Join botanist Judith Sumner for her discussion of Civil War botany. The Civil War was a period like no other in U. S. history, during a century in which people depended on plants for nearly all basic commodities, including food, fibers, medicine, and timber. Plants also provided virtually all of the natural products essential to the war effort, from the raw material for uniforms to dietary rations and antimalarial drugs. At the core of the conflict was slavery, which had botanical roots in the labor-intensive cash crops that drove the southern economy.

Judith Sumner is a botanist who specializes in ethnobotany, flowering plants, plant adaptations, and garden history. She has taught extensively both at the college level and at botanical gardens, including the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and Garden in the Woods.