Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7 p.m.

When Trees Testify: Learning From and With Trees

Beronda L. Montgomery is a writer, science communicator, researcher and professor at Grinnell College

Montgomery will discuss themes from her recent book, When Trees Testify: Science, Wisdom, History, and America’s Black Botanical Legacy, including the ways seven trees—as well as the cotton shrub—are intertwined with Black history and culture. The histories of trees in America are also the histories of Black Americans. Pecan trees were domesticated by an enslaved African named Antoine; sycamore trees were both havens and signposts for people trying to escape enslavement; poplar trees are historically associated with lynching; and willow bark has offered the gift of medicine. These trees, and others, testify not only to the complexity of the Black American narrative but also to a heritage of Black botanical expertise that, like Native American traditions, predates the United States entirely.

The program is presented by the Clarke Forum for Contemporary Issues. This program is in conjunction with the Trout Gallery exhibition Branch: Trees in American Art.

Photo credit: Melissa Blackall

Biography (provided by the speaker)

Beronda L. Montgomery, Ph.D., is writer, science communicator, and researcher. She has spent more than 20 years as a professor in higher education, at Grinnell College (since 2022) and prior to that at Michigan State University. As a researcher, Dr. Montgomery studies how individuals perceive, respond to, and are impacted by environments in which they exist. Dr. Montgomery has received numerous honors, including being named one of Cell‘s Inspiring Black Scientists in America, as well as being awarded the 2022 Cynthia Scott Science Writing Award, 2022 Adolph E. Gude, Jr. Award for outstanding service to the science of plant biology and 2023 Hutchinson Medal of the Chicago Horticultural Society. In 2025 she was named by President Biden as a recipient of the Presidential Awards for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM), the Nation’s highest honors for mentors who work to develop fully the Nation’s human resources in STEM. Dr. Montgomery is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and the American Academy of Microbiology. She is author of two books Lessons from Plants(Harvard University Press, 2021) and When Trees Testify (Heny Holt, 2026).