(upbeat music) - KUER's "TreeNote" is a two minute weekly feature about the wonder of trees.

Hosted by renowned ecologist Dr. Nalini Nadkarni.

Station manager Cristy Meiners is here to tell us more about an upcoming event.

Hi Cristy.

- Hi, Mary.

- So the tree thing's really popular, I know.

We love our trees.

- We really do.

And you know, Dr. Nadkarni, Nalini is this powerhouse ecologist.

She pitched this idea to us, short, little teeny tiny feature, weekly feature about trees.

I said, all right, let's do it.

And it just keeps growing and growing in popularity.

- I know, and it's so popular, you're doing a whole event.

- We are.

People love trees, we all love trees.

I mean, they are, in some ways, they're kind of the companions that are just around us all the time, right?

We all have relationships with trees we grew up with.

And so we wanted to develop this event really around what we feel like is the essence of "TreeNote", which is not just the science of trees, although that's an important part of it, but also our relationship with trees.

So that's what we thought about as we were putting this together.

- Yeah.

I don't know about you, I talk to mine.

(both laughing) - Me too.

- They grow better.

So, and I know you've got four panelists, kind of talk about who's on the panel and what they'll be discussing.

- Yeah, so we're kind of saying they're tree lovers and tree experts.

So someone talking about conservation, that's important.

Someone talking about our spiritual relationship with trees.

Also the artistic relationship with trees that we have, how trees show up in art.

And also then, let's see, what's the fourth one?

Dr. Nadkarni will be moderating the panel, and I'm blinking on who my fourth panelist is.

We've got.

- You've got trees in our cities.

- Trees in our cities.

Thank you so much.

Exactly.

As well, a tree arborist right here in the city who'll be talking about trees in our city.

- [Mary] Great because we need to take care of those trees, Cristy.

- We do.

- You have to prune them right, you have to water them right.

And in a drought kind of plagued area, that gets tricky.

- Yeah.

Yeah, it'll be a really good conversation.

Dr. Nadkarni has been studying trees for many years.

She's a professor emeritus here at the U, and so she'll be leading this conversation.

We'll really get into a lot of different parts of how trees affect us.

- Wonderful.

Well, thank you so much for being here.

And thank you for what you do.

- Thanks so much.

- And if you'd like to know more about "TreeNotes" it's an event coming up April 17th, at 7:00 at The Leonardo.

Go to kuer.org.

kuer.org.

I'm Mary Dickson.

Thanks for watching "Contact."

- Local events, arts, culture.

It's what brings us together.

Hi, I'm Mary Dickson.

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