From underground fungal networks to the secret communications of native plants, our new musical performance imagines some of the hidden conversations and mutual relationships happening all around us.
When the Land Speaks, Who's Listening?
In California's foothills, where systematic conversion has stripped away much of our native riparian habitat, something remarkable persists: the intricate web of relationships between plants, pollinators, and the soil itself. It's here, in this landscape of both loss and resilience, that The Botanist: A Plant-based Song Cycle takes root.
Each season has its ripening—a time when seeds break from their shells, when black crows and phoebes feast on millions of seeds, when tight young buds burst open with endless colors, smells, and flavors. This is the world of Ripe Area, our one-day festival celebrating the profound interdependence between humans and the native plant species that sustain us.
The Science Behind the Songs
What began as an exploration about native plant relationships has evolved into something creative for me and a group of musicians and performers: a musical exploration inspired by cutting-edge plant science as a way to challenge our ideas about intelligence, communication, and relationships in the natural world.
Recent research is revealing extraordinary phenomena: oak trees connected to fungal networks that could stretch over a million miles if untangled, mycorrhizal partnerships that detect drought and climate changes, plants that "remember" and communicate across vast distances. Scientists are now seriously investigating how these processes occur without the presence of a central nervous system—how plants might "feel" touch, sense threats, and exchange energy instantaneously throughout their entire bodies.
The stigma that once surrounded research into "plant intelligence" is finally subsiding in some scientific circles. Where scientists were once ostracized for exploring plant communications, we now have rigorous studies on cross-tree interdependence, fungal information networks, and plant memory behavior.
Enter The Botanist
From this fertile ground of scientific discovery, I wanted to create a character who embodies this wave of inquiry: The Botanist is an earnest field scientist who values rigorous data gathering and analysis, and yet is open to challenging prevailing assumptions about plant awareness and communication.
I carry a lens, a shovel, a trowel
Dirt on my face, sweat on my brow
I hear - my ears cannot tell
I see - what only bees know well
Through The Botanist's eyes, we witness a few hidden dramas playing out in California's native ecosystems: the dance between bees and California buckwheat, the early-morning conversations between manzanita blooms and emerging bumblebees, the underground partnerships between blue oak roots and ancient fungi, and the essential bond between the milkweed plant and the monarch butterfly.
The Botanist offers more than scientific observation—through song and movement, we're aiming to build awareness and emotional connections with these natural relationships.
I gaze at the soil, I squint in the sun
Temperature change and weather alert
Instruments tell me what's wet and what's dry
I am a Botanist: I only ask why
The performance weaves together the rigor of botanical research with imaginative and sacred relationships among plants and other species, with the intention to honor both the Indigenous peoples who have long understood these connections and the contemporary scientists pushing the boundaries of plant research.
Plants Are Listening
In our foothills landscape—where oaks, elderberries, ferns, flowers, and fungi maintain their ancient relationships despite habitat loss—we're reminded that the ground has much to tell. Underground teems with more life than there are stars in the sky.
The Botanist: A Plant-based Song Cycle invites audiences to experience our interdependence with riparian zones and their native inhabitants. It's an invitation to listen more carefully, to see what only bees know well, and to recognize that in asking "why," we might discover that the plants have been listening to us all along.
-Ameera Godwin
Myrtle Tree Arts is partnered once again with American River Conservancy (ARC) to host RIPE AREA: The Art of Native Plants Festival at ARC's historic Wakamatsu Farm, Placerville, CA on Sunday, September 21st, 2025 from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM.
At 11:30 AM, on the Big Oak Stage, Myrtle Tree Arts will premiere "The Botanist: A Plant-Based Song Cycle."
Register for FREE tickets and get more details. Come early and stay all day! Experience nature and science through the lens of the arts, explore, create, make, eat, and walk the gardens and grounds of this historic farm. Our collaborative and family-friendly event features local artists expressing benefits and uses of native flora in all forms, including the culinary arts, storytelling, performance, poetry, painting, traditional crafts and knowledge, and much more.
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