Dash Martin

Undergraduate Fellow, Team Flora

“Missouri is very new to me. I had never been to the Midwest before coming to college. To develop a connection with this type of landscape is very appealing to me.” 

Dash Martin majors in Environmental Analysis with minors in Film Studies and Landscape Architecture. He is exploring the field of botany this summer to equip himself with ecological knowledge to apply to creative pursuits.

“Being involved in Team Flora’s work enables me to go out and produce creative projects in the future. Getting professional experience is huge. Knowing how to withstand field conditions. Collecting and pressing plants. Developing your observational eye in the field. That is something that Team Flora is especially good at. They are trying to get you to see, to look at the smallest things, even amongst a wide variety of systems. And learning all these plants is a good way to understand the environment; the plants tell you about the ecosystem that you are in.”

After training yourself to notice more details and identify different plants, do you see plants in a different way? 

“Yes. Doug [Ladd] always says the flora of an area can really tell you about the history and what is going to happen in the future. That is something that I would love – to be able to go to a new place and identify what might be happening based on the plants that are there. That's something that drove me to Team Flora because plants are a window into everything.”