Science Friday14 Maj 2025

Identifying New Plants, And The Scientific Secrets Of Superfoods

What does it take to create and maintain one of the largest repositories of botanical information in the world? For starters, it can mean helicopter-ing into remote nooks of the Amazon, hiking through rough terrain, looking for strange fruits and flowers, and climbing trees to pluck specimens from the branches. Then there’s all the science required to identify, classify, and codify those species.

Botanists Lúcia Lohmann and Charlotte Taylor join Host Flora Lichtman to discuss their work discovering new plant species and maintaining the storied Missouri Botanical Garden.

And, what does it mean to be a superfood? What is the science of micronutrient-dense foods like millet, which get less hype than foods like açaí, goji berries, and quinoa? Flora talks with biological engineer Kiruba Krishnaswamy, who puts food under a microscope—literally—and studies the nutrients that help make our bodies function, in hopes of harnessing them to fight hunger worldwide.

Guests:
Dr. Lúcia Lohmann, professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and president and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden
Dr. Charlotte Taylor, botanist and senior curator at the Missouri Botanical Garden
Dr. Kiruba Krishnaswamy, assistant professor in the Colleges of Engineering and Agriculture at the University of Missouri

Transcript will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com.

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