09 Åsa Krüger: Gothenburg Botaniska

[00:00:00] I'm Catherine Polcz and this is Plant Kingdom. I'm recording in beautiful Sydney on the land of the Gadigal people of the E-R-Nation and I pay respect to their elders past, present and future. Plant Kingdom is a conversation series about plants, nature and environment,

[00:00:25] featuring scientists, artists, researchers and writers. We release two conversations each month and hear from people who have been intimacy with plants in nature. Today's conversation is with Dr. Osa Kruger. At first met Osa years ago on an exchange

[00:00:42] program at Uppsala University in Sweden. Osa is a Swedish botanist and curator at the Gothenburg Botanical Garden. There she is charged with creating experiences that connects the public with the stories of plants and she is also custodian to the tropical plant living collection.

[00:01:01] In our conversation we spoke about the status of Plant Knowledge in Sweden, the looming figure of Carl Linnaeus and the famous botanist desire to know all the plants in the world and her approach to creating transformative plant experiences and her passion for sharing

[00:01:17] plant knowledge. Here's our conversation. Osa thank you so much for chatting with me, been really looking forward to getting to ask you about some of your research and connect with you again.

[00:01:34] I guess off the top this is maybe a two-part or question or maybe one in the same. We met many years ago now in a taking a very special ethno botany course at Uppsala University,

[00:01:51] which I think was really transformative for both of us in our relationship to plants. I guess can you just tell me a little bit about that class and what it kind of meant for you and your

[00:02:03] kind of career trajectory into plants? Yeah, well I love chatting with you again. So the ethno botany course in Uppsala, yeah it was really, it was something special. It was something else. For me personally I moved from Lund University in southern Sweden to Stockholm to be with

[00:02:24] my boyfriend and I was new to Uppsala and I choose these course because it sounded nice. I was really into biochemistry and I had left the green part of my education two years ago

[00:02:38] and decided to go on the white track. But then I took this course and I was amazed that that led me to the botany track and to the following research that I later did then on on RubyAC.

[00:02:54] I actually did my master's thesis with our course leaders there as my suit. So I continued with the botany and this course that we took it was also people from everywhere bringing what they had

[00:03:10] and then knowledge that they already have and sort of bringing up what you already knew and talk about that to other people. And yeah I think we all learned so much from each other

[00:03:26] and we learned together and we got to go on this trip together. We were really unique going back to Morocco, going back to the Medina, looking at the roots and the powders and everything. Yeah the the fieldwork in the course to Morocco and the Atlas mountains pretty

[00:03:48] very special. It was incredible in top by Ethno Botany power couple. Amazing. And yeah I think for me I just yeah it was the second part of my my six months in Sweden the second course I took

[00:04:05] after taking molecular cell biology and in the winter and it was just such a big adjustment and I didn't really enjoy the first course and then taking Ethno Botany as it was turning from winter to

[00:04:17] spring from it was like such a beautiful, beautiful time and I think for me the the people in plants focus of the course and that relationship I think was probably something really unique

[00:04:32] and the kind of botany courses you could take but a really good way to be introduced to this study of plants through people's relationship with them. Yeah and I guess yes you're kind of path since

[00:04:46] that time has gone a few different places with plants I guess can you tell me a bit about your research today or what what have you kind of studied in the in the past maybe that has led

[00:04:58] you to where you're at today. Yeah so yeah so after the Ethno Botany class I did my master's thesis continuing with Ethno Botany and through that I met my PhD supervisor who was actually in Stockholm

[00:05:13] so I focused on Ruby AC from a gascar and he was from a gascar so we we traveled there and we did field work there and in Mauritius and trying to look at this really understudied tribe in Ruby AC with

[00:05:30] Ruby ACs is this huge and just sperm family like the fourth largest family and it has true economic values in coffee and quinine and a few timber trees as well but these were really shrubs small

[00:05:45] shrubs out in the middle of nowhere in Madagascar we were really investigating Ruby AC in the evolutionary history of that and that was that was a really good experience looking into species and different species and undescribed species so that was really a knowledge that I appreciate a lot

[00:06:01] but doing that research was in a research group connected to the botany garden in Stockholm so I actually started working at the botany garden at the same time because as I started teaching at the university and in feeling that outreach and be she's knowledge and getting to talk

[00:06:19] to people about plants and my passion for plants so I really started during my the last year some my PhD to take another path and do more active outreach and working in the botany garden

[00:06:33] and we'll talk more about what you're doing in your role now but yes similar for me I guess for me I felt like I didn't have to do the research but how could you stay engaged with

[00:06:44] the ideas was so interesting and try to connect people to it in different ways and there's no pathway for that kind of work is they're just kind of barge your own your own way push back your own way

[00:06:56] through some have and I wanted to ask you to you've done a lot of traveling with your research too and I guess still recently traveling a part of your a part of your job where we're kind

[00:07:07] of expeditions or places have you done fieldwork Madagascar but also a few other places is that yeah yeah we went to we went also to Mauritius another island in the western Indian Ocean and that is quite close to Madagascar but it's completely different it's very little native

[00:07:29] floor are left so when you go there with botany there and you said oh I want to see this species and they're like okay I can take it to it and then they know the individual of that species

[00:07:43] are where it grows in the special nature reserve because there is so much crop and an invasive species they're at least when I was there they were struggling a bit to keep the native floor

[00:07:55] safe and then we went to Vietnam for quite a long time looking at the floor are there and also those are the closest relatives to the ones that we are looking at in Madagascar for example

[00:08:10] so going to Asia and that is special and precious and a really nice experience and meeting all of these people invested in in botany in different parts of the world I think that

[00:08:26] open sort of a new universe and it's so I think truly important to to be there and and be part of the knowledge and also learn and have this exchange and you learn so much

[00:08:46] from being in field both about yourself but also about plants the ones that is precious in my mind now is this fall when we went to Brazil and to the Atlantic rainforest and that is something

[00:08:58] that we need we still continue to work with the data at the moment so that is very on the top of my mind now so so that's the latest field trip and what was the what were you doing in the Atlantic

[00:09:12] rainforest were you like collecting plants or is there a research partnership there what were you for eating so there is a research partnership the botany garden here in Gotham are worked together with the newly started project called Arasá which is a project with a research

[00:09:32] station and this private nature reserve they have different laws about nature reserves in Brazil and this is one of the private owned and so the project owns this on the mission is to do an inventory of the biodiversity in Atlantic rainforest so there are scientists for every

[00:09:58] organism you can think of going there doing inventories and reporting on the biodiversity and it's really amazing it's not only collecting like we did very little collecting actually but we did a lot of inventory and for us is also very interesting we're building new greenhouses here in Gothamburg

[00:10:19] and one of the rooms that we are planning is an orland plant evolution I should say yeah so it's all of these four diverse first plants and the Atlantic rainforest is just packed with ferns and mothas

[00:10:35] and like it's nice so it was a prime location to go to again inspired and also see how the elements are built together and how much of this goes with how much of that and how can we create

[00:10:49] something that would really inspire curiosity that's fascinating so you're yeah in how do you tell that story through yeah what living fossils are there what where on the planet was or did they originate so interesting yeah really interesting and another thing I wanted to ask you about

[00:11:15] the expeditions and the traveling and doing field research as if it's you're interested in these kind of large scale trends in biodiversity and I guess even when you were looking at ruby ACI did traveling and kind of being a new environment and taking in totally different floors

[00:11:34] in these different places give you kind of a different perspective on evolution or did it inspire kind of different questions do you think seeing these differences? Of course yes yes I would say yes

[00:11:50] and I think living in Sweden and in the northern and in the northern countries here where I first came in contact with Florida I've found out and in everything it's so different I mean to go to this mega diverse biodiversity hotspots seeing how everything is buzzing

[00:12:10] with life and like the completely different from the temperate region where I live so of course such an inspiration and and such an eye-opening experience every time you go somewhere new I would say

[00:12:27] even though it's rainforest or tropical climate it's completely different if you go to the African continent or Asia or South America they are built up with different species and they have different compositions and it's so interesting so interesting to see what niches there are and who has

[00:12:45] taken that mission yeah so interesting when I when I was doing more field research and just field work in I did a lot of that work in southern Ontario where I'm from and it was really amazing

[00:12:59] you know learning kind of open up those plants to me and tax-automizing was kind of how I experienced the forest and nature and then when I moved to Australia it was just so humbling to not have that

[00:13:14] knowledge anymore and that like all the plants are different the families that dominate are different and it really yeah I don't know I guess gave me an understanding of how science had really informed

[00:13:26] how I experienced nature but also just I'll open up all these different questions and interested in like plant migration and evolution and all these different different questions but also very humbling in that yeah where I could know a lot of the plants in Canada there's like just 900 species

[00:13:46] of eucalyptus genus alone here and how diverse it is and yeah never gonna know all of them but yeah the Swedish floor I don't I was not taking that in when I was in Sweden very much at all

[00:14:04] and what kind of what's the Swedish floor like or what kind of what kind of species dominate in what's what you have there yeah so so what do we have here well when people think of Sweden I

[00:14:19] think they think about forests and big trees and and so there is a lot of big trees here but not a lot of forest I would say it we have a big timber export so that's an important

[00:14:37] economical value of timber tree searing Sweden so we have a lot of those the tree diversity in terms of species or families and and so on it's not that big the focus is more on

[00:14:51] the herbaceous flora we have a lot of comics uh super easy family and uh poisey and yeah a lot of herbaceous flora here so really it goes very seasonal so when you come to spring here it's

[00:15:11] such a different thing to be here than to be here during the winter for example and what we have is not many unique plants at all but we have either we have the most northern distribution of species

[00:15:25] or we have the most southern distribution of a boreal species uh so we are in the in the middle zone there where to just southern and the northern species meet I think for a lot of those so

[00:15:39] we have redlisted species here that perhaps is genetically redlisted but they are common somewhere else but this genetic population or distribution most northern distribution is threatened here yeah probably more similar to Canada um carix was what my research was in

[00:16:02] and there's so much water and cold and sensed diversity in the north there's like not many in Australia come to the wrong place and yeah oh I also was just wanting to wanting to say we've just been

[00:16:15] talking up you know the biodiversity of the tropics in the south but the I guess the adaptations to the extreme weather in the north is they're doing amazing things there too those plants um

[00:16:28] and did you did you grow up knowing your plants at all or is there much of a plant culture in Sweden I guess this is something you're probably thinking about at work too well uh I grew up with my grandparents

[00:16:43] sort of cultivating their food so that's how I came in contact with plants and we also had a summer house where we grew up running around in the forest so I did know the most common species

[00:16:57] and I did know what my food looked like but I sort of left that interest and and then I would say I came back really to plants in the Atnobotanic Course that we talked about and another quite well known

[00:17:11] Upsula alum and taxonomous Carlinais of course very famous Swedish scientists who yeah created systems and taxonomy and by no meal, no main clature that we still use today is he I guess can you tell me a bit about him and he's someone that is really celebrated in Sweden

[00:17:37] yeah I would say that we all learn about Collinais for sure and he was on our money for quite some time I would say most Swedish people know about Collinia but I think as species knowledge and

[00:17:51] botany and biology is not getting that much attention anymore I would say there is also less of a talk about Collinius but in the Upsula of course is super present and you have visited his old summer house

[00:18:05] Hummarbe which is a really nice place and I could recommend that to everyone and I would really say go there doing the Athol exhibition in the in Augustus and his garden there or is it kind

[00:18:18] of a restored gardener is that I would say that is restored a bit but they still have some plants that were that he planted there is that kind of the first garden where he's kind of grouping plants by family

[00:18:32] in relationship I'm not sure but I know he used that summer house to do more of a experiments with his homework space there and he could do more stuff with his plants so I

[00:18:43] know it's more I know at least that he did experiments and had plants on a bigger area out there but he was a special guy huh I think you know knowing about him and he was such a religious person

[00:18:58] he grew up in a religious home and some of these no worse of Linne and they say that he thinks a bit about himself as the second Adam because you know in Genesis in the Bible I'm just

[00:19:13] just chapter two he gods said to Adam that he should name all the species or all the plants and animals and that is something that Linne has actually comes back to in some of his writings

[00:19:31] doing God's work is so is that his mission from that wow I say it was really a religious man and I think you can see that in a lot of stuff that he did his way of ordering nature has helped us a lot

[00:19:47] it's still presently being used so I think he did it did something great there I know other researchers were also doing similar stuff as Linne is at the same time but he really got the message through

[00:19:59] when I think that's his big accomplishment really yeah and this is I guess what we're talking about is the kingdom phylum class order like that hierarchy of relationships between not just plants all species and that's yeah this is the myth that you would be working with in the

[00:20:19] in the botanical gardens that scientists work with that is how scientists are still mapping the relationship between species it's incredible that it stood up even after you know there's no evolution when he was creating this in the 1730s but it still works after that paradigm shift

[00:20:41] yes no no he was only doing the works work really but also the vital and the low system like that he really made that stick also that we are using a genus and a species name

[00:20:52] and that's how we talk about the organisms and I think that's really valuable so we know that we're talking about the same things I heard something that he thought it was actually possible to

[00:21:03] know all of the plants ever oh yes he thought he almost knew all of them yeah I guess he had it hadn't been to the Atlantic rainforest daddy yeah yeah no but I think you know he sent his

[00:21:21] apostles all over the world to collect plants and he was like okay we have to be almost done now so I think that's fascinating and and I think maybe that's the opposite of how how we feel now

[00:21:37] when we go somewhere in a biodiversity house but you are like humbled and see like oh there's so much I don't know there must be so much more I don't know but he was like hmm I'm collecting

[00:21:48] all of this knowledge I knew so little before I know much more now now I almost know everything so yeah it's a really nice thing about science as suppose you know certain figures loom large and

[00:22:03] make big big break thers but really the practice of sciences on the shoulders of the scientists who came before and knowledge is really shared and in past down through teaching how it's all

[00:22:16] disseminated everything but it's it builds and I guess from from Linnae says garden now to another another one dear to you so you have the amazing title of being a curator at the Gothenburg

[00:22:32] Botanic Garden I guess can you tell me a bit first about the Botanic Garden and into its history yes yes I can and I would say Gothenburg Botanic Garden is a rather young garden so

[00:22:47] it inaugurated in 1923 so we had our hundredth you believe last year and what happened was that just a boy your Gothenburg was not a university city in Sweden that would traditionally be loomed in the southern part of Sweden and Uppsala where Linnae studied so those were the big

[00:23:10] university cities and they had Botanic Gardens but Gothenburg was the second largest city in Sweden it's a harbour city and it's a lot of merchants and so on and it's also called the big city of

[00:23:25] donations so a lot of the institutions built here in Gothenburg were based on donations and there was this one merchant who left a lot of money for the city to be more beautiful

[00:23:39] and that there should be a psychological and botanic garden in the city and at the same time the the schools of Gothenburg where there is no fields for botany we can teach our pupils about

[00:23:53] the importance of plants and the food and the medicine and stuff like that so there was a petition to the town to build a botanical experimental field and that actually merged together with this donation about the botanical garden so the city went to Uppsala and asked the professor

[00:24:12] there to come help them and place the garden somewhere and the person they asked was Rutgers and Nandar who was part of the nature protection movement in Sweden and what he found

[00:24:25] in the upper berg was actually a big piece of land close to the city which the city owned and he said like this land must be protected we should build the botanical garden next to it

[00:24:38] and then just fence in this area around and keep that as a nature reserve and then we build the botanical garden next to it and that will be the best place in Gothenburg to build it so then they hired

[00:24:52] the first director called Skotsby and was a young researcher fresh out of Oppsala and Stockholm during research on algae so he came here and he really took this to heart and and he was a very

[00:25:06] ambitious man he went to the southern pole expedition when he was 21 years old and he went to South America traveling there for many many years doing botany and maps and geography but I think yeah and what

[00:25:23] he brought to the botanical garden was that he felt it was extremely important that this should be the people of Gothenburg's botanical garden a lot of the botanical gardens around the world or specifically in Europe you would see our connected to universities and our really scientific gardens

[00:25:40] like it is was built for scientists to study plant and this botanical garden was built for education of the general public this should be a place where it was beautiful you should want to come here

[00:25:58] you should learn about how to cultivate your plants they should also learn about horticulture and you should learn about the systematic and botany and get fascinated so he did a lot of this education for general public he wrote so many articles popular science articles and books

[00:26:20] and everything I think if you want to know what Karl Scott's bag thought he probably wrote it down so you could read about it that is my sense of him and how he built this garden and I think

[00:26:35] the topography of the garden is helping a lot as well it's easy to create different areas or rooms in the garden that really has a unique sense to it and then you walk somewhere else and it looks

[00:26:47] completely different so I think it was a good place to have it and today I think it's a great thing that we are open 24-7 everyone is welcome and it's built to be here yeah amazing and to have the the interplay I guess of the protected

[00:27:07] is it a woodland of a forest or the nature reserve and the garden yeah yeah so the nature service right outside of the garden and we have the arboretum in the nature reserve

[00:27:20] and the nature reserve is actually going all the way into the next city so it's quite a large nature reserve it's so yeah oh wow and is it still said the garden was created in the 1920s it's

[00:27:35] it's still kind of his design and plants that he's planted or has it changed a lot if you're able to go to it today I would say he would probably recognize most of the garden if he were

[00:27:51] to come back today the first thing that he saw here was the what he called alpine attoom which is about the rock garden where we still have plants from alpine areas all over the world

[00:28:05] that is in the same place and it's really a still a true beauty and I think that is the place that he will recognize them but the things that he planted that was still be here is in another

[00:28:18] part of the garden which is called alpine attoom today where we keep a lot of the pines we still have a lot of individuals there from 1916 we got a bit of a preview but what kinds of

[00:28:31] plants are there in the garden like does are they kind of a group to tell different stores it sounds like there's plants from all over the world not particularly focused on Swedish plants what kind of what he had there if you come from the entrance and you

[00:28:49] where you meet the garden there you will find we have this horde cultural really beautiful entrance we also have we are part of a program for cultivated diversity so all these old cultivars

[00:29:04] from different parts of Sweden we have on a cloned archive of those as well so we could show also the cultivated history or the horde culture history on the biodiversity and then as you move upwards we come to my domain which is the green houses and tropical collections

[00:29:23] in there we have an orchid collection which I'm very proud of and it draws a lot of attention to visitors here orchids are always popular and that's a great thing because then you can talk

[00:29:37] about biodiversity and the importance of that when they're still dazzled with the beauty of the orchids and moving on there you have in the colder part of the greenhouse we have a collection of the

[00:29:50] o'Nesia which is a pre-malacy genist from the mountains outside of Iran and Afghanistan and I we have the largest collection of species in the O'Nesia and we also have active research and research collaborations on that collection are those kind of like cushion plants what do

[00:30:11] those look like yeah they are yeah when they fall they are like a hat like a cap you have when you swim like they look at the real heads in the sand bed with those flowery heads and they are really

[00:30:29] cool plants extreme plants and they take it be quite old too right and they kind of create their own warmth by their shape is that is that right yeah yeah what they do yeah with this cushion shape

[00:30:48] it's really like they create their own micro climate they're in such a harsh environment so they have to create something that can make them thrive so they're experts on climbing I would say hi and there we also have a really nice geofight collections and it's amazing how

[00:31:13] once you collect something for taxonomy for example so you want to have all the tulips of grease for example because you're doing some taxonomic work and then like 40 years later grease is actually trying to do restoration project on their tulips because they have been threatened

[00:31:30] in some way and then we can send the material back to them and so that could be part of the restoration with genetic material that is no longer in grease but we have it here so so you can be

[00:31:45] used so that is really nice and the geofight collection is still very active in that way as well and then moving up we have of course large tree collection the arboretum is also very big we

[00:31:59] have had different scientific courageous extremely interested in trees and right now our tree curator he's working with trees in urban environments and what trees should we plant in the coming or the future climate and doing modeling and and seeing what kind of clones

[00:32:21] or populations are best suited for the climate that we have in the future in the cities because trees will probably play a extremely important role in cities everywhere so that's his focus

[00:32:36] so that is a good collection and the rock garden is also a place where people come to look at these all pine plants so I would say those those collections draw a lot of attention here yes

[00:32:51] yeah amazing they're all really special plants you a lot of people won't encounter ever seeing I saw a cushion plant in the wild and Tasmania and it was just it was like seeing a celebrity right

[00:33:03] like they're very famous like did you see like it was very exciting lots of pictures no one else cared that's the problem with me with non-botomists and yeah amazing stuff you need to photograph and document and everyone's like what are we doing we haven't left parking lots

[00:33:25] plugging their ears don't want to speak Latin with you yeah and can you just can you just subscribe with the geofights look like yeah the geofights well those are the bulbs and the bulbs and friends so that's your two lips or your crocus yeah so though the geofights

[00:33:46] are very special here in Sweden everyone loves them because that day they are the sign of spring so after like six months of darkness which is the reality here you both the people and the bulbs

[00:34:00] wake up and the hope of spring so geofights are very close to heart here yeah yeah definitely and that's so interesting the the plants being used for conservation too in that botanic gardens are places of science places of work but every plant that a lot of plants are

[00:34:23] wild collected and they are either descendants of our clone of an individual that's lived in the wild wherever that was and that exchange is so interesting and I think yeah we're probably more used to thinking about zoos as being sites of conservation and people

[00:34:41] understanding the significance of the work that live animals are doing in terms of genetics and what they hold but yeah it's the exact same yes and I think this is awesome now that botanic gardens are going into this focus-reliing conservation because the collections are amazing and they

[00:35:01] were not collected with the focus and conservation but they could now be used in conservation in such valuable ways yeah I saw you a video of you talking about one of the plants the Easter

[00:35:16] island tree is that something that's in the garden yeah that's in the garden that's that's a cool plant and a cool history where actually callscot's by the first director he was there

[00:35:30] in Easter Island or up on the way and looking at this tree on time ago and he was describing it as a new species and he was like this tree doesn't feel very well and then he went back to Sweden

[00:35:42] but later in the 50s the Norwegian explorer told hey you know I'll went there on one of these return expeditions and he saw the same tree but he saw all sorts of seeds so he took them and he was

[00:35:55] like this tree is not feeling well I always send these seeds back to the scientists and they ended up hearing off andberg and we managed to grow a few of the seeds and they were happy and growing

[00:36:07] and 20 years later one of the curators went to a conference talking with a scientist there who was talking about the extinct Easter Island tree and how that was extinct now and that was too bad

[00:36:18] and they were such an important part of the culture on the Japanese and he was like yeah but we have them we have a place here in Gothamburg and that's how a collaboration started for a

[00:36:29] situation and conservation of these dryland tree back in Chile again so that is an amazing work that could be done when you share what you have. Yeah and as a as a curator at the garden are

[00:36:45] what are you what are you doing in your roller you choosing which plants might be on display or tell yeah what tell us tell us a bit about that. So what I did do is I managed the collections

[00:37:06] and the collections of old also to see how what should we keep what things could we change for something else or something of a better provenance or is it correctly determined? Is it really the species that's less unreliable and all of these unknowns that came from expeditions

[00:37:28] trying to get them a name but also communicating knowledge and science to general public and to do that with the story of the plants that we show in our public displays what we do here in Gothamburg

[00:37:42] is that we try to keep everything on public display to really show what a collection could look like and not only showing flowering nice specimens but showing them when they're resting as well

[00:37:58] and how different one species could look at the same time so I think that is an important thing that I'm working on to get everything on display and to talk about that in a good way and also

[00:38:10] to keep the collections current and and keep them or try to frame them in a current setting like now where we talked about the land plant evolution maybe that is not current but we're all working

[00:38:23] on a fire and desert room to show fire adaptation and fire is something that it's very much I mean in Australia of course you're used to be yeah we talk about fire but in Sweden

[00:38:36] it's coming more and more now the fires and fires that is but in Europe in general and people get affected if there are big fires in Greece for example but then to talk about fire as something

[00:38:47] that plants have adapted to and the ecological aspects of fire and plants and what is happening now when and so on and to keep it current and also to talk with kids I would say I mean the most

[00:39:02] important thing is to get the kids interested or to keep their curiosity and I love it when they come to the carnivorous room and we have made new scientists there so you don't have

[00:39:14] to be able to read you could just look at the pictures to understand how the plants work so they will tell their grownups what the plant does instead of them having to stand there and wait

[00:39:26] for the grownups to come and ask them like what does this plant do and how does it work and can you tell me instead they can be the storytellers yeah it's so interesting they can never

[00:39:38] as plants are kind of a gateway plants aren't they get people noticing yeah yeah super important concepts I think we're just yeah don't really you know many you know my me growing up is like this

[00:39:58] you don't have the language to really talk about plants or see them and to have those early experiences or to notice you don't even you might not notice you kind of have to be taught how to

[00:40:09] notice and see and see the differences and it's yeah it's amazing to try to create those experiences in your role that can open up those conversations and build that reconnection to plants and to the questions you might think about plants and life yeah yeah yes I love I

[00:40:35] mean that is something that I truly passionate about this really something we work towards like in Sweden and in most countries you could see a decline in knowledge really about species knowledge

[00:40:48] plant knowledge but also if you look at this school curriculum you could see that it's not taught in the same way as it was before I and all my parents made their own school herberia in the summer

[00:41:03] and it's hard to collect a hundred plants and hand in that and determine that so and that is not at all a requirement in schools anymore and I think in Sweden there is when you

[00:41:19] are 12 years old there isn't the curriculum that you should know the most common species in Sweden plants and animals but there's no more requirements about species knowledge and in when you go to the university not all universities even in the green biodeal program has

[00:41:39] you going to a course it's not mandatory to go to the course of logistics for example so you can become the biologist of a town or and then you don't even have had to take in the course

[00:41:54] of logistics and I think that is a problem we put a lot of emphasis on the biodiversity crisis we're a lot of people as a society into that and how can we work with the crisis and the

[00:42:10] effects and what most effective way and if you don't know what's in the biodiversity if you don't know the species building blocks of the biodiversity how could you possibly yeah or if you think it's

[00:42:24] elsewhere you think it's somewhere else not where you live yeah yeah but also how can you appreciate what biodiversity is to put in the correct measures if you don't know what the biodiversity

[00:42:38] is build up of and I think we're pouring a lot of money into ecology for example and they do great stuff they're amazing researchers they have to build a research on this primary science which

[00:42:53] is plastics and species knowledge really and that is something that our natural history yep yeah so that is something that we're actively working on here and we have tried different ways and we are trying to continue exciting projects but now in May we're actually having the

[00:43:14] bioblits here in Gothamburg for the first time and we are collaborating with natural history museum with the university and we're hoping and 19 other organizations so we really hope that we get some attention to species knowledge um people out there and to meet them and get general

[00:43:37] public to meet the experts and see that it's not so hard it doesn't have to be this threshold of always so hard to know the different species of grass for example or even that there is

[00:43:48] different species of grass grass it's hard yeah but just opening like possibility like that there is actually like five grasses where you stand yeah totally yeah and if you're to stand anywhere and try to look at the like you would you could recognize different forms or different colors

[00:44:13] or different shapes different textures like yeah and I think we we knew we do it subconsciously like oh I will think over here this is softer I will not sit here it's harder and and so on so

[00:44:28] we have made these differences already but we haven't put a name on it and I think that's lacking like we should give it give everybody the language to talk about the plans key to seeing

[00:44:43] is naming like there's such a relationship there to have the language to then talk about them yeah I had a professor that he's just advice to everyone in biology was just to get field guides

[00:44:58] and to just try to learn what's there locally which was really it was unique even in you know you're studying biology or studying famous case studies of Darwin's Finch's places that you know these universal kind of famous studies you're not well in my case was not learning locally

[00:45:17] anything about the connection of ecology and biologyography and geology like it's all broken broken all apart isn't it yeah yeah yeah I think also that's history I mean and history of

[00:45:32] what you want to tell someone you want to tell something something unique and it's weird I mean the kids know what you're all flying and all of the animals of the savanna but that's in every kid's

[00:45:44] book now and they hardly know the names of the birds outside the window so yeah tricky and I guess what are the kind of different projects you're you're working on so you do

[00:45:57] you have the gardens you have exhibitions you have a podcast can you tell me about some of the different mediums that you get to work with to try to connect people is so we work with the collections

[00:46:10] then of course and have exhibitions with the collections as a foundation and then we try to keep current and keep to the topics that are buzzing in society and then I do guided tours quite a

[00:46:24] lot of guided tours and I think that also a nice way to connect with people they become here because they want to see something beautiful and it has somewhere beautiful to be and you can really see

[00:46:37] that it's eye opening and it's fascinating and they often say that when they go out of here they they know so much more than they thought they would just have a nice day in the park so I think

[00:46:49] that is also a very important thing to be in person but then of course also to work with the texts and the signage and how people interact on their own when we're not there to guide them.

[00:47:02] Yeah and you're doing that on the experience you have it actually seeing how people react to the tour and to the individual plants I think that is quite rare insight to have when you're creating in these other mediums too. Yeah yeah and also the gardeners here they meet

[00:47:20] visitors every day having them different things and then you can also sort of like so in your in your area what are people asking you every day or and maybe that's also something that we

[00:47:31] can do an exhibition or a day asking the gardener or have a coffee with a gardener and to get people to get out of the garden what they want to get out of the garden but then I mean the podcast

[00:47:46] is really nice way of showing what we do behind the scenes sort of say so looking at how how do we so the seeds or what are we doing to get things to look like they do and what do we do as

[00:48:01] researchers when we went to Brazil for example we brought our gear for recording and trying a fig tree 30 meters up and talking to the listeners during that time and what we saw and just

[00:48:15] bringing people to places maybe where they are not able to go themselves and reaching a broader audience that the ones that are coming here to the physical garden and I think that is the

[00:48:29] main challenge really that the public that we have coming to the garden they already know that they want to come to the garden but we also want to talk to people who doesn't come to the garden we

[00:48:42] want to be seen and heard elsewhere talking about botany and the importance of plants so that is something that we are working on in different projects right now how can we reach even more people

[00:48:54] yeah and has your practice engaging people with plants you think that's kind of changed or matured or evolved over time since you started doing that work yeah yeah for sure I'm hoping that at least

[00:49:15] I'm hoping I'm still evolving and changing and getting better better at it and having different when I started out in back in Stockholm going being a tour guide and being also teaching a lot of school children we had more of lessons that were following the school curriculum so

[00:49:36] I had like the manuscript that I was following more or less for those most of those tours but here it's more based on experience and what people are interested in and also

[00:49:52] I'm taking from from everyone I meet I try to go and tours wherever I can and pick up good things that other people are doing reading articles about how to dust people actually take in information and what is crucial if you want to communicate with kids or

[00:50:10] and we have great pedagogues employed here in the garden that we work just look together with and trying to exchange knowledge and tricks yeah it's so interesting there's no um there's no right way to write every different approach and different artists institution researcher is

[00:50:32] getting connected with people in different ways this may last question for you and it's maybe a bit broad I guess for for you what kind of draws you to doing this work or why do you think it's really

[00:50:49] important to connect people to plants yeah the broader scale I think it's for our own survival the ultimate thing is for our own survival and I think there are many many many

[00:51:08] reasons for why this is important but I think primarily I think to it is crucial to know what you have around you which is the everyday if you don't have a name to it if you don't know what

[00:51:20] it is how can you appreciate it how can you feel like you should care about it and we need to care about it for our survival but we also you could see in the studies that if you are out in the forest

[00:51:37] your heart rate goes down you feel much better and just get people to appreciate where the food comes from how everything is connected how we are part of something bigger that the plants are not

[00:51:52] entities that stand on their own we interact with plants every day and they interact with us every day if we are part of nature and the big biodiversity diverse planet that we live on I think that is crucial

[00:52:08] for the generations I couldn't agree more and I think what you're saying about connection like that resonates so much with me and what what I get thinking about plants too it's not just a connection to plants it's kind of connection to yeah oxygen time evolution earth it's everything

[00:52:31] isn't it in plants there's such an interesting way to have but open that gateway that was my conversation with Osa Kruger thank you for listening huge thank you to Osa for sharing

[00:52:55] her work plank kingdom is hosted and produced by me Katherine Polts and our music is by Carl Dider listen to us wherever you get your podcasts and check out our website at plankkingdom.org