Beronda L. Montgomery (Lessons from Plants) weaves together personal narrative, family genealogy, American history, literature, and geography, along with her extensive knowledge of plant biology, in When Trees Testify, a profound and compelling exploration of Black botany and the many lessons trees can teach us about our past, present, and hoped-for future.

A plant biologist and self-described botanist, Montgomery traveled around the United States to visit (or revisit, in some cases) trees that feature in her memory and understanding of history. These visits provide the starting point in an exploration of what she calls "my reciprocal engagement with the essence of these living beings with whom I share space, history, and hopefully a future." There is the weeping willow tree on her aunt's property, where the low-hanging branches provided Montgomery a haven and secret hideaway as a child. And the "warm familial memories" of pecan trees, whose nuts flavored her grandparents' homemade butter pecan ice cream during the hot Arkansas summers of her girlhood. She describes her love-hate relationship with oak trees, recalling the work of collecting their fallen leaves each autumn alongside the joyful memories of bounding into leaf piles with her siblings.

Within these fond memories carried in the roots and branches of childhood trees, however, are darker truths of American history. Montgomery calls these trees "living witnesses to national history--and national shame," decisively connecting the violent history of slavery and racism in the United States to the present-day lack of representation of Black Americans in plant sciences. "Plants and African Americans are inseparable in American history," but based on the violence and trauma of those interactions, "many Black people in America rightfully have contentious relationships with plants and agricultural land... a somewhat prevalent and deep-rooted disenchantment with farming and other botanical endeavors."

Encouraging a naming and owning of this past, Montgomery works to connect various tree varieties to their nuanced histories. She recalls relatives teaching her and her cousins about which pecans would open easily, and why, noting too that scientists later felt the need to experiment to prove these hypotheses--discrediting the validity of Indigenous and intergenerational wisdom. Majestic runways of mulberry trees, such as those at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, are historically linked to failed attempts by early colonists to establish a silk industry in America--an industry dependent on the labor of enslaved children to be profitable. In the presence of the more than 600-year-old McLeod Oak at a plantation site in South Carolina, Montgomery reflects on the centuries of enslaved ancestors the tree watched work the nearby cotton fields.

And then there is America's legacy of lynching, violence that inextricably links trees to innumerable murders of, and threats against, Black Americans. Montgomery recalls a homecoming memory of a noose on display at her Arkansas public high school; the history of Billie Holiday's 1939 "divisive political song, 'Strange Fruit' "; and the frequent cultivation of poplar trees across Southern plantations, including Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest planted in Lynchburg, Va.--a place name impossible to disconnect from the ugly history of lynchings across the 19th and 20th centuries.

Montgomery does not shy away from the "both/and" that the natural world offers in spades. She revels in the beauty of cotton plants while honoring the back-breaking harm the crop played in the lives of her ancestors, even as recently as her parents' generation. Despite being the "first and only" Black person, Black professor, Black woman in many academic spaces throughout her career, she views herself as a "multigenerational cultivator of plants and holder of botanical expertise." And while she is a pioneer in these spaces, "being a pioneer is overrated. It generally speaks to progress denied, delayed, or unrecognized." She draws on historical documents to substantiate her inner knowledge of the wisdom and experience of those who came before her; in addition to recalling that her mother is better at sustaining houseplants than she is, she carries forward the legacy of Fred Montgomery, an ancestor born in 1835 Mississippi, most likely into slavery, and remembered to history only as a "married farmer."

This willingness to not only step into nuance but stay in it moves When Trees Testify into something deeper and more reflective than it first appears. As a plant biologist, Montgomery offers remarkable insights into trees of many varieties; as a complex, multi-layered person, she brings into this science a sense of self rooted in the past, grounded in the present, and looking forward to a vision of an America moving ever further from its violent past. Beautifully crafted and packed with observations sure to appeal to both plant and history enthusiasts, When Trees Testify is itself a testament to the strength, resilience, and wisdom of both the natural world and what might be possible when we bring the lessons of nature and history together in exploring Black botanical legacies in 21st-century America. --Kerry McHugh

Beronda L. Montgomery (photo: Nicolas T. Kaguri)

Beronda L. Montgomery is an award-winning plant biochemist, botanist, professor, researcher, and co-founder of Black Botanists Week. Montgomery's first book, Lessons from Plants, offered insights into what plants can teach us about human behavior. Her second book, When Trees Testify (Holt, January 20, 2026), combines personal experience, familial genealogy, and deep archival research in a profound exploration of the legacy of Black botany across American history.

You are both a botanist and a plant biochemist. Help us non-science types: What's the difference?

I am a plant biochemist, yes, so I use biochemical approaches to understand plant biology. And I think I really leaned into claiming the title of botanist in 2020, when I was a part of a group that co-founded Black Botanist Week. We realized that "botanist" was a much more accessible term. There are gardeners who think of themselves as botanists. Of course there is a discipline of botany, but it seems more accessible, and I'm very open to not feeling that I have to isolate myself into being just a biochemist. I want to be open to interact with people as broadly as possible.

I am always one to say that knowledge is complete in and of itself, but as you know, we have this obsession, as scientists, with kind of verifying things through the Western science lens. I try as many ways as possible to remain accessible to the fact that there's knowledge both within the canon that I learned in graduate school and so much outside of that. You can get knowledge that is life-changing and world-shifting from so many different spaces, not just within the context of what we think of as the accepted path for becoming a plant biologist.

And I experience that. My mother is better at growing houseplants than I am, because she has an intuitive kind of relationship with these plants and an understanding.

As a scientist by background, what kind of historical research did you do for this book?

It's very different from anything I've ever done. It was a fascinating process, because it certainly took me out of my comfort zone as a lab-based plant scientist.

I was in some of the genealogical archives in Arkansas, other archives, in the chapter on apple trees, when I became aware of Harriet Tubman having a love of apple trees. I learned about that through a children's book, An Apple for Harriet Tubman. Then I actually went into the papers for her land, the deed papers, to see what her history had been with those. I was looking at homestead papers and going into archives, doing genealogical work.

A lot of times things you have to do to trace a history of an African American family who was enslaved may be very different, because sometimes you're only looking for ages, and the farm where they were, the plantation. You don't have all the details that you might have otherwise. So it's a very different process, but I think it's important to try to recapture some of those details, because otherwise we keep getting the same stories.

For some of the stories, I really felt compelled to visit the sites. I realized that for this book, in many of the chapters, the listening had to happen in the presence of the space: Blackdom, N.Mex.; Elaine, Ark.; some of the trees in Charleston. That proximity really brought out a lot of different things in this particular book in a new way. These writings and observations had to be place-based for me because I didn't want to just retell history, but to observe where that history had taken us, and to be able to witness and testify to that myself. I talk about the trees testifying, but some of the visits allowed me to have that kind of personal testimony of what it meant to be in that space as well.

It's really important to me that people walk away not just with the science facts. They're going to be there; we're going to learn about plants. But I also wanted to be sure what I had ensconced around it in terms of the history and others for that to be true.

That thread of authenticity comes through in the book in the way you have woven together your personal experiences, your ancestral stories, the context of place, and the science of trees.

I never wanted to write any kind of memoir. But the experience that I was having in thinking about the spaces was so personal that it became important to be open to that.

I really felt, as I was writing this, that I was telling a version of the story that I was uniquely positioned to do. Not that other people couldn't write about these things, but it just all came together in a way that felt like a story that only I could write. I think that's the beauty of being a writer, to find that particular space. It feels like both a privilege and a responsibility.

You talk about the heaviness of some of this writing and research, but you also lift up many moments of joy in When Trees Testify. What have plants taught you about holding that kind of both/and in your work?

I think one of the things that's awe-inspiring to me about plants is the way in which a plant can look so different in a different environment, because the plant is never just in isolation. It is always growing in response to community, in response to external environment. There's always this sense that whatever that plant is to be or not to be, whatever its limitations or opportunities may be, is in community and can't just be an isolationist perspective. Nature reminds us that who we are is in relationship. It's in relationship to who we're with, it's in relationship to the external environment. And isolated and extreme ideas don't give us the place to be in community. At the core of the two books I've written, even though they are very different, is this sense that I am asking questions about who we are in relationship with others, in community, with our past, with our present, and our future, and understanding that nuance and difficult conversations are the key to a joint future.