Cassandra Leah Quave - The plant hunter : a scientists quest for natures next medicines

In a wet grassy pasture bordering the swamplands of Florida, I stood with my team of six students, surveying what would be our work site for the morning. Wed all woken up early and driven the twenty miles into the countryside as dawn began to throw its rays over the swamp. This was the latest of many expeditions I had led for the students working out of my lab at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Our mission: find plants.

The field was filled with invasive weedsexplosions of spiny soda apple (Solanum viarum, Solanaceae) with their hard, yellow fruits and prickly leavesand clusters of the native feathery dogfennel (Eupatorium capillifolium, Asteraceae) that waved in the wind as if to greet us. Fifteen feet away, the green field turned to black muck, where a long stand of cypress trees, their knobby knees poking out from the water, stood as wizened sentries to the swamp. I stared at the scene a moment longer, wiping my brow. I hadnt even started to work and I was sweating like a pack mule in this April humidity.

As a professor and the herbarium curator at Emory, Im dedicated to the discovery of new medicines derived from plants. My students and I were out in this swampland to collect some one hundred different plant species over the next two weeks; then wed bring them all back to my lab to study. Wed spent the previous three months preparing for this trip, combing through historical records of Native American plant use, creating a customized field guide of the medicinal plants and their applications complete with identifying photos, and planning all of the logistical elements required of an intensive scientific expedition.

Finally, we were ready to go.

Wait! I said. Lets change into tall boots.

Never underestimate Florida muck.

The students pulled on mud boots while I sat on our trucks tailgate. It would take me a little longer than them to get ready. Born with multiple congenital defects of my skeletal system, Ive been immersed in medicine and science, in one form or another, right from the start. Ive been subjected to scores of surgeries, beginning with an amputation just below my knee at the age of three, which have given me the ability to walk, using various models of prosthetic legs. Today, I wore my most stripped-down versiona metal pylon connecting the stump below my knee to a rubber foot shell. The prosthetic ankle didnt bend, making it almost impossible for me to put on a normal boot. Luckily, my handy husband, Marco, had installed a zipper down the back of this particular boot, so slipping it on was relatively simple. Once I was booted up, I checked the gear strapped to my army utility belta bowie knife, a set of pruning clippers called secateurs, a Japanese hori-hori digging knife, a handheld radio, and a .357 Smith & Wesson pistol.

We werent there to hunt wildlife, but I knew better than to trespass on gator territory without a form of defense. My pistol was loaded with hollow points, the safety on. Few people are well acquainted with real Florida ecosystemsthe inland swamps and wetlands where a picnic by the water can end with you becoming the mealbut this wild, dangerous, untouched part of the state was where I grew up.

Each student was equipped with handheld radios, clippers, and shovels. They spread out in pairs along the swamps edge, entering from different angles like a big pack of wolves hunting down prey. I sent two of them off opposite our group toward the creek to wade through the shrubbery and tall grasses in search of the elusive blackberry bush, while the rest of us entered the swamp head-on.

Kim, an energetic young woman whod been with the lab for a year now, was the first student to call me over. I used my hiking stick to help me slog through the rough terrain, my boots slurping and squelching in the muck. She pointed to a small herb, about a foot tall, with clusters of dainty white flowers along its distal stalk. Hello, gorgeous, I said, touching it with my fingertips. I flipped through the pages of our field guide to confirm my hunch.