[karim79]

I grow marijuana and chillies from time to time. I got good at it. I will say that plants are malleable in untold ways and so I find this article to be unsurprising.

Plants will do what they need to do in the end. I've done stuff like co2 bombing, and increasing nutrients to the point to where I get a whole new ecosystem of insects and an entirely new situation.

It is such fascinating stuff that it's actually the life I want to live. I'm a computer scientist but now I yearn for the botanical sciences.

I highly recommend checking out defoliation strategies and low-stress training methods for anyone interested. Plants are not dumb creatures. The results you can get from them are astonishing and the science of what plants actually are becomes more profound by the day.

[kuerbel]

I'm studying for a bachelor's degree in horticulture part-time through a distance-learning university. If you're more interested in growing plants, I'd say horticulture is a better fit than botany. If you're more interested in understanding how plants work, botany is probably the better choice. That said, you'll still learn a lot of botany in a horticulture degree as well obviously

[karim79]

Thank you sir. I actually got my CS from distance learning and somehow the combination of growing things and monitoring everything using CS just grabs me. I would work on any farm anywhere with appropriate agency.

[whacked_new]

this is low key one of the few things that I think of doing for the rest of my life, though my bias is towards seaweed farming and related ecosystems

[tryagainian]

Oooo, I get a bit excited about interdisciplinary techno-plant-and-livestock

Another area that might be easier to break in to as far as work goes is labouring for an irrigation business, kinda agricultural plumbing.

You’ve probably seen pivots[1] and side-roll irrigation systems.

This would put you in more direct contact with the farm operators, expose you to a wide range of agricultural crops, and also tie neatly in to your existing CS skill set with regard to agricultural SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), or Industrial Arduino as I like to call it.

Working for seed processes / distributors and fertiliser and pest & weed control industries could also be another foot-in-the-door move.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center-pivot_irrigation

[pvaldes]

Botany comprises all, but most people see it as a synonym of plant classification.

Horticulture is about growing plants and multiplying it, often with flower power overtones and moon myths that vastly underestimate its importance.

Veganism is often mistaken as a synonym of "botany loving people", but is just a religious movement started by a priest, and centered around the random ideas that:

1) Plants occupy a lower rank of importance among life beings because they lack a single particular type of sensor that only the cool animals have, and...

2) Plants are safe to eat, because they were designed by god for us

None of those ideas are validated by real facts. As people grows in the cozy comfort of their religious group they lose the capability to see the whole picture and turn into food zombies that move and hate just by inertia. You can show science here for weeks and weeks without finding a sign of intelligent life.

---------------

Many people stop here and will never heard about:

Geobotany. Be afraid, very afraid. This is what a cabal of Da Vincy code linguists would do in the dark to bring pain to the world.

Most people will be put off by it in seconds, by the strange words and tedious lists, but there is an unexpected reward at the end when all pieces fall in place. You will never see the wildlife in the same way.

And plant physiology, that is like a really good sci-fi book.

Very complicated, defiant, dealing with really futuristic problems, and with more "hit the coin" moments that Mario. Who would imagine that the future of the humanity is linked with the capability to huge organisms to do physical work that makes the stronger animal look like crap

[mountainriver]

With a lot of software getting eaten up I’m increasingly interested in biology. Seems like one of the later frontiers that could have massive benefits, and AI is really well suited to help us understand it.

[karim79]

True and also, the actual physical contact and results are absolute magic. Maybe we need to create a "computer scientists for botony" forum. I think that has legs.

Botany is great because the results are basically what I'd call magic. It's such beauty (and horror on occasion).

The marriage of CS and botany seems like a match made in heaven and just from writing these comments I've convinced myself that it's probably the most practical way to go forward in life.

[grantith]

Just about everything we experience in our lives is a constant distraction from the fact that biology and its mechanisms are the most interesting thing in our existence.

[karim79]

Absolutely this.

[nntwozz]

But but… physics—space and time etc?

— Carl Sagan

[card_zero]

There is apparently such a thing as "Computational Botany", where you model virtual plants.

[BobaFloutist]

I suppose that would make "Botanical Computation" the use of plants to perform calculations.

[globular-toast]

Have you considered computational biology? They are always looking for people. Knuth said a while back that biology has tons of open and useful problems left to be solved.

[CyberDildonics]

Anyone who sees that a giant trees leaves aren't dried out should find it unsurprising.

[itomato]

one time, while communing with Nature, I looked up at the transpiring coastal tree line flexing in the wind and I uttered, "pumps."

My hunch is that torsion, flex and their effect on the capillary structures are at play, but I haven't been able to step away from CS myself.