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Patreon over at patreon.com slash indefensive plants and help keep this show up and running in the process. I hope to see you over there. But in the meantime, on with the show. Hello everyone and welcome to the Indefensive 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? I hope you have your reading lists ready to go because I have another book to add to it, and it is a phenomenal publication that is absolutely gorgeous, both in Word and in viewing. The book in question is in the circle of ancient trees, where Dr. Valerie Trueway and 11 other authors sit down to talk about their work in tree ring science

or dendrochronology. It's amazing to pour over the pages of this book and appreciate not only

the trees themselves, but the sheer amount of data you can get out of tree rings and the stories

they can tell not only about the trees, the region, the climate, but human cultures all around

the world. It's a phenomenal read. It's always

great talking to Dr. Truway, so I don't want to keep you from it any longer. Without further ado,

here's my conversation with Dr. Valerie Truay, welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you return. For those that haven't listened to our first episode together, how about you start off with an introduction? Tell us a little bit about who you are and what it is you do.

Hi, Matt. Well, first off, thank you so much for having me back. It's really a pleasure.

My name is Valerie Trouet. I am a professor at the University of Arizona, and my department

is the laboratory of tree ring research, which means that my colleagues and I, we all specialize in the science of tree rings, dendrochronology.

And so my field of expertise is to use their rings of trees to study the climate of the past, but also the history of forests

and the history of people, and then how those three interact with each other.

Yeah, it's one of those subjects that I think we can all kind of resonate with on some level,

but when you realize just how much information there is hidden in tree roots, what it can tell us about not only the life of a single

organism, but the environment around it, and then really the history of our lives on this planet,

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