Kristie Scarazzo - Women in Science

Listing and Recovery division botanist, Kristie Scarazzo with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Ventura shares how her love of botany began.

 

For audio described version: flic.kr/p/2iJhJEn

 

Credit: Lisa Cox and Hazel Rodriguez/USFWS.

 

Video transcript:

00:12

My earliest memories of botany are from

00:15

My childhood and I grew up in rural Pennsylvania in

00:19

a very small town, and my parents had a huge yard. And our

00:24

house faced an open space kind of wild land.

00:27

And, I just remember spending all of my time outside

00:31

in the yard, and to me as a child the plants were really my friends. They

00:36

all had very distinct personalities and I definitely recall, you know,

00:41

looking inside the flowers and picking them apart.

00:45

I didn't realize that I wanted to study botany until

00:48

I was the age of twenty-five. I dropped out of school and I moved to

00:54

Homboldt, and I lived and went to Homboldt State for a brief time.

00:58

And it wasn't until being in that environment that I had this epiphany, that

01:03

it's not just the medicinal plants or the food plant, but that where we live

01:08

in California is amazing as we harbor, you know,

01:12

some of the greatest diversity on the

01:14

planet whereas global biodiversity hot spot, and I just was in awe.

01:20

That really had a profound effect on me so I

01:22

decided to change my major and go back to school and study botany.

01:27

You know, I was in high school I took AP Bio and I got the highest grade. And it was my most

01:31

fun class.

01:33

But even then, it just never occurred to me to do something scientific.

Done