Wilson Tryon

Undergraduate Fellow, Team Flora

For Wilson Tryon, Team Flora is not just about learning new plants, it is about learning the skills to identify plants he has never seen before. Before joining Tyson, he took Woody Plants of Missouri with Stan Braude and did research in the WashU Arboretum. 

“I really like the way Stan taught Woody Plants. At the surface level, it was about learning to identify and name the trees on WashU's campus. But the point that he would harp on was learning how to look at something instead of just learning how to know what something is. Learning how to look at the plant so that when you do see something you have never seen before, you know how to describe it. 

As a group, the goal is eventually to describe the plants at Tyson as well as possible by the end of the summer. But for the four of us [fellows] as individuals working together, it's about helping each other learn how to learn, but then also how to know which plants are which. I am learning so much new stuff every day that I should be writing more of it down.” 

This abundance of plant knowledge is like a treasure chest for Wilson, driving him to keep answering Team Flora’s overarching question: ‘What plants are at Tyson?’  

“There are so many places and individuals and plants here at Tyson that I don't think I'm going to have a day in 10 weeks when I do not see something new. And that is enough of a motivator to keep going at it.”