RU 
EN 
CN 
ES 
Olga Kalashnikova studied in Samara, at school No. 10 (now it is the “Success” school”). Her mother, the director of the Samara Yunnat Station, did not leave her daughter a single chance to choose another profession. Only botany! How else could it be? When you have been conducting research since your childhood, studying the species composition of the nature monument “Malousinsk upland pine and oak forests on the Rachean Alps slopes”?
“Since the 5th-6th grade, me, like other students of the Yunnat Station, regularly went on expeditions in the summer. We studied the species composition of the Rachean forest — stand of trees, shrubs, grassy layer. We described, measured the diameter and height, as well as insolation (the lighting level). Based on these data, we made the geobotanical description by layers: both at the top of the slope and at its foot, where the Usa flows. We compared plants from different parts of the wooded area — in the dell, at different heights: the species composition, thickness.
Any expedition was wonderful: living in the tent, food cooked over a campfire, daily ironing newspapers with antique cast-iron irons to be the necessary procedure for preparing our herbarium. Already in Samara, the plants collected in the expedition were identified. We compiled results of these observations into reports, and I did reports at conferences, including those of the All-Russian level. It was also my mother’s merit: she always inspired confidence in me, encouraging, “You are bound to be successful!”
Therefore, when the time came, I brought my USE scores to the biological faculty of Samara University. Moreover, I took only mathematics, in other subjects I was credited with winning Olympiads and the conferences”.
“How did you choose your path to science? At your freshman year or later?”
“I think I knew even at school that I would work only with Tamara Ivanovna Plaksina! At last, there was my practice in the first year. It was in Shiryaevo. Tamara Ivanovna came to our camp! I looked at her like at a goddess, thinking, “Oh my God! This is the very Plaksina!” I’d like to note that Tamara Ivanovna has been studying the Zhiguli Nature Reserve almost all her life, she was among those who were behind its creation. In her house in Shiryaevo, the entire second floor was filled with herbariums — more than 35 thousand samples! By the way, it would still have been there if, in 2007, under her strict guidance, we had not opened a laboratory at the University. Tamara Ivanovna is a unique person.
At the University, talking about science started in the second year. Tamara Ivanovna was absent from the meeting where students chose their scientific supervisors. She was already a good age. I came to the dean’s office and said, “I want Plaksina to be my scientific supervisor”. They replied to me, “What are you doing? She will send you to the steppes, and you will wander there alone, collecting plants from dawn to dusk!” I insisted. “Tamara Ivanovna, I want to be your student”, I shouted in her left ear, because she didn’t hear very well. She said to me, “All right!” She gave me a task in the steppes. At that time, she was studying the steppes in the south of our region. I had been studying the Rachean forest all my life. Why did I need steppes if I loved pines and swamps? Everyone said, “It’s not worth talking to her about changing the location. It's useless!” I don’t remember what happened, but in the end it was the Rachean forest that I studied”.
“What is the job of a botanist?”
“Studying plants in a certain area, continuous floral observation. Describing what grows, blooms or bears fruit, what size, what state of the population, especially if these are rare red book plants, and collecting the herbarium.
Making a general list and comparing it with the plants that have ever been identified or hadn’t in this area. Then, classifying by tribes, families, genera, and species. Identifying dominant plants. The analysis by biomorphs (life forms), for example, is based on morphological features of aboveground and underground shoots and root systems, considering the rhythm of development and life expectancy. The ecological and geographical analysis identifies forest, meadow, steppe, weed plants. In our region, there are areas that have not been described yet.
In the process of such research, new species for the Samara Region and even the Volga-Ural region has happened to be discovered. For example, Alisma bjoerkqvistii. I found it in the Buzuluksky pine forest. In our region, in the coastal zone of reservoirs, Alisma plantago-aquatica is widespread . I found the same one, but it was small. Being a meticulous person, I decided to collect the plant and clarify the matter. It turned out to be a really new species! We took it to Moscow State University for identification, to the scientists who produce plant reference books in Russia.
After identification, we begin to publish scientific articles. I have about 70 articles in total. The doctoral dissertation awaits ahead”.
“You say you draw a plant from nature. But what if it is a rare plant?”
“If there is one sprout, then we don’t take it. However, we come several times at various periods to see how the situation evolves. Now the sprout is alone, and in a week, others may come out next to it. That is what happens to orchids, by the way. Sometimes they are not visible, and then they start appearing. There are thirty species of orchids in the Samara Region. There are common ones: Lesser butterfly-orchid is found in birch forests, in forest plantations”.
“What qualities distinguish a good botanist?”
“Love for nature. Then it’s not a burden to travel to wild places, to live in the open. I will say more: expeditions, hiking are my life. If I don’t go anywhere for a long time, especially in winter, I feel very bad, I have no strength for anything. So I get my vital energy from communing with nature.
We are usually accompanied by foresters: they know their lands. We look for outlandish plants, needing wet, slightly swampy areas. Foresters of the Shigonsky District take us in handmade Chuvash flatboats. I’m looking at it with my camera, fully amazed. It looks very much like mangroves somewhere in the tropics: lianas, bare tree roots. Under the water, it flutters like hair.
Huge dragonflies fly, like helicopters. Sometimes branches of trees hang low over the water: you stand up in the boat and step them over. In some places, we push the willow branches apart with our hands and float as if through a curtain. Behind one curtain, there is a lake with yellow and white water-lilies to be usually called lotuses, but this is not the case. Foresters told us that they once had brought their future wives there on dates.
I collect plants, I stand in the water in my swamp suit of Size 41, — they didn’t sell such suits of my size then, — there are mosquitoes and midges around. Suddenly I realize that I can’t get out: I was sucked into the mud! I wouldn’t have gotten out without help. Thus, the profession of a botanist is dangerous. You can’t walk alone. For getting the Thelypteris palustris fern, you make your way through the swamp. In search of Anthemis trotzkiana, which grows in the same Shigonsky District on Mount Gusikha, you risk getting hit by landslides on the chalk slopes.
A botanist is a stubborn person. You realize that, most likely, there is something interesting in this forest, since it has not been explored. You go and look for this. Self-belief and confidence help a lot.
A botanist is an adventurous person. Identifying harvested plants is routine. However, I look at the armfuls of the herbarium with anticipation: what if this is a new plant, what if no one has found it before in the region, what if this is a new population? With this attitude, this expectation of discovery, energy appears, and you are ready to move mountains.
In fact, comprehension of being “in science” came to me only in graduate school, when I began discovering new species for our region. I am glad that the biodiversity in our territory has a place to move. It isn’t over till it’s over. We know, there are species to be disappearing, but the fact that new ones, not typical for our region, emerge, is encouraging. Where do they come from? There are several speculations. They were once overlooked by biologists. They can be brought on the paws of animals or birds. The habitat may shift. And this results in our discovering new species for the Region, and for the Volga-Ural region”.
“Now it’s probably easier to organize expeditions: navigators won’t let you get lost?”
“The situation with technology is twofold. On the one hand, for example, appearance of standup paddle-boarding made life much easier. I currently study aquatic plants. It has become easier: there is no need to look for a boat. Just put the paddleboard on the car, and go ahead. I can drive into any wilderness. It’s the same with the navigator. But, again, it’s better not to go into the forest alone, even with a navigator. You can meet wild animals. So, twice I came across wild boars. Once, collecting plant samples in the forest, Zhenya Korchikov and me heard crunching. We turned around: a wild boar was running to us! We froze and looked: it was too late to run away. But for some reason, the boar stopped, turned around and rushed back. I don’t think the animal saw or smelled us. The second time was that a little wild boar ran out to me. It wasn’t alone, its mother was next to him. We looked at each other, turned around and went away.
So, of course, at the forest, we look not only at plants, we can read animal tracks, and see beds of wild boars, sometimes we can hear their trampling.
By the way, we, botanists, are a bit superstitious. Tamara Ivanovna always says, “If you take something from the forest, you have to leave something in the forest”. Well, we — the young — usually respond, “Come on!” Then I realize that in the expedition, my knife, which is convenient for digging up plants, goes missing again and again. I just held it in my hands, put it down, looked back... it has disappeared. It is as if it had been swallowed up by the earth. After this event, I started carrying sweets and cookies to the forest spirits. Nothing else is lost. ...Something tells me that even if knives become smart and respond to requests like phones, this function will not help in the forest”.
“And what other technologies do you use?”
“Our engineers help us in the interdisciplinary project on the Chapaevka River, where we and chemists detect unauthorized effluents. They monitor the river from drones equipped with a hyperspectrometer. We study algae, higher plants, and species composition from the pictures. This is a long-term job, because the hyperspectrometer requires adjustment, even, one might say, training, since biological objects are not buildings, the image is affected by light intensity, plants look different at various times, the bottom also constantly changes. Our work in a close interaction, constantly correlating our data. Now, we are studying articles: who did what in this area. There were no such works in Russia”.
“You have detailed plant reference books. What about electronic resources? Are they in demand in the profession of a botanist?”
“Foreign research has become much more accessible. This is a big plus. You don’t live in a capsule. I would also mention such electronic resources as Inaturalist — www.inaturalist.org — where the plants are uploaded by users, and scientists identify what it is. There are experts, who study only steppes, and some explore only forests. They are unlikely to identify plants that their colleagues who study swamps deal with. And now anyone can upload a plant photos, and you can filter out the options to be definitely unsuitable”.
“How do you feel about tourism in your native region?”
“Increasingly more people want to see something, to leave the city. Unfortunately, our environmental education is much to be desired, people do not understand that they can harm nature. So, recently, the Malousinsky upland pine forests burned down because of from an unquenched cigarette. The nature monument, where unique species — rock ferns, mosses, lichens — lived, flared up and burned out.
The common polypody, or the red-book rock fern grow only in the Rachean pine forest on the Rachean rocks. If in the early 2010s we observed large populations of this fern: they hung like a waterfall from each boulder, now it is very difficult to find it there, there are only small patches of them. It wasn’t trampled. There is an assumption that the microclimate has changed due to the large number of tourist groups. But it is not yet possible to say exactly what the plant reacted to: there is not enough data.
Tourism is great, but it has to be controlled. It is necessary to clearly designate the places: this one is for visiting, and that one is strictly prohibited to be visited! For example, in the national park in Finland, everyone walks exclusively on decking paths. We wanted to take a plant to our herbarium, and we are experts, we know how not to harm the park. But we were told, “No, this is a national park”. I wish that we could create similar infrastructure in specially protected nature areas and monitor compliance with the requirements.
I cried when I found out that a glamping had been built in the Podvalskie terraces. There are unique plants to grow there, I have already mentioned Anthemis trotzkiana. It grows only there, on the chalk. It is nowhere else. After the landslides, it remained only at the top. So, now a bridge approaches to its habitat, the national highway is being built. Will this rare flower be preserved? Probably not. It is very difficult to transplant it, since it needs exactly such a soil — chalk, height and special humidity are needed”.
“How do you manage to combine your family — your husband and children — and your passion for botany?”
“I met my husband in graduate school. Literally on the eve of my defense. I was afraid to tell Tamara Ivanovna. She always told us, “Girls, science first, then everything else!” But I was worried in vain! Tamara Ivanovna was very happy for me, but waved her finger in front of my nose: just be sure to defend your dissertation! Because of my dissertation, I did not take my husband’s last name: nevertheless, I am known as Kalashnikova, all documents are almost ready, all articles are under my last name. He agreed. So I’m still Kalashnikova.
Our children are also immersed in environmental issues. I and my friends from the Yunnat Station decided to revive our children’s expeditions. We had a happy childhood. Now we organize ecologist schools for our children”.
“A child means maternity leave. For that time, you find yourself outside of science. How not to drop out of the scientific agenda for this period?”
“The research is still ongoing. It is likely to be not so intense. In terms of publications, there is still a kind of decline.
I wrote articles for the Red Data Book of the Samara Region when I was pregnant. About 30 articles were published. But after birth, you focus on the child, the process slows down”.
“Equality in research between men and women? What do you think about this? Do you need to “run faster to stay in the same place”?”
“You mean competitiveness. It’s not about me. I compete only with myself. It should be understood that men have their own obligations: support his family, build a house, garage, summer cottage. They also live not only in science”.
“Are there any services to make female graduate students’ life easier for focusing on research?”
“I wouldn’t mind a housekeeper... it’s a joke! It all comes down to the family. It should be friendly. This is not only a husband, children, but also grandparents. They help, because family is for life. When there is support, I am in science. How do I keep up to do everything? I believe that if during the business trip, I leave my children with our parents, everything will be fine. Mom always goes with us on the expedition. And that’s great. If every family has such support, then any woman will cope with any task. It’s good when people believe in you: wings grow behind your back.
The questions were asked by Elena Pamurzina
Photos from the archives of the publication’s heroine
