His already dirty hands caressing the soil in a bucket in front of him, Martin Grantham stares at the translucent ceiling and tries to remember how his love for plants started. Most of us spend our lives trying to find our passion, but Grantham found his at a very early age. Before even starting kindergarten, Grantham had already collected hundreds of plants. Growing up in an agricultural area, he quickly began picking out seeds from fruits, planting them and putting the pot under the windowsill, patiently waiting to see the new plant come to life.

"I don't know why," Grantham says of his early interest in plants, but he likes the idea that he was inspired by Luther Burbank, a pioneer in agricultural science with whom he shares his birthday.

His knowledge grew over the years as he took care of his grandmother's vegetable garden with her, but his calling wasn't clear. He loved plants but only live ones. He was repulsed by fake plants and didn't like handling dead ones. It became clear that he wasn't cut out to be a florist.

After graduating as the top botany student at UC Davis, Grantham attended UC Berkeley for a graduate program on fungi. There, his hunger to learn about living organisms was reinforced and he decided to leave his Ph.D program for a more hands-on approach to botany. For the next six years, he worked for the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden on an outdoor exposition of plants from Mexico and South America. Through various travels, Grantham developed contacts and expanded his knowledge of plants from all areas.

In 1998, Grantham took over as the manager of the SFSU campus greenhouse, which had been left unattended for the past three years. "I liked it because it was a challenge," he said. In a year's time, the greenhouse was under control and Grantham now watches over thousands of plants, mainly used for biology classes and student projects.

But the present facility is too small to allow faculty projects. Grantham, as well as students and staff, impatiently await a new facility. Located between Thornton and Hensill Hall, the new greenhouse-- scheduled to open May 2009-- will be eleven times the size of the current one, allowing space for research, teaching collections, or even classes, and will allow Grantham to expand his collection.

Grantham also advises Friends of the Greenhouse, a student-run organization whose members are dedicated to learning about plants: how to recognize, name, and take care of them.

Every semester, the club organizes a two-day plant sale on campus, during which students can buy "extras" produced by the greenhouse and usually very unique species of plants. "We give students a good deal," said Thomas Preston, a student in environmental studies and a committed member of the club. The money is used to organize field trips for club members to discover horticulture in the Bay Area, and also to purchase new rare and unusual plants for the greenhouse.

At fifty-four, Grantham still likes to be surrounded by plants as much as he did when he was a child, but he also likes to work with students: "It's very engaging," he says. "I never get tired of questions." And you can ask all the questions you want. He will gladly give you a tour and describe each plant's unusual characteristics thoroughly; he will get lost in his botanical world and take you with him.

The next Friends of the Greenhouse plant sale is scheduled for Earth day April 22-23.
For more information on the greenhouse and the club, log on to http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~fotgh/

contact: sabouana@sfsu.edu | Sabrina Blardone loves cheese so much she sometimes only eats bread (NOT crackers) and cheese for dinner.