Brian there on WNIC, now, as promised, we debut a new year-long series on the show.

We're going to take time each month to pay some attention to maybe the most

important part of the city and surrounding areas when you really think about it, the part

that's not man-made, the plants and animals that help sustain us. Some of you probably remember

our 2022 series, BL Trees, and once again, we'll be joined throughout the series to talk not just about trees,

but other kinds of plants this time and wildlife. Mariel Anzalone, urban botanist and ecologist,

and the founder of New York City Wildflower Week, NYC Wildflower Week. Hey, Mariel, welcome back. Good

to hear your voice again. Hi, Brian. It's so great to be back on. I'm really excited to be here.

And maybe before I introduce this month's topic and the expert you asked to join you, you could tell us a bit about why it's important.

In general, in this city, with so much to hash out with a built environment. We need to spend some time looking at what's growing

in the cracks in the sidewalks and the remaining green spaces and things. Sure. Well, I think,

you know, it's something that people don't really consider, but the very existence of New York

City is based on the fact that it has a really rich biodiversity. And what I mean by that is

it's the living part of the natural world. So it's the plants, it's the animals, it's the fungi,

even the bacteria that live in our city. We have salt marshes and vernal pools, coastal dunes.

So there's a lot of really rich nature through the five boroughs, but we don't really

think about them a lot.

In some ways, I think a little bit about it as like, you know, how having a stable democracy helps people kind of move on to doing other more creative things.

This is the underlying infrastructure that we rely on but don't really think about, like the way flowers are pollinated,

or that forests store carbon and provide oxygen that we breathe.

So these ecological concerns directly support human health and our climate resilience and even our economic systems.

So they're really important to think about, but also it brings people a lot of joy just to observe plants and animals around us.

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