1Hey, it's Jay.
2Ever seen one of these before?
3This is a plant called a cactus.
4Maybe you've seen one of these growing in a pot before.
5Cactuses, also called cacti, don't need a lot of water.
6So lots of people find them easy to grow as decorations for their homes.
7If you live in certain parts of North or South America,
8you might have also seen cacti growing in the wild. Like these!
9Cacti come in lots of funky shapes and sizes.
10And many of them have another way of getting noticed:
11these spiky spines!
12Someone named Abby has a question about cacti.
13Let's call Abby now.
14Hi, Jay!
15Hi, Abby!
16I have a question for you.
17How many cacti are there?
18That's a great question!
19I want to introduce you to someone who knows a lot about this.
20Her name is Elia Bravo Hollis.
21Elia Bravo Hollis was born in what is now Mexico City in the year 1901.
22As a kid, she and her family spent lots of time outside.
23At night, they stargazed.
24And during the day, they took walks among the cacti and other plants near their home.
25Elia Bravo Hollis fell in love with plants.
26Elia did well in school, and her family dreamed that she would grow up to become a doctor.
27But she realized she had a different dream.
28So halfway through studying medicine in college,
29she switched to studying plants instead.
30After she graduated, Elia Bravo Hollis took on a big new goal.
31She wanted people everywhere to learn about the plants she'd grown up with in Mexico.
32I'm curious...
33if you wanted everyone to learn about plants that grow near where you live,
34what would you do?
35How could you share that information?
36Elia Bravo Hollis lived in a time before a lot of the tools we use to share information today existed.
37There was no social media, no internet,
38and far fewer films than there are today.
39So Elia decided to write a book about Mexican cacti.
40Her book was going to be a guide to the many different kinds of cacti in Mexico
41what they looked like, where they grew,
42and what made them special.
43This wouldn't be easy.
44There were hundreds of different types of cacti in Mexico,
45and she was sure there were more that scientists hadn't even studied yet.
46She got to work.
47She carefully read the research of other scientists who had studied cacti before her.
48Then, she set out into the wild to do her own research.
49She traveled all around Mexico looking for cacti.
50She hiked through deserts, mountains, and jungles.
51It was hard work,
52but the cacti she got to observe were amazing.
53She studied barrel cacti.
54She studied colorful prickly pear cacti.
55She studied saguaro cacti that were as tall as trees.
56But Elia didn't just want to learn about these cacti for herself.
57She wanted to share what she learned.
58She wanted people reading her book to feel like they were taking a cactus field trip across Mexico.
59Like they were standing next to her as she inspected each cactus.
60So she carefully recorded her observations of each kind of cactus she encountered.
61She took photos.
62She made sketches.
63She sliced parts of the cacti open and sketched what she saw inside.
64She dug down to the roots of the plant and sketched those too.
65She collected hundreds of thousands of plant samples.
66She described each sample in detail and compared it to other cacti she had seen.
67Finally, after years of research,
68she published Las Cactaceas de Mexico, or The Cacti of Mexico.
69She achieved her goal.
70Her book was more than 700 pages,
71had 324 photographs,
72and described most of Mexico's many kinds of cacti.
73Nobody had ever put that much information about cacti together in one place.
74People used her book to learn about cacti for years and years to come.
75But Elia Bravo Hollis did not stop there.
76She dedicated the rest of her life to the study of cacti.
77After publishing her book, Elia became a beloved teacher,
78helping many others learn to study cacti.
79She published more research and wrote more books.
80She started the Cactus Society of Mexico.
81She knew that the more that people learned about cacti,
82the more they would care about these prickly and perfect plants.
83And the more they would care about protecting the places in nature where they grow.
84Her work was so important that some scientists now call Elia Bravo Hollis
85La Reina de las Cactáceas (the Queen of Cacti).
86Because of her work, and the work of scientists she taught and inspired,
87we now have identified nearly 2000 kinds of cacti in the world.
88So, in summary, much of what we know about cacti we owe to the work of Elia Bravo Hollis.
89She explored across Mexico and carefully recorded observations of hundreds of types of cacti.
90She encouraged others to continue her work,
91and we've now recorded nearly 2,000 different kinds of cacti.
92And there's still more to do.
93Even at the end of her life,
94Elia Bravo Hollis knew that there was still much more to learn, discover, and share about these plants.
95Maybe you'll be the next person to carry on her work studying cacti.
96Or maybe you'll carry on her work in a different way:
97by learning more about the things you're curious about, whatever that may be,
98and sharing what you learn with other people, just like she did.
99That's all for this week's question.
100Thanks for asking Abby!