Hello and today we're talking on the power of plants and the beauty of botanicals and as so many of you will know Botanical ingredients have really run like a thread throughout my whole working life

from my first book, Vital Oils, which focused on plant oils for health and well-being

to my work with building a botanically based beauty brand and then having moved away from that now,

my more recent work with fabulous natural ingredients in both food and natural health remedies

to boost overall well-being. So it's with

huge pleasure I welcome back the leading ethnobotonous Jennifer Hirsch to our

studios for a discussion on how and why the Plant Kingdom manages to provide so many truly fabulous well-being

wonders. Jennifer, welcome back. I'm delighted to be here again. And we're talking about one of our favorite, well one of my

favorite subjects, your total immersion subject, which is the the plant kingdom.

Absolutely. Now I'm going to ask you... Well I'm going to ask you first off what is an ethnobotanist because you're not just any old

botanist are you? No I'm so an ethnobotanist botany is the study of plants

ethnobotany is the study of plants. Ethnobotany is the study of our relationship with plants, people's relationship

with plants. So it goes back over time for millennia really.

So people and plants. People and plants.

Etonobotony. And what was your journey? What led you to become a botanist in the first place?

God, it started really early lives.

Because you grew up where?

I grew up in Alexandria, Virginia, and my parents had a garden and I was immersed from the

very beginning in plants, very curious, always. My favorite question is why, which you will know, because

I ask it all the time. And from there I went to university and of course I didn't know about

botany as a field of study so I have an

honors degree in English lit of all things but then very quickly I went to work

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