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Flower Power

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"Ron is amazing," enthuses Kay Yatskievych. "There's nobody that can do what he does. And there's nobody he can train to do it!"

Liesner was born with plants on the brain. Growing up on a Wisconsin dairy farm, he watered the calves, arranged hay bales and did much of the gardening. "I was six years old, I got some seed and started planting radishes," he recalls.

Liesner didn't know it then, but he was seeing things few people could -- and most never pay attention to. "I recognized there were two kinds of grasses -- grass and sedges. I knew peas, beans, clover as a child -- before anyone said 'plant family,' I knew what they were." Names, that's all Liesner was missing.

He learned them studying botany at the University of Wisconsin, and then he started collecting. Today Liesner can identify a plant by family, often by genus, and sometimes by species -- instantly.

Piperaceae, Erythroxylaceae, Myrtaceae. Black pepper, cocaine, guava.

"My favorite place to collect," Liesner says, "is a just-cut forest that hasn't wilted yet, or where they're bulldozing a road. Just look out if the bulldozer comes back and decides to widen the road right where you are! That happened to me in Panama. The bulldozer didn't see me."

Grunts and "y'know"s, the chummy trademark of a northern Wisconsin accent, punctuate his slow speech.

"One rule I have is, I'll never climb a tree after drinking again. I was in Venezuela, and the people I was with, they opened one beer, so I was trying to be polite, sociable, y'know, then they opened another!" He laughs. "I climbed a tree, and I reached out for a branch and miscalculated. Luckily I fell on a bush."

Out pour stories of near-misses in busted helicopters and beat-up cars, of freezing and starving, of eating arepa after arepa after arepa, not to mention the unthinkable. "The thing I dislike the most is monkey. It looks too much like a person." But, he admits, "They make a sauce with ants in southern Venezuela which is really good. Wasp larvae is actually good. I think it has a lot of fat and protein."

Liesner hasn't been in the field since 1993, for fear he'll ruin his fragile eyesight. "You're constantly getting hit in the face by branches and things!"

Today it's mothballs tumbling out of the specimen boxes, leaving a chalky trail on his navy pants. He plays chess during his lunch hour and lumbers home in his white Chrysler to the love of his life, a microbiologist, a handler of bacteria and fungi. "She hates plants!" he laughs.

Liesner has, however, passed on prescriptions for collecting based on his and others' experiences in a paper guide called "Field Techniques Used by Missouri Botanical Garden."

"Remove field books from luggage when in cars or hotels in case the luggage might be stolen," the document warns on page one.

On page six: "It is much safer and more efficient to collect if you have a sheath for your clippers and machete, i.e., you have an extra hand available."

And on page nine: "A few people have used quality target guns to shoot branches down. This requires great skill and special permits are needed in most places to carry guns. Also, local people are much more concerned about strangers when they are carrying guns."

There are tree-climbing techniques and tips for concocting portable convection systems: "Sometimes it is possible to mount presses in front of a car radiator to take advantage of air movement when the vehicle is in motion, and radiated heat from the radiator when the vehicle has stopped. (Some botanists put canned food in the engine compartment to heat while driving, and stop for lunch without setting up the stove!)"

The packing list cites obvious things like machetes and money, easier-to-forget items like a hammock and dental floss, plus little "musts" like fish hooks, safety pins, and needle and thread. Question one of those, and tested logic prevails. "Oh!" Liesner jumps up, starts pulling at his pants and cackling, "I'll never forget the time I walked into a camp in Venezuela, and two guys had ripped their crotches open! They were happy when I had needle and thread!"

He sits back down. "And if you figure what they weigh, y'know, it's next to nothing."

It's been at least fifteen years since Liesner penned the list. Does he think anything should be added? "The only thing would be a GPS [global positioning system]." Little has changed, really.

Liesner fiddles with his magnifying glass. He could talk for hours, but there's sorting to be done, and his wife's waiting at home for dinner. Outside dusk has settled over the botanical garden's parking lot, shrouding the rarefied vanity plates, "DESRAT" and "BOTNIST. "

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