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I have a challenge for you.

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The next time you're stuck in traffic,

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take a minute to take a look
at the sea of cars around you.

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How many car companies
do you think you could recognize?

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I'm not even really into cars,

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but I think I'd do fairly well.

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But then look beyond the cars

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to the trees that line
the side of the road.

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How many of those could you identify?

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Probably not as many, right?

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Year upon year,

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we grow further and further
away from nature

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to the point where we have to question:

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What experience of nature
will the next generation have?

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And if that generation lacks
a sort of emotional connection

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with their surroundings,

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then will they bother to fight and save it

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when we need it most?

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My name is Nirupa Rao,
and I'm a botanical artist.

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In short, that means I paint plants,

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usually with watercolor,

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in a way that aims to be not only
aesthetically appealing

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but also scientifically accurate.

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And I'm well aware
that this is quite an odd profession

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for a 21st-century urban Indian --

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some might say outdated
in the age of the camera --

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but here's how my journey began.

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A few years ago,

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I met two naturalists who work
with the Nature Conservation Foundation:

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Divya Mudappa and T.R. Shankar Raman.

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And now interestingly,

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they actually began their careers
working with animals,

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but they soon came to realize

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that if they were
to protect those animals,

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they'd also have to protect
their habitats --

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that is, the trees they live off.

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And so they started a rainforest
restoration program

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aimed at growing local trees
that local birds and animals rely on.

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And they were looking to visually
document them in some way,

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but the photographers they approached
came up empty-handed.

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These trees were up to 140 feet tall.

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That's 26 times my height.

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Try capturing giants like that
in a single camera frame.

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Besides, the surrounding greenery
was just too dense

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to clearly isolate a single tree.

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And so together, we decided
to give good old painting a shot.

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And to tell you the truth,

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even when I was standing there
right in front of them,

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it was difficult to see the entire tree.

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So instead I'd study
the buttress up close

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and then climb up the hill to see
its crown rising above the canopy.

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And then with Divya,
and she there as aide,

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we could piece these pieces
of the puzzle together

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into the final painting.

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For a lot of people
who don't know the jungles

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as well as these naturalists,

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these paintings are the only way
that they'll get to see these trees

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in their entirety.

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We were able to document
30 of the region's most iconic species

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along with their fruit, flowers,
seeds and leaves.

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(Applause)

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Through this process,

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the jungles really came alive to me.

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They morphed from this
undifferentiated sea of green

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into individual species
with individual characters.

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And I think a lot of people just tend
to see plants as background scenery,

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assuming that their immobility
makes them uninteresting.

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But I began to see that it is that very
rootedness that makes them fascinating,

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the ingenious ways in which
they adapt and respond

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to threats and opportunities

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on timescales that make
our heads hurt to imagine.

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And I couldn't help but wonder:

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What if I could tell their stories,

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showcase their complexity?

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Perhaps we'd all start to think of plants
a little differently.

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And in fact, in my family, plants
have always been a source of fascination.

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My grand-uncle, Father Cecil Saldanha,

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was the first to document the flora
of our home state of Karnataka

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back in the '60s.

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And my mother has all of these memories

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of being a little girl watching
this entire enterprise unfold.

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And consequently,

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I've come to associate plants
with adventure and discovery

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and excitement.

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And so I knew I didn't just want
to paint roses and sunflowers.

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I wanted to paint the kinds of plants
that botanists like my uncle work with.

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And so I set out to create a book,

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supported by the National
Geographic Society,

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on the weirdest, wackiest
plants we could find

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in one of the most biodiverse
regions in the world:

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India's very own Western Ghats.

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(Applause)

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Take a look at these fantastic
jewel-like sundews.

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They grow in regions where nutrient
content in the soil is poor,

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and so they have a little way
of supplementing their diets.

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They lure, trap and ingest insects
using mucilaginous glands on their leaves.

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The little insects are attracted
to the sweet secretions,

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but once they come in contact,

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they are ensnared and the game is up.

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And you might notice

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that the sundews very cleverly hold
their flowers on tall, thin stems

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high above their murderous leaves

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to avoid trapping potential pollinators.

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Further inside the jungle,

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you might meet the strangler fig.

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It grows in areas where sunlight is scant

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and competition is intense.

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And so it has a strategy
to sort of cut in line and get ahead.

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You see, its seeds are dispersed by birds

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that drop them atop the branches
of existing trees.

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And that little seed will start
to germinate from there,

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sending its shoots upward to the sky

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and its roots all the way
down to the ground,

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all the while strangling
the host tree, often to death.

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And even if that host tree
dies and rots away,

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the strangler will persist

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as a hollowed-out column
of roots and branches.

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And if that didn't impress you,

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let me show you one
of my personal favorites:

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the Neelakurinji.

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When it blossoms,

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it does so in unison,

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covering entire hillsides
in carpets of blue.

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This is its pollination strategy
known as "gregarious flowering,"

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in which it invests all of its resources
into a single, spectacular event

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aimed at attracting
pollinators to the feast --

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which is easily done,

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considering the Neelakurinji
is all that can be seen for miles around.

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But here's the catch:

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it happens only once every 12 years.

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(Applause)

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And soon after seeding,

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these flowers will die,

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not to be seen again
for the next 12 years.

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This is our way of telling a story
of the Western Ghats:

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through plants and through
their ecosystems

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and the various ways
in which they interact

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with players in their habitats.

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It's glorious, isn't it?

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But the way things are going,

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we can't be sure that the Neelakurinji
will come out to play again

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in the next 12 years.

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The further and further
we grow from nature,

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the more we are almost
literally blind to it

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and the effects that
our activities have on it.

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And that's what it's called --
"plant blindness":

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the increasing inability
to really register the plants around us

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as living beings.

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The two scientists that coined this term,

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Elisabeth Schussler and James Wandersee,

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contend that plants lack
certain visual cues.

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They don't have faces,

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they don't move,

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and we don't perceive them as threats.

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And so with the increasing onslaught
of information that our eyes receive,

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we just deprioritize registering plants,

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simply filtering out information
that we view as extraneous.

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But stop to think about that.

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Are plants really extra?

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Are they just nature's backdrop?

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Or are they the fundamental
building blocks

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upon which all life is based,

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the starting points of our ecosystems

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and the reason why earth
is sustainable for life to this day?

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I leave you with these images
from a program called "Wild Shaale,"

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which in Kannada means "wild school."

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It's run by a conservationist,
Krithi Karanth.

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And her team turned
some of my illustrations

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into games that village children
could play with and learn from.

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And I can tell you they were so excited
to see plants that they recognized --

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the trees that the monkeys play on,

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the flowers they use
at their harvest festival,

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the fruit they use to wash their hair.

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And it's that sort of familiarity
which, when celebrated,

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turns to love,

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which then turns into an urge to protect.

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It's really time we open our eyes
to the world around us,

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to this entire kingdom
that's hidden in plain sight.

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And so the next time
you're stuck in traffic,

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you know what to do.

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(Applause)