful to be able to get to family or some level like that that have these uniting traits that are really interesting and we can talk talk about the biology of but the id to species barrier is one that we like try to, you know, lower as much as possible. Like you don't need to be able to do that to enjoy it. It is very fun though. And especially when you start to learn your local area. Yeah. And, and, and just to add to this, you know, so just to, um, the scale of plant biodiversity is immense, right? The thing we say there's more, there's more ferns than birds, there's more mints than mammals, there's more beans than butterflies, right? Like, And so one way to think about that is like, oh, that's daunting. It's impossible to sort of figure out everything. But as Ben was saying, this sort of hierarchical or evolutionary or taxonomic approach is rewarding. Getting to genus, family, order sometimes. If you're in the tropics and you're like, what even is this? um and so you know is this a rosette or a magnolian right um and and so and so that's really rewarding but the sort of flip side of it right is like wow like the game never ends like there's so many plants right like like the game never ends even in your sort of local area it's it's immense um and sort of also like it's not only the biodiversity but but the the sort of vast number, right? Like they, as we said earlier, they form the foundation of all ecosystems. So it's actually, I think these challenges, right? The biodiversity, the fact that we see plants as the background to life, you know, plant awareness disparity, Kate Parsley's work has really sort of pushed that. But it's just an amazing opportunity to study plants and to do the hobby of botanizing, right? They're everywhere. And it just makes it an easy hobby to sort of, I think, get into because plants are everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it's good too, because you guys in this book and in your efforts in science communication in general, you're not pushing anyone in a specific direction saying, well, this is the coolest aspect. Like I happen to really like orchids. I would love everyone to like orchids like I love orchids. Unrealistic, right? And that's a charismatic plant group, but giving them the tools, it does kind of lend well to this idea of, yeah, you're never going to get bored. And there's always a way to kind of chip away at this, even if it's just like you said, familial relationships teach you about evolution. It starts making you look at things differently. At least you're giving them a different lens or filter to go out into the world and look at. But when you talk about in terms of like attention spans and boredom and like everyone can go out and pick something they like and still find something really cool and really in depth there. Whereas, okay, yeah, we have one tree creeper here in the United States, go to Costa Rica and that's a different story. But if we're talking about getting people out and giving them the power in their own backyards, there's an endless variety in the parking lots as we hinted at, at botanizing pace. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Like one of our main points is you can botanize literally anywhere, parking lot, sidewalk, great at your desk at work. If you got a houseplant, you know, on the windowsill or something or, or on your lunch break, you know, take a closer look at that tomato and your sandwich, you know. And it is tools. You know, it's, it's funny whenever birders talk about sort of the tedium of botany, it's like, have you met a gull person? Have you met a sparrow person? Like every niche group has their own language, right? And you kind of have to get your head wrapped around that. And so this is a big part of that is trying to give them the language to look at, okay, what part am I looking at? Is it different in this way? even as seemingly as simple as leaf margins, can really tell you a lot. And so from the scientists, the specificity of what you do in research and communication every day, how do you go about this in a way that makes sense both to you, but also as the person you're expecting to pick this book up? How do you write or you begin to write a book like this? that that's a good question i think um so what we tried to do with this book is deconstruct what we do in our brains when we walk in the woods right and when we walk up to plants and it was kind of a hard task because it was like thinking about you know like we all have this algorithm especially once you you know you know how it is and you're walking in the woods and you You look at plants. You know what to look for, right? You're looking at the number of petals. You're looking at, as you said, the serrations of the leaves. You're looking at the dissection of the leaves. You're looking at the veins. You're looking at the, you know, the abscission zone of the, where the leaf is attaching, right? You're doing all these things in your, in your head. And so what we were really trying to do is, is dissect that out, right? And come up with 101. We had many, many, many more, but 101 sounded reasonable. 101 sort of prompts to facilitate this active observation of of plants right In order to yeah, ID, but also just, just look and observe and, and, and see, right. And, and appreciate, um, and understand, right. The morphology, the ecology, the physiology, uh, and, and sort of the way plants are. So that's kind of how we were thinking about it when we were, when we were writing it in the beginning. Yeah. And in terms of the tone, you bring up a good point. Something that we've tried to think really hard about over the years is where should our tone sit in terms of complexity? And one of our sort of core commitments is to not dumb things down, try to figure out ways to clarify them so they can be communicated without a ton of jargon. Or if there is jargon, part of the point is defining a word. But still be drawing often from primary sources to figure out what story we want to tell and not shy away from stories that we haven't heard other people telling necessarily. So they might not be familiar to people already. Yeah, I'll also add, you know, we wanted the, you could imagine a book like this could be like, oh, well, I did all the prompts. Now I'm done. I'm going to never open this book ever again. So, or you could also imagine that it's, that it has like a bias of like temperate zone or, you know, somewhere in the world or seasonality. But what we really tried to do with the book and with the prompts is write them so that you can revisit a single prompt at different times of year. You could revisit a single prompt in different places, right? You can bring the book when you travel to a different country. You can revisit the same prompt when you are sort of more advanced in your botanical journey, right? And so I think that's sort of one thing we're really thinking about. how do we make this book and these prompts evergreen, pun intended. Save space for that. You are welcome here. So I think that's something we were really thinking about. So the book is really broken up into three main parts, parts, patterns, and perspectives. And so the first section is all about structure and morphology, really understanding how plants build their bodies. The second really focuses on, you know, physiology and sort of evolution and ecology. And the third section gets into, it kind of gets a little bit philosophical. And I think it taps into this idea that we're really trying to push. And I think, you know, you are as well, which is like, let's kind of, let's connect with these organisms, with plants in a way that, you know, we see them as these other living beings, right? And so that's kind of how we organize the book at this structural level. It's very thoughtful. And I'm glad you kind of talked us through that process because I'm always curious if what I'm experiencing translates to what the author or author is intended, right? And it's okay if not, because that's the artistic part of it. But I'm really happy you brought all those points up because A, I'm going through the proofs you sent me and conveniently in a PDF because when I'm in the field, I'm not lugging a ton of books and I'm going, okay, a brain's a muscle. You got to work that muscle. And especially when the dormant season is around, I'm not thinking about it as much. I switch gears. And so I'm thinking about this. I'm going, this is a great review. This is a really good chance to kind of re-brush up because let's be honest, I don't memorize half those terms. I don't memorize these ideas. I have to refresh in the spot. So to keep that going is really nice. But I also really appreciate that you approached it with this idea of like, we don't need to perpetually dumb everything down. I think we don't give people enough credit, especially ones that are already interested enough to pick up a text like this and go okay absolutely i want to learn more and that's one thing i love about my audience is i've posed this question and gotten tons of emails of people saying like no i'll do the homework i don't want to have 101 every time i pick something up like let's yeah let's there needs to be things for that next step right but at the end of the day like thinking about what keys are what field guides are like a good field guide will talk about the ecology or connect you to these organisms, but good luck finding one that's very specific to your area. Or maybe, how do they generalize without leaving things out? Field guides have their place. The next step for many of us are dichotomous keys. And someone said it, and I don't know who it was, but keys are written by people who don't need them for people that will never use them. And I'm like, damn, that is, you nailed it. And there's obviously a nice middle ground there. I use keys constantly because I have to know in many cases, but they're not the most exciting reads. and I use them more as a tool I have to use, you need that extra step. And nothing is worse than, ooh, an illustrated floristic. And then you open it up, you're like, it's literally just a floristic. Give me something more to feel something about these organisms. And I'm really happy that you two are obviously in a position where you've thought about this, where you're thinking about this from multiple perspectives because having an audience forces you to do that. But you didn't shy away from taking that leap into a world that, like, let's do a little bit of work here, but let's have fun in doing it and let's arm ourselves no matter where we are with the tools we need to understand our local flora. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. One thing you said there about the brain is a muscle and you got to work it. One, one way that we started thinking about the book, it's kind of like a workout plan. It's kind of like this little exercise guide, right? Like, all right, you want to strengthen these muscles, your plant brain muscles, you know, here's, here's a bunch of exercise, 101 different exercises you can do. Make up your own plan. I'm going to do? Prop 23 to 67. Yeah. And I think, you know, another thing that you said that I think really resonated with us is, you know, you have all these keys and these floras, which are fantastic resources. We use them all the time, right? Both in an academic and in a, in a sort of science communication sort of way. But ID is just one dynamic, one piece of botanizing, right? And so there's all these other aspects of, of like appreciating the morphology and understanding development and thinking about function and physiology, right? And, and, and ecology and species interactions are so it's, it's immense, right? And, and ID is just one piece of it, you know, it's a fun piece. It's rewarding piece. And it's a, it's a, it's a, uh, maybe it's powerful. It's powerful. It's maybe the easiest piece to see, right? And, and it sort of spans across different natural history hobbies like birding, right? Um, but because you can get so close to plants and they don't fly away, right? You can observe all these other dynamics, right? You can look at the glandular, you know, leaf teeth in salix, right? You can look at bud scales in a beach, right? You can get really close and sort of see these things and you can track things over time and look at development, right? So it's a really, again, it's an accessible natural history hobby at sort of multiple scales, not just ID. And one other, a couple of, one other thing I will, I will add about the book, right. Is like, so we have this huge glossary at the end. So you have all these terms that are defined, right. Which is again, right. Like sometimes we were like, wait, what's that term again? You know? Um, so that's a great resource in the book. We also, it's littered with, um, a lot of our macro photography. Um, so we, we, you know, which is a, I think a huge boon. You can just open it up and just look at images if you'd like. And then, and then, you know, accompanied with each prompt, right. Is that big chunk of text where it's like, you know, you're, if you take, if you take a minute, you're going to learn something, right. You know, it's going to be deeper. Right. So, um, so I think all those dynamics, right. Are kind of, you know, fit into the book in these, in these various ways. For sure. And the pictures, thank you for bringing that up too, because I think it's so easy to go. oh yeah of course it's the social media world we have pictures but i i i'm not a visual learner and the definitions of like a thing like a fierce versus an humble versus this like that drives me insane that i have to figure this out in my head with whatever the mind's eye is doing which is never what it actually should be doing and so to have such a visual prompt to associate with all of these easily accessible tools like you said you just have to take the time to sit down and okay what am I interested in sends that so much farther into the realm of learning. Now, granted, not everyone's a visual learner, but it's there if you need it. And so many of us are, and it's done in a way that's visually appealing to like, not to downplay it, but sometimes the text stuff just isn't, isn't capturing it. And I think it's so much part of like the DNA of who you are as communicators and what Let's Botanize is all about to actually to have that translate through. Again, it's something you can be proud of. Like, this is us. This is what we represent. And this is representing our stuff moving into a future as long as there's print or digital media. Yeah. I mean, to the point about photos, like the plants are extremely beautiful. And, you know, just the visuals are a hook to get people interested. I mean, I think that probably the biggest plant hobbies are like gardening and houseplants. And those hobbies are all about trying to keep these really beautiful things alive near you, looking as good as they possibly can, just so you get to, you know, they add joy to your life because they look so, so amazing. So yeah, putting a ton of photos in there was important to us. You know, they're beautiful. I think one other thing that you mentioned is like sort of, you know, having a physical thing in the world, you know, we're, we're all in these digital spaces, all of us, right. And they've been, they've been good to us in many ways as science communicators right like they they um are an amplifier of of things uh often many of which are not good but some things right the things that i think all of us are putting out there um are good things right and but we're sort of at the whim of these like large, you know, corporations that might not have such, you know, positive outlooks on things, might not share similar ideas. So it's sort of nice, right, to sort of have these things off of social media platforms, right, and sort of diversify the way that you interact with people. So that's something that's really, from an organizational perspective, we're really proud of. This is like the physical manifestation of the organization. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's, I don't know if it's changing. I'm too old now to know if it is, but for me, something in print, it's going to land a little bit harder. It's going to mean that much more. Again, I'm not lugging it out into the field all the time, but to have it to come back to is really great. And yeah, it's that diversified, don't put all your eggs in one basket, right? Because what if Instagram shuts down tomorrow, right? We don't know. It could happen. We've seen evidence of this in different platforms all over the world. Those servers get shut down. Who knows what happens to all that data, right? And so to have this to kind of come out of it and say, okay, no, we're beyond this. This exists beyond just taking that photo for Instagram or even for iNaturalist. You can experience the world with no social media whatsoever, and you did it whether you prove you did it online or not. But it all comes back to getting to know the world around you. And that's what I think is so powerful about stuff like this. It's not only showing you what these features are. It's not just minutiae either. These are meaningful traits on organisms that, you know, if you're curious enough, you're not necessarily leaning them down that road. But, oh, yeah, why is that leaf tooth? Why is that leaf smooth? And it's opening up an exploration into just that. What is around us? What's sustaining us? Right. And that's, I think, the most tangible aspect of everything that comes out of the philosophy of what you guys are doing. Yeah, there's a real positive feedback loop when you get curious about something and then have the means to learn more about it. Opens up new questions, more sophisticated curiosity. Hopefully there's more sophisticated education waiting for you. And there's a great positive feedback loop. And I think a lot of what science communication is trying to do in many cases is start that catalyze that reaction for people Yeah and I think something else that i think you hit the nail on the head with is like this this activity of botanizing and a lot of natural history hobbies but it's there's a mindfulness aspect to it right and and i think you know what could be more uh mindful than just standing in front of a tree right and and carefully looking at buds, right? Even in the winter, right? With your hand lens and just taking the moment to sort of be in, and, you know, we, we talk about active listening a lot, right? But being an active observer of the, of the things around you, I think we often take for granted, right? When you see things, you're observing them, but that's not always the case, right? You have sort of, it's an active process. And so, yeah, there's a, there's a, there's a huge sort of personal mental health benefit to a lot of natural history hobbies and walks in the, in the woods and things like that. But, but botanizing in particular, right. Because, um, you know, these, these are mostly static organisms. They're not sort of flying. You're not like maybe, you know, your lizard brain stimulated by, by bird wing flat wings. Not to, not to. Sure. Sure. It's just, It's the easiest group to point out. But it's a great hobby for just stimulating your interest in the natural world, but also mindfulness. Big time. I never could get my head wrapped around meditation. I never understood it. I was like, how do you quiet anything down in there? It's just barking all the time. until someone, you know, I heard enough, like people talking about the, the mindfulness feeling, like what they were experiencing. I was like, Oh, that's how I feel when I'm crawling around the woods, looking at mosses on bark. Like that's, I'm doing it. It's just not the social media portrayal of it most of the time. So these are really truly like deep down. It's just good for you to get out there and look. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. No, I mean, it's, it is intoxicating. If you can give yourself that feeling through, you know, if you have a hobby, you're like, okay, let me just go enjoy my hobby. And I know there's a very good chance I'm going to sort of lock into this mental state that is just joyful and focused and rewarding and kind of intense, you know, but a really good one. Yeah, it is. It can be very emotional too. When you finally like search things out, that's why it's like people, where'd you find this? Where'd you find this? Like, just go look, go search. Like the reward of finally seeing it versus getting those coordinates right to the spot is so much better, I promise. But when you think about what you've been doing, how long you've been doing it, what you've learned, I mean, social media forces you to learn things really quickly. And you see a lot of what others are doing. You take what you like, you kind of exercise what you don't. But then to take this and then take that next step, you're now a 5013C, you're working on, you know, you're publishing a book, like, you've got to learn stuff along the way. What about this process has kind of opened your philosophies up or change the way you look at just communication in general? Because you see a lot of things that work just purely in numbers, but are they reaching, are they doing the thing or are they just feeding that fear and anger algorithm that I don't think is helping anyone? That's a, that's a great perspective. Um, great question. I think, um, a couple of things, but the first thing that, that, that came to mind was, you know, there's this trade-off between breadth and depth of interaction, right? And on social media, we get this huge breadth and you're interacting with so many people, but it's often very superficial, especially, or maybe particularly on the, on like Instagram and TikTok and things like that, right? People sort of are just scrolling through really quickly. And so I think, you know, often with in-person interactions, you have classes and things like that, lecture seminars, you have a much deeper sort of way to connect, but you're connecting with far fewer people, right? And so I think this book, maybe, or with books in general, maybe it's sort of a way to like toe that line, right? Of like, you have the potential in theory to reach a lot of people, right? I guess based on the whims of the publisher and how many books they want to, you know, but also like you're going to, for the most part, hopefully, we'll have a deeper connection. I do genuinely think that people connect deeper with physical things like books than many other forms of media. And I think the other thing that I was thinking about is there are so many dinosaur books and animal books for younger people. And there's just not that many, or even for older people. There's just not that many books, I think, kind of like the ones that you wrote or the ones like this one. I think we need more things like this out in the world so that some young person who doesn't know much about botany or plants in general can pick something like this up and be like, oh, this is a thing. I can go do this. I can sort of a spark book. you know yeah in terms of some things we've learned like one thing that comes to mind is i think we've we've learned where our capacity is maybe we still don't have such a great idea but because it's just the two of us that we still maintain day jobs but we have so much like genuine passion and eagerness to do this work that we we've been known to bite off more than we can chew but we've certainly tried our hand at a lot of different things and the most most visible is the social media. So that's maybe the only thing that most people see. But like, for instance, we lectured for two years in the Landscape Architecture Master's program at Pratt, which was an incredibly challenging and rewarding experience. And what Jacob was saying about depth versus breadth, right? We were getting to know a small number of students each semester, but having these repeated interactions with them that were hours long and we would do a field trip out to a botanic garden with them and trying all those different types of things you know doing a public talk or a walk at a garden writing like magazine type articles and then doing that sort of teaching trying all those different things you you get different types of feedback from each of them right and that's how how we sort of learn and hone our tone and okay, finding that, like we talked about before, that balance of complexity, you know, trial and error in these different contexts has been really helpful over the years to see like, Ooh, that really turns out. That's not really landing how we thought it was, you know, once, once we're saying it in front of someone face to face and we can see how they react to it body language wise versus what we put it on in a video on social media. We're like, yeah, that definitely is going to land, you know, But we don't really get the same feedback in different contexts. So I think that's been powerful for us too, is trying all these different things. Maybe learning how to pick a few and focus has been healthy for us. I mean, it's a hustle. No matter which way you splice it, it is a hustle keeping up with that machine. And when you start adding variety to it, it's kind of like jack of all trades, master of none. And it takes a while to figure that out. And not to say you can't be good at all those things because communication weaves its way through a lot of different aspects of human life and the way we express ourselves. But I think at the end of the day, what you said there is, you know, I think back to what influenced me early on, especially in undergrad when I was really starting to get like fired up about this stuff. They weren't books that were like written yesterday. These were books that were like 15 years old sometimes or 20 years old sometimes, even older in many cases. And you never know how that can hit. And so having these different attempts and different trials and feeling things out, you know, you can finally settle on multiple different avenues of communicating. Some work, some don't. And it's finding that own mental space for you guys because that hustle can really burn you out. And you never want to see that passion go to the wayside because that's what I think makes it so special. yeah i think you know and and this is our this is our passion project right let's botanize as a whole um as ben was saying right we have our we have our day jobs and so let's botanize is always something that we're just doing in the evenings like this right um and uh uh or on the weekends and so yeah it's all sort of driven by that by that passion for these fantastic organisms excellent i will say it's really helpful to have two people like respect must be nice yeah seriously like respect to you and people who who are doing this passion-driven work on their own and are able to sustain it at a high level for so long like if i'm like dude i don't know if i'm feeling it tonight but we have a meeting scheduled i know jacob's gonna be there I'm logging on, you know, it's very helpful to have that. I mean, you take it all in strides, right? And it's, you learn, I've learned at least over the years how to positively interact with and engage and then how and when I need to tap out. And that's, I think the important thing, but yeah, I mean, having partners in crime and all of this, you know, I'm not doing it solo in the sense of like, I have a great support network. I've got a partner that looks out for me and helps me. And like, you know, So we're all kind of in this as like a group, but to be able to do it and do it well and have it well received is really great. So with that in mind, if people would like to receive like the message that you're out there putting out there, where do they go find more about your social media? Where do they pick up Let's Botanize the book? Great question. So on social media across the different platforms, let's see, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, I think those are our main ones. We're at Let's Botanize. And our organization website is www.letsbotanize.org. And we're trying to really make that the digital home for all this different stuff as we sort of expand to other types of writing that don't really fit on social media or things like our book. The website's a good place. If you go there, you can sign up. We do a monthly email newsletter, just a little recap of what we've been up to. and in terms of buying the book at this moment everything we do has the same name which is kind of convenient so the book is also called Let's Botanize 101 Ways to Connect with Plants if you search that it'll pop up you can find the publisher's website Hachette will have all different link out to all different ways to buy it most of the places you buy books you should be able to find it yeah it's the power of the internet most people listening kind of figured out how to use it But I will put all of those links up so that people can, you know, save themselves any trouble of writing things down, stay in the shower, keep your eyes on the road, that kind of thing. But thank you both for your time. I know it can be a monster trying to schedule this, let alone amongst three different people at one time. I appreciate your flexibility, but thank you so much for talking to us and for putting out to the world what you do put out to the world. It's so important to tell the stories of plants and having a bunch of different people doing it in different ways. And you guys have really crushed it. And it's really incredible to be able to sit down and talk to you about it today. I appreciate it. Likewise, you as well with all the work you're doing. Thanks, Matt. I'll give you your flowers. Yeah, absolutely. It's been fun. Well, hey, happy botanizing, y'all. All right, phenomenal stuff. I thank Drs. Ben and Jacob for taking time out of their very busy schedules to talk with us. And as always, go check the show notes over at indefenseofplants.com and make sure to follow them on all the social medias and pick up a copy of their book, Let's Botanize. Their book is coming out later this month. That's February of 2026. And the link to pick up your own copy will be in the show notes as well. While you're over there, check out all the great ways you can help support In Defense of Plants because conversations like this don't happen unless you support the show. As I mentioned at the beginning, we have a Patreon over at patreon.com slash In Defense of Plants, where for supporting the podcast a little bit each month, you get access to an entirely separate podcast about gardening. We also have copies of my book and customizable merch for sale. All of those are great ways to help support the show. at the very least make sure you hit that subscribe button and keep checking back in but that is it for this week i thank you all for listening until next time hang in there stay healthy and get outside if you can this is your host matt signing out adios everyone