I am a botanist

Just a couple of days ago, TPP explained that he was a botanist. This was because the Botanical Society of America started a campaign for its members to loudly (?) proclaim themselves botanists. If you want to see some of the hundreds of responses from social media adept people who are botanists, click on over and have a look. These are TPP's colleagues and he's proud of them!  Here's a nice article at the Philadelphia Enquirer explaining what some of my colleagues are doing to combat "plant blindness" and zoochauvinism.

Who is a botanist?

The Phytophactor is a botanist. His official title is Professor of Botany Emeritus, his graduate degrees are in botany, and the courses he taught were botany courses. Too many of my colleagues think botany is an old fashioned label rather than one of great distinction. Plant science is a favored label of some, but plant science, plant science, plant science, it just doesn't have a ring to it. The problem is that some of my colleagues prefer a narrower perspective. TPP introduced one of his colleagues as a botanist, and my colleague insisted he was not a botanist, so TPP focused things a bit, and said, well, alright Dave here is a geneticist thinking that would mollify him, but again he insisted this was not correct, so fine Dave, you are a cytogeneticist, and then he nodded, stuck out his hand, and said, "I'm a maize cytogeneticist".  Now given the importance of maize, this is not a small field, but not recognizing that you belong to larger and more general collective groups is in TPP's opinion, a small perspective. My ecological colleagues prefer to be called an ecologist rather than a botanist, but obviously they are both. And phycologists, physiologists, bryologists, and others all prefer the smaller, narrower label, as if somehow the broader label diminishes their expertise. The Phytophactor is a pure botanist trained in plant anatomy, plant morphology, and systematics/taxonomy, pure, undistilled, unadulterated botany. And it's time botanists of all flavors reclaimed the distinguished field of botany, the study of plants, not plant science, as their own. There. Said and done. And TPP could not be prouder.

Is the tomato a fruit or a vegetable?

For the jillionth time, the tomato is a fruit. That this question went to the Supreme Court is totally silly, but then to add that the justices had to consult a DICTIONARY, well, that's just insulting! You consult your friendly neighborhood botanist to answer such questions.  That's what we're here for. Typical though that SCOTUS justices didn't know enough to know who to consult. Very simply they should have just contacted a botanist, someone like John Kress (the Indiana Jones of ginger) at the Smithsonian, and gotten an authoritative answer in 5 sec or so, if he was in the country. So the next time you get your tomato jam out (often called ketchup), remember the tomato is a fruit.

Another reason to become a botanist

Here's an interview with one of my colleagues at the New York Botanical Garden about what he does and why he does it.  Unfortunately, universities find doing this type of research much less desireable so it falls to botanical gardens to carry this ball.  It remains a struggle to keep herbarium collections from being sold or given away, or stashed in some attic or basement corner, or simply thrown out.  Fortunately, interest in botany remains just high enough to keep things going at my institution, but not without a lot of constant pressure to maintain diversity. 

Joseph Hooker - Botanical Explorer, and plant quiz too!

Joseph Hooker was one of the most prominent botanists of Darwin's day.  His exploits and travels are the stuff of adventures.  So hang on to your pocket books and credit cards because this new book about Hooker is going to be hard to resist, and since it is actually quite reasonable in price, why not indulge a bit in some botanical history.  Hooker probably named more plants than anyone since Linnaeus.  So here's the link if you're interested.  And dang the Phactor loves that hat, rakish angle and all.  Yes, botanists are dashing sorts, especially in the field.  And do you recognize the plant that is being illustrated?  If so, what sex is it and where was it growing (country)? 

The hotness of being a botanist

Middle aged men who think they are more attractive to women than they actually are may be afflicted by a "hotness delusion syndrome". You think? Firstly, the Phactor is well beyond middle age, and never had any illusions of being "a gift to women." Having spent the last 40+ years working on college campuses, surrounded with young women, it hit me right around the age of 40 that as a sex object the Phactor had become invisible to young women. Curiously, young women pay more attention to me now than then, perhaps a manifestation of the "harmless grandfather syndrome". When you say botanist, the bar isn't set real high on the expectations of being your being hot, especially on the male side because remember as a profession a great many of my colleagues are female, a higher proportion than any other scientific field, and nearly all of them good looking (covering my bases here), especially the lovely Suzanne. Without question though the best looking botanist is a paleobotanist, and he's so good looking you could get a gay flash from his flowing, perfectly-coiffed platinum hair, his Gallic profile, adorned in a cream colored blazer over a plum colored shirt, and so on. He's so perfect he could be a werewolf from London. So with this obvious exception, most of us are geeks, some less, some more. This became quite obvious when after hearing a lecture from a noted science educator who extolled us to make science "cooler", thereby deflating her case because nothing is less cool than saying "cool", to attract more kids into careers in science. Now in high school, how many of the cool kids were actually top achievers in life? Based on my experience, one or two; the rest were a flash in the pan who topped out in grade 12. At the end of the lecture the Phactor asked for a show of hands from those 200-300 people in the audience who were actually "cool" in high school, and exactly one person professed to being cool, and yes, she still exhibits some of those cheerleader hallmarks at times, clearly an exceptional exception, oh, but she married a chemist, a dead geek giveaway. The rest of us were geeks. So in a way you must pity these poor people who were terribly impressed by their own hotness in their youth because it wanes, it lessens, and then what have you got besides some old pictures? This is how formerly hot people get their lives in a mess; they can't face reality. But you take a guy like Al Franken and you can be pretty certain he knows how he looks and figures it's way better to get ahead by being smart and clever than to be a has been high school hunk. So clearly what people should look for in their botanists, in their leaders, in all walks of life, are geeks who know who they are. So everyone can be quite certain that the Phactor has no sleazy phallic photos phloating around on the internet, unless perhaps we be talking about aroids, titan aroids! Talk about hot!

Monday morning musing

Following a weekend of wonderful weather during which the primary activity was the removal of a large, but quite dead, redbud tree, and some surrounding woody trash, a necessary prelude to remodeling the lily pond, the walk to work was a bit slower than usual. As chance would have it, a gaggle of suits were quacking down the sidewalk in front of me and their only possible destination was the admin building, and the thought occurred to me that inspite of the completely irrational differences in our remuneration, the Phactor harbors no desire to be a suit. Hawaiian shirts are so practical and so much more conducive to creative thought, and botanical work (those ties drag in everything). So the week starts on a happy thought of how fortunate to be a botanist.

Everyone want to be a botanist

The Phactor operates with the idea that everyone wants to be a botanist, it just takes some people longer to figure that out than others. Quite a few people never figure it out. So it was a great pleasure to advise a student today that did figure it out, changing their major from medical information technology (that's a major?) to botany! This is a bit of a rare thing because the human biomedical tail constantly is wagging the biological dog in this country. In the great USA no one cares that botany is a greatly under-represented or ignored subdisipline, so much so that people in most other countries think our biology is greatly out of whack subject wise, and of course, they are right. A very Teutonic chair once said in exasperation, "Vhy you wouldn't be happy unless we hired botanists for half the faculty!" "That's right!" "Well, what would they teach?" "They'd teach cell biology, genetics, evolution, ecology, everything but zoology." And most of my colleagues would think such a thing just plain wrong, although it certainly is no problem having all those courses taught by animal biologists. And so it is quite refreshing to chat with a student who has come through many of those courses and still finds plants interesting. He mentioned that our introductory biology was terribly unbalanced (human biomedical approach) and that the instructors in cell biology seemed blissfully unaware of plants or what makes their cells different. This student was quite perceptive, and bright, and that does not surprise the Phactor because it takes a certain mental maturity and intellectual sophistication to appreciate things as subtle and surprising as plants. And when people finally reach that level, that's wthen they know they want to be a botanist. Don't agree? Don't understand? Oh, we do so understand why.

What is a botanist

This query (?) is asked many times a day (30+), and the web site ChaCha provides an answer. After the obvious omission of a question mark, which calls the ChaCha mission into question because after all how can you provide decent, reliable answers if you cannot properly pose the questions, this site provides dreary, lifeless, dictionary type of definitions, which while technically correct, are bereft of the soul and passion that drives botanists. You might as well define beer as a carbonated, fermented hops and malted barley beverage, which while perfectly correct hardly makes you want a cold one. Anyone interested enough in botany to ask this question deserves far better answers.

Clearly the one thing they didn’t do is ask a botanist. Our diversity is quite impressive, and while it is technically correct that we botanists study plants and other green organisms, and we are scientists, we are so much more, and some of the nicest people on Earth to boot. So click yourself on over to the Botanical Society of America and see what a bunch of real botanists say about themselves and what they do.

Everyone wants to be a botanist, it just takes some people longer to figure this out than others.