I looked around at the faces nodding at me. Germinar did seem to be how one said “to germinate” in Spanish – another fortunate cognate.

I was at the Next Generation conference, and very happy to be discussing my research plans with other scientists great like Daniel Morales and Blanca Romero studying plant, microbial, and animal dynamics with the same nasty invasive grass I am interested in, known often as zacate buffel or pasto buffel.

Ecology is probably easier for me to discuss in Spanish than what I did last weekend, really. I know some of the vocabulary, much of the rest  I can guess, and there is less slang and fewer funky subjunctive tenses. Wait, did I say ecology, with all its complex systems and policy implications leading to opinions? Sigh, never mind.

Fortunately, most of these folks also spoke English (better than my Spanish), and I muddled through sufficiently to get some really exciting new results and suggested methods for germinating Sonoran perennial seeds from them!