Plant Love Stories invites scientists from diverse backgrounds and career stages to share their stories of the plant that shaped their life. Even ecologists can suffer from ‘plant ambivalence’ and let the vegetation blend into the background while we work and play in the outdoors. When we engage in science communication, we often focus on the charismatic megafauna of our research and leave the plants out of the story. Here, we celebrate the autotrophs — and their connections to our lives and careers — in stories from biologists, conservation scientists, students, and managers.

Plant Love Stories centers the importance of narrative storytelling in science communication, both within the scientific community, and when we try to reach broader audiences. Stories have power: to bring people together, to connect people with nature, to help us bridge our research and our communities. Our stories highlight emotional connections with plants; through plants, we grapple with topics from equitable access to nature to anxiety and depression to finding humility. We talk about the plants that have inspired our careers, challenged our research, and shifted our perspective. Our plants appear on movie screens and in wild places, in city parks and city homes, in our labs and our field sites. Be prepared to fall in love with orchids, mahogany, chili peppers, durian trees, and marsh sedges, and their pollen, seeds, leaves, and trunks as you listen to the love stories in this session.