How a Brazilian botanist uses Taylor Swift to teach plant science
How a Brazilian botanist uses Taylor Swift to teach plant science
Bryan West, USA TODAY NETWORKFri, March 6, 2026 at 10:05 AM UTC
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Taylor Swift sings "we can plant a memory garden" in her song "The Great War." For Glaucia Silva, that lyric became a mission rooted in helping students pay attention to the green life around them.
Silva lives in the city of Natal, Brazil, where she grew up. As a botanist and teacher, she developed a method that uses the superstar's music videos as visual tools for introducing plant science.
"I hope people can see plants and recognize them as important parts of our planet, through the lens of art and pop culture," she said. "Plants are everywhere, in everything. Without them, there is no life."
Glaucia Silva leads a classroom through botanical concepts using Taylor Swift's music videos.
Her idea began during the pandemic, when students were overwhelmed with traditional botany instruction.
"If you go on twitter and type 'I hate botany' on search, trust me, you will find a lot of students complaining about botany," Silva said. So she tried something new: "Hey guys, today we are gonna watch a Taylor Swift music video, what do you think?"
Their excitement was instant. In "Blank Space," students eagerly described Swift's outfits, the car, the mansion, but not the garden, trees, apples or flowers until Silva pointed them out.
"This selective attention is called 'plant imperception,' the human inability to notice plants in the environment and recognize them," she explained. With each video — "Cardigan" for mosses and ferns, "Out of the Woods" for gymnosperms, "Willow" for flowering plants — the students' awareness sharpened.
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"If plant imperception is not seeing plants, by using Taylor's music videos, it helps students activate their cognitive structure, reprogramming, to start to notice plants everywhere," she said. "Some of them will start to enjoy learning botany. If I see one of my students from 2023 around, they will tell me they still remember what a gymnosperm is."
Silva has taught her method's success for the international scientific community in Madrid as well as at Brazilian universities, including Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, the Federal University of Goiás and the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation.
Her work now stands alongside a global wave of Swift-inspired academia, from Melbourne's 2024 "Swiftposium" to Swift-themed courses taught at Harvard and Berkeley, just to name a few. Silva says Swift's art holds even more botanical power than fans realize.
"She definitely loves roses, red roses," she says. "At least 78 songs in her whole discography make references to at least one botanical element. In her videography, more than 53 music videos show botanical imagery."
And if she ever met Swift?
"I would tell her that before being a Swiftie, I did not use to dream, you know? Seeing everything she accomplished, I started to dream more and believe that good things could happen to me."
Brazilian botanist Glaucia Silva teaches her "Taylor Swift Method" at the 2024 XX International Botanical Congress, showing how music videos can help students identify plant biodiversity.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: How a Brazilian botanist uses Taylor Swift to teach plant science
Source: “AOL Entertainment”
