Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Independence Plants Podcast, the official podcast of IndependencePlants.com.

What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How's everyone doing this week?

I know I'm doing great because I have a better understanding of the role of fire in midwestern Prairie ecosystems,

and that's all thanks to my guest today, Dr. Greg Spireius.

Greg's been on the podcast before many, many years ago, but he's back today to talk about an incredible research project

he's been on that looked at historic fire regimes in the midwest dating back to the 1600s.

There's a lot of cultural context that needs to be factored in here, and it helps people trying

to understand how to move forward in this chaotic world that we live in. But I'm going to let Greg do

all the talking, so let's just jump right into it without further ado. Here's my conversation with Dr.

Greg Spireius. I hope you enjoy.

All right, Dr. Greg Spireius, welcome back. It has been a long time since you've had you on the podcast,

so how about you refresh us? Tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is you do.

Hello, Dr. Matt. May I call you that? Yeah, totally. Thank you.

It's a rare case when that happens. It sounds cheesy. Anyway, Greg Spireius is my name. It is I.

I am a botanist and planning collegeist at the Illinois Natural History Survey housed at the

University of Illinois and Champaign Urbana, where I work with rare plant surveys, vegetation surveys,

and I also do a little research on the site. You do a lot. And as someone that gets to see

sort of your day-to-day a little bit more than most listening to this, I don't know how you manage to

balance everything that you do, but you seem like you're functioning. You're doing all right.

Yeah, it's not a bad gig.

So what brought you to becoming a botanist? I mean, are you someone that always liked plants,

or did you kind of stumble into it later on through, you know, education or hobbies, whatever?

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