Hello, everyone, and welcome to the In Defensive Plants podcast, the official podcast of Indefensiveplants.com. What's up? This is your host, Matt. Welcome to the show. How is everyone doing this week? Before I begin, I just want to say, consider supporting the show over at Patreon. That's patreon.com slash In Defensive Plants. There's a lot of great kickbacks over there, but the best thing of all is it helps keep the show up and running. I literally, and I mean this, could not be doing the show without the support of my patrons each and every month. So thank you to all of them. But today, I've got a really exciting book to talk about. It's called A Gardner's Guide to Botany, the biology behind the plants you love, how they grow, and what they need. And it's written by someone you'll be familiar with

if you've been listening to this podcast for any length, Dr. Scott Zona. He's a plant taxonomist by trade,

but he's really, in recent years, turned his eyes to plant communication, getting people

interest in plants by understanding them better. And that's exactly what this book is done. So

no matter how interested you are in

plants or gardening, there's something in here for you. It's beautifully illustrated by Preston Montague and a

bunch of others. But it's just a fantastic book and I can't sing its praises enough. But I don't need to

tell you all that because we're going to be talking about it. Let's just jump right into it. Without

further ado, here's my conversation with Dr. Scott Zona.

I hope you enjoy.

All right, Dr. Scott Zona, it feels like forever since we last spoke.

But for those that haven't listened to previous episodes, let's start off with a brief

introduction.

Tell everyone a little bit about who you are and what it is you do.

My name is Scott Zona.

I live here in North Carolina now, although I did most of my professional work down in South Florida.

I'm a taxonomist by training, but I've sort of branched out into other areas of botany.

But yeah, plants, palms, palms and salvias and liverworts are my thing.

Nice.

Great, great combination.

Odd, but nonetheless, interesting.

And, yeah, I think you've really expanded since the strictly taxonomy days, I guess I could say.

...