Bruce almighty: a Selby Gardens researcher goes where the wild things are.

Selby Botanical Gardens' manager of collections Bruce Holst chafes at comparisons to Indiana Jones, but how else to describe someone who braves mountains, rapids and poisonous snakes in search of rare plant species? Holst is currently enmeshed in a 20-year project to document the 10,000 species of plants in the Lost World of southern Venezuela. How dangerous is your work? On one trip, Africanized bees attracted to the salt in our sweat stung us 10-15 times a day for 30 days. We've had screw-worm maggots grow in our muscles and burrowing fleas that dig into heels and under toenails and produce pea-sized egg sacks if you don't dig them out with a needle. Also, the usual stuff ... biting ants, snakes, scorpions. How's the food? In Peru, the Ashaninka Indians at the base of the Andes Mountains shared a starchy root-based home-brew fermented with spit. I don't recommend the monkey stew. So why do this? Our collection is a botanical ark of the productivity and diversity that make the natural world complex, stable, and enables humans to thrive. If we lose those elements as a result of greed and ignorance, our children will lose their quality of life. This research enables us to understand and conserve life on Earth.