Why I am a uwp board member

By Dr. Stanley J. Roux

Distinguished Teaching Professor, Professor Emeritus
Molecular Biosciences
The University of Texas at Austin

I have had a near life-long love of plants, beginning as early as my pre-teens, when I marveled every year at the bountiful harvest of figs and cooking pears from our back yard in Metairie, La. That love affair continued through my years at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, where my green thumb generated Big Boy tomato plants that grew over 9 feet in height and yielded over 10 pounds per plant, and my taste buds feasted on the wild muscadine grapes and passionflower fruit that I found on campus. These happy experiences motivated me to learn more about the molecular mechanisms that controlled plant growth and development, which I did in my graduate studies for the Master’s degree at Loyola University in New Orleans and for the Ph. D. degree at Yale University in Connecticut.

Consequently, it was not surprising when, shortly after beginning my term as a faculty member at the University of Texas in Austin, I was immediately intrigued when I first learned about the Useful Wild Plants of Texas project from Scooter Cheatham, whom I met serendipitously at a neighborhood get-together to plan zoning improvements. Because I had always valued plants as sources of food, medicine, and beauty, I deeply resonated with the goals of the Project to catalogue the diverse wild plants of the region and document the multifaceted gifts they offered the world. Therefore, I joined the UWP Board early in the 1980s and ever since have felt privileged to support the project in any way I could.

Besides serving on the Board and writing articles for the UWP Newsletter, one of the main ways I work to foster the success of UWP is by advertising its critically valuable contributions to internationally distinguished visitors to the University and to the thousands of students I have taught during my more than 40-year tenure on the faculty.

Among the half-dozen different courses I taught, the one that best communicated plant values to students was the freshman-level course for non-majors entitled “Hidden Treasures of Plants: Fuel, Food, Meds, and Money.” It is one of the Signature Courses that the University of Texas offers entering freshmen to introduce them to the University’s academic community, and it is given in a discussion-oriented setting. This informal setting was ideal for students to both learn about the latest discoveries on how plants benefit humanity, and to share their own personal experiences about the value of plants in their life and that of their extended family. It was remarkable how almost every student had a story about how their family benefited from one or other of the diverse plant values we discussed in the course, which included such topics as Plants as Bio­fuels, Plants as Medicine, Plants as Nutrition, Plants as Poisons and Hallucinogens, and Plants as Landscape Treasures.

As a key text for the Hidden Treasures course, the four volumes of The Useful Wild Plants of Texas... are kept on library reserve, and they serve as the main background reading for the topics that are covered in the course. As a further connection to the UWP project, every year the highlight of the course for the students is the field trip they take to the UWP office, where Scooter Cheatham and Lynn Marshall tell them about the project and take them on a tour of the ­treasures “hidden” in the wild plants growing in the one-acre field behind the office.

Several students from the Hidden Treasures course, as well as from other courses I teach ,have become so enthusiastic about UWP’s work and programs that they have volunteered scores of hours with the organization and continue to help now that they have moved elsewhere for graduate school and professional positions.

Beyond these volunteers, multiple students repeatedly told me that the plant course I taught them greatly expanded their appreciation of just how critically valuable plants are to our society. Moreover, by teaching the class (and having the students teach me through their readings and personal experiences), I have achieved my goal of deepening my knowledge and love of the green treasures that enrich my life daily.

Meanwhile, my research on the mechanisms that control plant growth and development has led to an unexpected discovery that can help increase food security for the world. We have learned that enhancing the expression of a certain enzyme in soybeans and corn can expand their root system architecture, strengthen their drought resistance, and increase their seed yield. A local entrepreneurial company is interested in commercializing this discovery, and if they are successful, more productive soybean and corn plants could eventually be available to farmers.

So sometimes plant love can result in increased plant ­reproduction!