Sam Helmkampf

Undergraduate Fellow, Team Flora

Sam Helmkampf is curious about the world surrounding him, and Team Flora allows him to put names to the “big green blur” that is nature to the untrained eye. 

“My main drive is developing my own botanic skillset. I think that is what Team Flora is really amped up about – learning the plants around us. That's what it seems for a lot of botanists, too. You are never going to learn every plant. But there are always plants to look for and to learn. Team Flora’s work is loose and open-ended and allows many other things to enter the equation in research questions.” 

Despite being an endlessly exciting subject, plant identification is certainly no easy task, and it demands immense attention to detail. 

“The lines between species, especially within genera, are very blurry. It is interesting and important to do a genus look across species because it helps you learn what differences to look for across all plants. It is kind of frustrating when you can not find that one detail that you studied. You know exactly what it is but can't quite tell if that difference is what you’re looking for. 

However, the most challenging part is the scale of it all. There are so many plants to learn here at Tyson. We have 800 of the 2,900 that Missouri has. The 800 that we have is minuscule compared to the state. That is very daunting. It is a challenging but also invigorating part because there is always more to learn, always more to look for. Even when you think you have seen it all, you are going to find something else, which is heartening. Because in the times when you are seeing the same thing, it can become upsetting to think, ‘I am not going to come back with anything new’. But then you find that one thing that looks different than the rest.”