P O I N T S O F I N T E R E S T > > FAC ULT Y FOC U S
The Heart of Brightness Emory researcher and alumna Cassandra Quave—aka ‘The Plant Hunter’—takes readers on a quest for nature’s
A LIFE WORTH READING ABOUT A medical ethnobotanist, Cassandra Quave has overcome personal hurdles to excel in her field and help humanity by discovering remedies in nature.
C
assandra Quave’s 00C life is like a tropical forest: Varied, colorful, bursting with life, and laced with hidden paths that must be constantly cleared to move along them. Her new memoir—titled The Plant Hunter: A Scientist’s Quest for Nature’s Next Medicines—guides readers through a world of plants and the people entwined with them. The story is sometimes dark but mostly uplifting, lit up by her personal revelations and scientific discoveries. Quave’s story begins with a spirited childhood in rural Florida. It’s marked by dozens of surgeries and chronic pain, but also volunteer work in a hospital and joyful explorations of nature. It moves on to her pivotal years as an Emory undergrad, winds through the Amazon and little-known environments of the Balkans and Italy, graduate school, postdoctoral training, marriage, and children. Quave is now back at Emory where she is curator of the Emory Herbarium and an associate professor at the Center for the Study of Human Health and the School of Medicine’s Department of Dermatology. “I was inspired to write the book because people have found my work interesting,” says Quave (her last name rhymes with “wave”). “It’s a chance to tell the larger story of my life, bringing 8
EMORY MAGAZINE
WINTER 2021
together all the different parts of it.” As a medical ethnobotanist, she studies how people survive when they have few resources other than what is available to them in their immediate environment. Quave follows clues hidden in ancient plant remedies to search for new compounds to combat the modern-day scourge of antibiotic-resistant infections. She holds six patents, is a fellow of the Explorer’s Club, and a past president of the Society for Economic Botany. Even at her home near Emory, Quave is immersed in plants. She wears a dress printed with lemons as she gives a tour of her terraced garden: Tomatoes,
Hungarian peppers, and okra grow amid chives, lemongrass, and Thai holy basil. Mint scents the air as she crushes peppermint leaves in her fingers and explains how they have soothed stomachaches for centuries. She points out motherwort (sipped in a tea to ease the anxiety of childbirth) and cone flowers (the roots are pounded into a tincture for cold symptoms). She breaks off a sprig of celandine, a member of the poppy family, and a bright orange resin oozes out. “The resin is toxic in the wrong doses, but it’s also a traditional remedy applied to warts,” Quave says. Quave scours historical documents and interviews
P H O T O G R A P H Y A N N WAT S O N
next medicines in her newly published memoir.
