Brrrrr! Send wine, winter clothing, and money.

This is a bit of an appeal as this is the season when need is felt the greatest: the end of the semester and the start of winter.  How many r's have to follow the B to indicate -7 C? And the wind chill factor makes it feel much colder.  This is our real first blast of winter, and it will serve to convince any still confused plants that it is indeed time to drop your leaves, if deciduous.  The lily pond has its first shell of ice except where the bubbler is keeping the water open; of yes, the leaf net was removed just in time.  But our tree pruners have yet to return and finish the job they started several weeks ago. Are arborists difficult guys to pin down where you are?  Ours all seem to be extremely busy, free spirits who show up magically long after you think they've forgotten you exist. Of course, if they want to get paid.....
This time of year can weigh heavy on a botanist.  Revised manuscript is just about done, except even before it was ready to return to my colleague, the discussion had been revised again.  Mrs. Phactor wants a Christmas tree set up (after it has been thawed!).  A mouse continues to thwart all trapping attempts, and the kitty girls have not managed to get this one although it has tempted fate several times. They get nothing but a little exercise. One quite lethal trap has not been used because it must be placed where kitty paws cannot get at it.
Sadly one of the best herbarium interns ever is graduating, and looking for something meaningful to do. If anyone needs an intern or a horticulturalist, contact The Phactor in the comments with the necessary info. She has a twin, but they do not come as a set.  The gap between college and a job that can keep you alive is a tough transition that TPP has helped many students bridge, but while they represent cheap willing labor at this stage, even that small amount of money is so hard to come by.  You could double my herbarium budget and not have to give a cent. But seriously if someone is well off, TPP needs a patron of botany. You have no idea how much value and experience can be squeezed out of a few thousand dollars.  Do you see how much money they spend on people who can kick, throw, hit, or bounce a ball?  Research money for doing field work has just about disappeared as the prairie and rain forest continue to disappear too.  Clearly government is not going to support science, especially that liberal, greenie, unimportant ecology and systematics, of plants no less.  More on this to come.

Really, truly, deeply depressing news

TPP finds this really, truly, deeply depressing news.  Fewer students are taking botany classes and herbaria are shuttering their doors. What this means is that fewer and fewer people have the skill and experience to identify plants. This goes far beyond taxonomy. A new graduate student, JP, has asked TPP to serve on her committee, but her background is in microbiology and she only recently "discovered" plants and the great outdoors where biology actually happens. All of TPP's recent students who had gotten their "novice" plant ID badges have gotten jobs in part because of this knowledge. The herbarium TPP curates costs our institution very little (translation: it doesn't have a budget), but it takes up space always at a premium and it needs a somebody. Right now that person is an emeritus faculty member, but one way or another his days are numbered.  Then what? Colleagues already point to low enrollments to argue against hiring another botanist. Such decisions are always a zero-sum game or viewed as such. Part of the trouble is that human biomedicine is the tail that wags the biological dog in this country, so students often get little if any decent botany in biology courses. Their teachers are not well versed in botany and so do a poor job teaching it, and you can see how this leads to a vicious cycle of dwindling botany. They enter university thinking there are only two career paths: medical professional or high school teacher. Our undergrad program produces plenty of both, but many of them needing but one more course take a botany elective out of sheer desperation or curiosity or a course df = 0. And they are surprised, even delighted, how interesting plants are, but then they say, "Gee, discovered botany too late." Well, it isn't too late, but like most undergrads, what do they really know?  JP is working hard at learning plant ID, and like anything you work at, she will develop the necessary skill and knowledge ("square stem, opposite fragrant leaves" = mint family, and so on).  Botany has always been a ill-treated stepchild in the field of biology in the USA, always in the minority, and never having the financial support of bio-medicine. Yet all the medical afflictions together are small potatoes if you find yourself miserable, naked, and hungry, those basics provided by plants.

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.

What makes a garden botanic? They don't know in Brooklyn.

What makes a garden botanic?  Obviously botany, a science, a process conducted by botanists, botanical scientists.  Without the botany all you got is a pretty garden, nice, but it adds nothing to the future.  This is rather similar to what makes a university a university?  Simple, it's the faculty and students engaging in scholarship, learning how to learn, and without this the institution is not a university. It saddens and outrages TPP mightily when a venerable institution decides it is no longer going to be in the business of science.  The Brooklyn Gardens (formerly Brooklyn Botanic Gardens) have decided to fire their science department, put their herbarium into storage, and cease being botanical.  It's still a pretty place, but now that's all it is.  Why they actually plan on tearing down the science building and putting up condos!  Gardens are only ever in two states: improving or declining, so without question the garden president Scot Medbury is presiding over its decline.  What you don't see in his bio is telling: botany.  He's a pretty place type guy; all show, no substance.  Why this rather reminds TPP of the black comedy A very peculiar practice where an American president, Jack Daniels, convinces Lowland University in the UK that it could operate very well without students.  This is becoming a bit of a worrisome trend because the type of science done at botanical gardens is becoming rare at universities, and former bastions of taxon based research, museums and botanical gardens, are now using fiscal arguments (of a dubious nature according to TPP's inside source at BBG) to get out of the business of science (e.g., the Field Museum, Fairchild Tropical Gardens).  Science in the USA is definitely in trouble; botany the more so.

Botany and Art

Now gentle readers, the data show that among your diverse interests, the art-botany intersection is not your favorite.  Well, TPP will try and try again to introduce some culture and art appreciation.  Here's a nice article where a colleague of mine, Tim Gerber, has been collaborating with an artist and science educator so that students can explore the intersection of art and botany.  This study was published in the journal Science and Children published by the National Science Teachers Association.  Any elementary teachers out there should have a look. 

Strange thing to do - justify your own replacement

My colleagues, a few of my colleagues at least, have noticed that TPPs retirement from academic servitude in a couple of years will leave a pretty large gap in organismal botany; it'd be gutted actually.  So with positions so hard to come by, replacements so long delayed, justifications must be put into the queue with considerable lead time.  Thus TPP finds himself writing a justification for his own position, and this is proving a very strange thing to do.  A justification needs to be strong, but then it begins to sound like arguing for your own significance, your own importance, your indispensability.  And this list of what you actually do do does begin to look like a considerable undertaking should it be suddenly handed to another person in toto, and someone needs to do it all, although it was indeed acquired gradually, or in fits and starts over the years.  Let's see, this position requires someone with a broad and encyclopedic knowledge of plants.  Check. This person should contribute to the scholarship of the school, perhaps with a distinguished publication record extending over years (37 years and counting).  This person should be an excellent teacher.  Well, duh, and maybe receive both the university's and the botanical society's highest honors and awards for teaching.  Check.  This person should play well with others.  Hmm, well, ...  OK, maybe that one can slide.  This person should be capable of making excellent, award-winning chili, and not some slop with beans and corn, or even worse, macaroni, in it.  Whoa!  Maybe this is starting to sound too much like the current occupant even leaving out the part about being a fashion icon in biology. 

Promoting careers in plant science

Promoting interest in studying plants and pursuing careers in botany has always been part of my job.  The Phactor's basic premise is that everyone wants to be a botanist, but some people just take longer to figure that out than others.  At any rate any help is much appreciated, so this assistance is appreciated, even if they say that a botanist's job is to identify a&nd name plants and fungi, a view of botany over a century old. They also say, "it’s fun to discover the active, useful, beautiful, eco-friendly, and even bizarre things plants can do." Now what do they mean, bizarre? Plants do all the same things as other living organisms, so why when plants do them are they bizarre? Well, only because people never thought plants did anything! For the Phactor identification and taxonomy is part of the job, but at the same time we're plant biologists, ecologists, conservationist, and so on.  Why just today a colleague left a specimen in my mailbox, flattened into a folded sheet of paper, and asking, "Can you identify this?"  Without any delay it was answered, "Yes", and put back in his mailbox.  Once he thought of the correct question he came by and asked, "What is it's name?".  You can also read about botanical careers here.  

Botany enters the 20th century, and maybe the 21st, in 2012

This summer in Melbourne Australia the Phactor attended the XVIII international botanical congress, which are held every 6 years. One of the highlights of the meeting are the nomenclature sessions where the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature is discussed, debated, and amended. This is the official rule book for naming botanical organisms, a real page turner recommended to cure insomnia. However as of January 1, 2012, botanical naming is going to ditch Latin! Now before you faint, please rest assured that nothing is happening to Latinized binomial nomenclature. Scientific plant names will remain the same, but what has changed is the requirement that anyone proposing to name a new species supplies a detailed description of the species in Latin. Presumably when this requirement was initiated any well-educated person would have studied Latin in school (it was still available when the Phactor was in high school), and it provided a common language of science. However, de facto, English has become the language of science. In another startling move the Code will allow electronic publication. This is important because of the principle of priority by which the first validly published name is deemed the correct one in the case of multiple namings starting at Linnaeus. So don't forget the time/date stamp on that electronic publication; it'll be important. Somehow the Phactor missed all the nomenclature sessions in favor of seeing fern gully (Those are all tree ferns!) and other sights. HT to Culturing Science for reminding me to blog about this.

How do you explain a lotus?

A flower lover does not like the Phactor's "analytical" approach to fabulous flowers. How sad.
A lotus flowers in my garden pond, and no lovelier flower exists on Earth. No wonder the lotus has figured so prominently in Eastern art and religions. In addition to its beauty a great many things are known about this flower. The lotus is very distinct from and not even closely related to the water lilies that bloomed in the same pond earlier in the summer. The lotus flower functions to interact with pollinators producing a most unusual fruit containing its seeds. The 135 million year history of flowers and their evolution into a myriad of forms is a marvelous story, and waterlilies, not lotuses, are a remnant of that very ancient stock from which today’s diversity of flowers sprang forth.
This flower lover wants to know why botanists such as the Phactor cannot just appreciate flowers like the lotus for what it is without dissecting it and taking it apart. Can’t we just look at it and say it’s beautiful and leave well enough alone? Well, no. That just isn’t good enough. For one thing, curiosity demands looking deeper. Although the lotus and waterlily look much alike in a very general way, they have many obvious differences, and botanists want to know why both similarities and differences exist. While both lotus and waterlily flowers are very pretty that information doesn’t answer any questions, and even that leaves the Phactor wondering why the aesthetic senses of humans are tuned to interpret some flowers as pretty when they are adapted by natural selection to attract certain insect or bird pollinators. The failure to appreciate the aesthetics of flowers is a symptom of clinical depression, so certainly looking beyond the shallow it’s-a-pretty-flower-and-you-don’t-need-to-know-anything-else perspective is warranted on both sides of the human-flower equation.
This brings the Phactor to a last point, a very important point, detailed knowledge of and an in depth understanding of a flower, of a lotus, in no way diminishes my aesthetic appreciation of the flower. And why would it? Do Civil War historians have a diminished appreciation of the valor of the soldiers because they know of the impact of many mistakes, miscommunications, and chance events had on the outcome of events? Does a painting have any less impact on art historians because they know about the palette, brushes, and personal woes of the painter? Ah, but historians are students of the subject they love and admire, and the unidimensional flower lover is not.
In return the Phactor wants to know what kind of mind, what kind of intellect is it that doesn’t want to know any more or isn’t curious about natural things? What is such a mind afraid of? What kind of intellect settles for the simplest and most banal of explanations (it was created that way)? In most cases in my experience they are worried that a quest for knowledge will gore a very sacred cow, their religion. How truly sad. Especially in biology where literally each and every time biologists have pursued a detailed course of study, the results, the understanding acquired, are quite at odds with religion. But a lotus, which isn’t even mentioned in the Bible, by any other name, would still grow from the navel of Narayana, and its leaf would still carry Kamadwa down the Ganges. And the saddest thing of all is a wasted intellect.

Build Botany for National Security

Let's see, the dwindling of botany as a field of study among the biological sciences seems to suggest that no one worries about being miserable, naked, or hungry. So let's try this.
Wake up America! As botanical knowledge declines, our national security is threatened as so aptly demonstrated by this cartoon. All those alien trees creeping into our landscape could be harboring terrorists, socialists, or even tree-hugging liberals! But would you ever know, native versus indigenous? The Phactor has long wondered if the Princess Tree invasion might be at the root of China's successful espionage efforts in the USA. Didn't you notice how many and how quickly they have sprung up around the Pentagon? The camera lens protruding from the tree holes, it's a dead give away, but first you have to cure the tree blindness of our security community! Just a billion or two would give my taxonomy and plant identification class a real shot in the arm, and none of it would be wasted either, but a Phytophactor logo will be needed for the doors of the Hummer field vehicles.

The Future of Botany

The Phactor has seen the future of botany, and it's young women. This the my 39th year in the botanical society, and never before have so many young people been in attendance, the result of so many supporting members contributing to student travel funds. A great deal of scientific talent was on display and it was most impressive. When you see undergraduates speaking to an audience of 60 or so professional botanists, and with great poise and confidence, you just know what kind of potential they have. Botany has always had the largest percentage of women of any of the sciences, upwards of 40% in recent history, and it's possible that botany will become the first female majority science, and nothing is wrong with that. The Phactor has always had a thing for smart women.

Botany as a Brand

Over at the AoB blog Alun Salt (always thought he should be Alum Salt and a chemist) is offering his thoughts on making botany more appealing to students. Here in the USA the human-biomedical tail continues to wag the biological dog, and as more stand alone botany departments and programs get submerged into biology depts and programs, it continues to get harder to even get a forum for showing students that plants aren't just green scenery upon which animals cavort stopping now and again for a bite to eat. Alun used sensitive plant as an example. Show the video to a bunch of biology students, and then ask, "How do they do that?" The responses will sound like plants are just green animals. Then you have to prick their biological bubble. "Plants don't have nerves; Plants don't have muscles." "Yet this plant reacted quickly to a stimulus, so I ask again, how do they do that?" Unfortunately such investigative approaches, while quite rewarding in some terms, requires sacrificing content, but since content laden botany seems to be a losing proposition, what do you have to lose? Remember, plants are dull, but botany can be. More on this later.

Botany programs in decline - UK version

Botany as a subject is definitely in decline in universities, the unfortunate victim of popularity. It's been a 40 year trend now, and shows no sign of improving anytime soon. Here's a recent news item from the UK. Of course, there are more reasons than ever to study plants, and more reasons than ever to be producing more botanists. For example, upwards of 50% of all the botanists employed by the federal government will retire in the next 10-15 years. No one knows where the replacements are going to come from. Botany departments and degree programs have gradually been incorporated into biology departments and biology majors, where as the minority, botany continues to lose the numbers game. Biology has become so human-biomedically oriented that botany becomes marginalized. About 10% of our majors find plants interesting, but all too often students who take a botany elective in their senior year find out, all too late, that plants are fun and interesting. In an effort to interest kids in plants at a younger age, the Botanical Society of America operates a collaborative effort (Planting Science) to have grade school teachers conduct plant research with their classes and professional mentors. It is a worry especially when your alma mater, long known for its botany program, makes the error of combining separate departments into one.

Generating student interest in botany

A long time colleague used to say, "I'm going to teach them ecology if I have to rip their little heads off and pour it in." Such practices are widely frowned upon among the more enlightened members of our profession, but short of pouring it in, you can't make students learn anything that they are not interested in. Therefore the first and most vital step in teaching, especially subjects like botany and ecology that are viewed by many students as "boring" is to generate interest. Here's a nice post about how an aquarium visit generated student interest in ecology (and a link to a freebe publication), but generalized there is a lesson for all educators. Put something interesting in their hot little hands. The most successful general biology lab for non-science students the Phactor ever constructed consisted of a series of stations each with some intriguing problem that posed questions to be answered via a simple investigation by a small group of students.

Friday - Darwin (a) Day Early

Yes, yes, Darwin Day is tomorrow, and so is Abe day and Sister Day, to note all the birthdays of any significance. But today we can host an openhouse for organismal biology students and have some birthday cake. Tomorrow is Saturday and students will not be found, in academic buildings, and beer and cake were never a good combination. To celebrate here is a nice celebration of Darwin from the cover of the American Journal of Botany. "Many of the portraits of Charles Darwin have become iconic—the bearded, somber and pensive force behind one of the most important paradigm shifts in the sciences (and in our understanding of the human condition). However, he took much pleasure from some of the images produced. Darwin commented on the portrait shown on the cover of this issue: “I look a very venerable, acute, melancholy old dog; whether I really look so I do not know.” The color images surrounding the Darwin portrait are representative of the papers included in this bicentennial issue and include studies from paleobotany to molecular developmental genetics, anatomy to pollination biology, and systematics to analyses of patterns of diversification and the reasons for angiosperm success. The back cover illustrates the 1879 letter of Darwin to Hooker in which he uses the phrase “abominable mystery” [a reference to the origin of flowering plants] and on which this issue is based. The mix of old with the new brings to light our progress on solving the abominable mystery on the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth. Oil painting of Darwin by Walter William Ouless, etching by Paul Aldophe Rajon, 1875." The complete works of Charles Darwin are online.

Amazing Discovery! Botany is interesting!

Elective courses were at a premium this fall, and several transfer students were "forced" to take the Phactor's economic botany class or be short on hours. Now by mid-semester two of them have approached me to express their "surprise" that botany is interesting and both wanted to know how to pursue it as a course of study, something that is not all that obvious or easy in a department of biological sciences (a new plant science sequence is being prepared to fix this). Why is it this was such a surprise? Their answers were exactly, precisely, and fundamentally what the Phactor has always said: never before were they exposed to any botany in their "biology" classes or what little was covered was boring terminology and memorization (i.e., teachers without any background in botany being forced to include some plant stuff in their course). Gad! This is the human-biomedical/animal bias that permeates biology in the USA. It's why there can be 3 snake-chaser programs on TV, and when a clever student of mine pitches a program about botanical discoveries, like the oldest forest in Lincolnland, a mile below ground in a coal mine, he's turned down flat with a three-word rejection, "plants are uninteresting", to which we add, to the below average intellect of most TV producers. This problem starts way down in grade school where teachers poorly prepared in science any how don't realize that the best stuff around for teaching biology are plants. They simply don't know what or how to do it, even easy stuff like tree identification. Then in high school, the biology teachers, thoroughly steeped in the prevailing bias, either leave plants our or teach about them poorly. A few of my students do counter this and introduce lots of plant biology, and their positive results support my contention, there is no innate bias against plants, it's learned. The Phactor remembers when an 8th grade science teacher told us the F1 was doing poorly in science mostly because the botany she had to include was so terribly boring. She was on the cusp of retirement, the damage done, but you find yourself wondering if homicide to improve science teaching would be justifiable? Maybe, but only if there was a jury of my real peers.

Why don't students want to study plants?

Others have wondered the same thing? Why is it that plants capable of fascinating the Phactor for so many years are of so little interest to students? There is no one answer, but several factors do come into play, but before outlining these for you, some smallish percent of our biology students do like studying plants, about 10% on average.
Firstly, and most importantly, it takes a certain mental and emotional maturity and sophistication to apprectiate something a subtle as plants. This certainly explains the attitudes of many of my zoological colleagues. Flower children versus colleagues red in tooth and claw. They're just like most of our students, but grown up. Secondly, you have to know something about plants to appreciate them, and today's biology, especially in the USA, has a heavy human biomedical emphasis that even ignores non-vertebrate animals. A student complained about our animal behavior course as being about "insects" rather than animals. Wow! Unfortunately biology students who think biology is about baby zoo animals is all too are all too prevalent, and they become high school teachers. So thirdly, high school teachers educated in this system perpetuate the cycle by treating plants as uninteresting items forced into the curriculum. When the Phactor complained once to a chair that botanists weren't being considered for many jobs, he said, "You won't be happy until half the department are botanists (at the time it was 8 out of 34), but what will they all teach?" Genetics, cell biology, ecology, evolution, physiology, etc. was my answer, but of course, "real" biology is animal biology, so this could not be tolerated. He was dick about lots of other things too, so no big surprise in his attitude. To a great extent generally held preconceived notions about plants (and fungi) color people's attitudes, and even many gardeners revolt, or get revolting, when you try to learn them something about plants, sort of a don't muddle my poor head with knowledge, and never ever use a scientific name (which is why the Phactor blogs every now and them about knowing your genera; oh, it's been that long?). Fortunately the master garden programs are reversing this for many. Even worse, higher education, which should be a bastion of biological diversity, is run by pin-headed "bean" counters so if your area of expertise is on the short end of the stick, well, too bad. No one needs all of biology, just enough to get people into medical school, and so it goes with no real regard for the discipline. It''s like a conspiracy.

Botanist - An Endangered Species

You don't have to try to convince me that botanists and botany are an endangered species here in the USA where the human-biomedical tail wags the biological dog. Here's a brief report on botany in the USA that doesn't exactly offer much optimistic news, but it's no surprise to the Phactor. More on this later; the energy for a full-fledged rant just isn't forthcoming today. A bit of vacation and the annual botanical meetings are upcoming these next two weeks, and this report is sure to be topic of conversation among my colleagues.

HT to Get Your Botany On.

Wanted - A Patron of Botany

Two things grieve me severely. 1. My back isn’t getting any younger and more and more of my research takes place at ground level, or so it seems. 2. Students who miss out on first-hand scientific experiences because of too few resources. And that is the point of today’s missive; the Phactor needs some patrons of botany. Artists have patrons; why not botanists? Surely somebody out there with deep pockets, and actually they don’t have to be that deep, wants to support students interested in botanical research. The Laboratory for Plant Identification and Conservation stands ready to accept your charitable donations. A mere $10,000 a year would keep several students in groceries while happily engaged in research. A mere $100,000 would endow the laboratory and the herbarium collection within providing perpetual support. Just so potential patrons understand, not a cent goes to support the Phytophactor; that’s Mrs. Phactor’s role. And those young minds (and backs!) are needed for the future of botany. While our government daily fritters away billions as if pennies on dubious international escapades, the educational needs of tomorrow’s botanists, apprenticed by engaging in today’s research under the tutorage of experienced and worldly scholars, are not being met. The funding rate from the National Science Foundation has fallen to the lowest level (less than 5% of grants are funded) in my entire career, so needless to say governmental support is far from filling even the minimal research needs, especially those of us who are not at large research universities, those of us who deal with undergraduates rather than post-docs. Failing to support basic research is just one more way that our governmental system is mortgaging our country’s future. But rather than castigate any individuals for having accumulated a large share of this nation’s wealth, how about allowing some of it to trickle down to the grass roots of botanical research? Every Hummer that drives by represents one person with misplaced values; for the difference in price between an impractical and a practical vehicle, you could support a student’s research for a year. You’d never regret your decision. You’d see your name in the scientific literature. You’d be invited to our fabulous end of harvest gala balls (we serve pizza, or sometimes fry a turkey). And we'd love you, really. Your support would allow a clever and committed waitress to rush to a few less tables each evening carrying a few less plates of pasta, a job she needs to make ends meet even after working in the field all day. We’ve got some great youth in this country, and we have lots of interesting things for them to do, but they can’t eat grass. Contact the Phytophactor at his google-mail account with any serious inquiries.

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.