Black in Botany

I earned the nickname “Talking to Trees” because I was found meticulously inspecting the foliage around campus one too many times. But what can I say? Plants fascinate me.

Usually found around plants, I always joked that I’d study botany in college solely out of curiosity for the green guys. That fantasy never became reality, so I did the next best thing — I spoke to a few.

Inspired by the “Birdwatching while Black” Twitter movement that occurred following an unfortunate incident in New York, I wanted to learn more about the nuances of being Black in these seemingly racially heterogenous natural science spaces. So I traced down two botanists making waves in their field, and we talked about everything from how they got their start to their favorite plants. And how like the very things they study, they manage to thrive in unexpected places.