About Me
Name: Daryl, Daz
Pronouns: They/them
Gender: Nonbinary
Sexuality: Bisexual
Mastadon: @firefly@tech.lgbt
So, I'm Daryl. I'm a biologist... but I study drugs, not plants. My undergrad degree was 'Biological Science' - a pick and mix course where I picked heavily from the pharmacology, physiology, and microbiology themes. After a PhD in gut hormones and a couple of post docs, I now write about drugs for a living. It's not a super well-paid job, or a secure job, but it is a very chill one, and one where I get to use writing to help people.
I think my early interest in plants stemmed from my Mum getting us out foraging as kids. There was an abanoned railway track near ours where we went blackberrying every year. She was also keen on mushrooms and would forage for those as well... something I haven't dared attempt on my own! We didn't live anywhere super rural (town of about 15,000) but I had a lot of access to green space as a kid. It was nice. I used to do dumb kid things like pretend the big sycamore tree in our school playground was the king tree, and I was the princess tree, and everywhere I went, I was visiting my tree subjects.
When I was 19 and a Lord of the Rings fan, I became a bit of a hippy and started trying to learn all the names of trees. I got a little tree book that I carried all around with me, which I still have. I got into pharmacology by way of eating all sorts of entheogenic plants and then wanting to know wtf they were doing to me. Everyone has a level at which they feel comfortable understanding things... mine is around the molecular level. Any bigger, not explanation enough. Any smaller, yo that's chemistry (or worse), don't confuse me. I got into plants as drugs by hanging out with lots of herbal medicine students at uni. I don't think that plants make better drugs than drugs (look, I like a clean side-effect profile, OK), but they can make useful jumping off points for drugs. Plants are more like friends, than drugs.
At uni I also joined the Pagan society and eventually got into Druidry (via Heathenry). Although I wouldn't consider myself really any of those things now, I still love all the rituals and observation of the seasons stuff that comes with Paganism, and I always want to know all the myths and folklore about plants. I would say that I'm atheist, probably, in that I don't really believe in any gods, but I do find nature and especially plants very spiritual.
Yeah, so I like plants, OK?
But the thing is the types of plants I like are the normal every day plants you see just growing around you. I like weeds. I like to see their familiar shapes and watch them changing every year through the seasons, and just knowing a few facts and stories about them, or what they might be used for. A book I have says that herbs are a plant that has a use, and by that definition what I like is herbs. Exotic plants or indoor plants or big showy flowers don't really do it for me - although that said I have really got into going around National Trust gardens recently. I also have a real soft spot in my heart for poisonous plants, the more a thing can kill me, the better. I saw some hemlock water dropworts last year and I haven't stopped thinking about them so much, I think they might be my next tattoo. I don't know why I love these dangerous things, maybe it's the queer's love of the abject, or maybe it's the biologists love of the toxin.
Yeah, that's about it, really. A short history of me and why I love plants. I just think they're neat.