Hi, this is Flora Lixman. You're listening to Science Friday.

SciFright just got back from Columbia, Missouri, where we did a live show with the radio station, KVIA.

So today we are bringing you to Mizzou's Jesse Auditorium to dig into the wild world of plants.

From the microscopic nutrients they pack to the quest

to identify every single plant that lives on planet Earth.

To figure out how our world works, we need to know what these are and where they live.

One of the great mysteries of our planet is simply what lives here.

It's a deceptively simple question, and it's the life's work of my next two guests.

They've spent their careers in the field looking for new plant species.

If botanical work conjures up an image of someone in a wide-brim hat with gardening gloves in a spade.

Think again. What this work actually requires is helicoptering into remote nooks of the Amazon,

hiking through rough terrain, looking for strange fruits and flowers, climbing trees to pluck specimens from branches, and that's just

step one. Then there's all the science required to identify, classify, and codify those species,

which my next guests do at one of the largest repositories of plant information in the world,

the Missouri Botanical Garden.

Thank you. of plant information in the world, the Missouri Botanical Garden. Here to tell us more about this work and why it's important is Dr. Lucia Lohman,

professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and president and director of the Missouri

Botanical Garden, she is the first woman

to hold the post.

We also have Dr. Charlotte Taylor, botanist, and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden,

who is recently named the most prolific woman author of new plant species living today.

So we have some living legends with us. Thank you both for being here, and welcome to Science Friday.

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