We Have a Lot to Learn from Plants

The Final Boss of Botany

Let’s begin with a few facts about our sister in science and Indigenous wisdom.

• Robin Wall Kimmerer is a writer, a scientist, a decorated professor, and an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation.
• Kimmerer has a Bachelor of Science in Botany from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry and both a master’s degree and a PhD in botany from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Braiding Sweetgrass was first published by Milkweed Editions in the fall of 2013 with an initial print run of just 8,000 copies
• The book first hit the New York Times bestseller list in 2020, a full seven years after its original publication. It then stayed there for five years and still reliably appears on indie bestseller lists to this day.
• The book had sold over 3 million copies to date! It’s been translated into 20 languages and was adapted into a young readers edition.
• Kimmerer was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship Genius Grant in 2022 and was named to Time’s list of 100 most influential people in 2025

“This is more fundamentally a five-alarm bell, but it’s like five alarm gongs of the soul and of the earth and the sky and the moon.”

Where to Catch Kimmerer

I don’t always have the opportunity to point you at events where you might catch the authors of the books we cover on the show, either because they aren’t actively publishing, don’t tour or give interviews, or because they’re, well, dead. Not so with Robin Wall Kimmerer! She tours widely and regularly, with several upcoming events on the horizon. Here are a few:

Catch her full tour schedule at her website’s Events page.

“And then there’s Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel, and they got in a fight and here we are today, right?”

Plant, Baby, Plant!

In 2025, Kimmerer launched Plant, Baby, Plant, an initiative to encourage us all to get involved in caring for the natural world however we can. I am pleased to report that the way I was going to describe the project initially (an ecological middle finger to the “logging company from Fern Gully” types pillaging the planet willy nilly) is not very far off, according to Kimmerer herself:

”Drill, Baby, Drill”, that mantra of destruction and extraction, is an intentional slap in the face to people who value land, life, health, and justice over corporate profits. Well, let’s raise a garden-gloved middle finger in return. I invite you, my friends, my neighbors, my readers, my fellow citizens into a new movement called Plant Baby Plant.

As someone who often gets stuck feeling like I don’t know where to start in the fight against climate change or whether what I have to offer is worth a damn, I really appreciate the “potluck for the gift economy” approach that Kimmerer espouses, a gentle reminder that we all have something to contribute and can begin at any time. The site has a section dedicated to Featured Actions to help kickstart your PBP contributions; the current feature is Less Lawn More Life, a free, nationwide 12-week challenge to turn outdoor spaces into thriving habitats.

Extra Credit

Readalikes and Such

• The Glorians by Terry Tempest Williams – the latest from another must-read nature writer (and personal favorite of Rebecca’s), this book follows a similar structure to Braiding Sweetgrass
  • There’s also her earlier work, Refuge, for folks looking for something more conservation-oriented
• How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell – Has some flavors of Kimmerer in its search for a sense of place and connection to one’s community
• Zoë Schlanger’s The Light Eaters, which is about plants and some pretty radical scientists who gave a lot more credence to the animacy and agency of plants than was common and accepted at the time

Supplemental Reading (and Watching/Listening)

• If you like Braiding Sweetgrass, here’s why you might also enjoy—and be changed by—Kimmerer’s The Serviceberry.
• Watch Kimmerer in her element in this guided nature tour of Clark Reservation State Park in Jamesville, NY
• Kimmerer has a wonderfully soothing speaking voice to begin with, but accompanied by live instruments? That’s next level, as you’ll see in this lovely storytelling session from the New York Times Climate Forward event in 2023 on insights gleaned from observing snapping turtles.
• For all my language nerds (it’s me, I am nerds), the essay “Why We Need New Words for Nature” is a call to pay more attention to the language we use to describe nature in a time of environmental crisis, weaving in the beautifully descriptive ecolinguistics of Anishinaabemowin, the language of the Anishinaabe people.
• I’ll wrap things up with two wonderful pieces I hope you’ll spend some time with. One is “Speaking of Nature,” Kimmerer’s essay in Orion Magazine’s March/April 2017 issue, a meditation on the search for language that affirms our kinship with the natural world. The second is an interview and podcast episode, also from Orion Magazine, that serves as a companion to that piece, a discussion on the grammar of animacy and the concept of ecological compassion explored in the essay

“Listen, I fucking LOVE a tree.”