Plant Music Hour

With Good Reason

If plants could talk, what would they say? What if they could sing? Sam Nester, Yassmin Salem, and Donald Russell explain how George Mason University’s Arcadia installation turns a greenhouse into an orchestra. And: Fossils give away the secrets of the past, but they can also tell the future. Rowan Lockwood is taking a closer look at the fossils of giant oysters to learn how to rebuild oyster reefs today. Lockwood was named a 2019 Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award recipient. Later in the show: Crystal blue lakes might make for a popular tourist spot, but they’re starting to disappear. Dina Leech is studying what gives lakes their color and why they’re changing. Plus: While forests are a deep green right now, in just a few months leaves will be changing colors--thanks, in part, to caterpillars. Rebecca Forkner shares how these tiny insects change their environments and what we can learn from them.