# Cassandra Quave on Reddit (u/Cassandra_Quave)

Part of Scientists on Reddit, researched with Autumn (https://www.autumn.ai) from public sources. Updated 2026-11-07. Interactive version: https://www.autumn.ai/resources/scientists-on-reddit/cassandra-quave

Cassandra Quave: Ethnobotanist at Emory University.

- Reddit account: [u/Cassandra_Quave](https://www.reddit.com/user/Cassandra_Quave/) (AMA only)
- How we know it's theirs: [The 2017 r/science AMA, posted from this account](https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/69e7ni/)
- Where they post, in the records we retrieved: r/science (76)
- Known activity in the posts we found: 2017 to 2017
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassandra_Quave

## Moments

### u/Cassandra_Quave in r/science, May 5, 2017 · Explains things

Replying to a redditor:

> I just read about you for my botany class at Penn State University! What is the most interesting plant you've come across? Why do you find it so interesting?

> Hmmm... this is a tough one. There are so many interesting plants that I've worked with over the years. I'm most interested in understanding human uses of wild plants. One really neat one that has multiple uses is Arundo donax - or the giant reed - in Poaceae (grass) family. In southern Italy, this plant is used as a tool (as a fork and wine barrel tap), in construction (to build grain bins, fencing for gardens, vineyard support), as a bartering stick (items that are traded are tracked by carved notches on the reed), as bedding (the leaves once were used to stuff mattresses), and as a medicine (the white internode membranes are used to stuff bleeding lacerations as a hemostatic). So many amazing uses from what some would just see as a weedy grass!

Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/69e7ni/comment/dh686s7/ · 14 points as of Nov 7, 2026

### u/Cassandra_Quave in r/science, May 5, 2017 · Explains things

Replying to a redditor:

> I'm personally against the extraction method utilized by western medicine. Such as stripping a plant down to one chemical constituent to be used in a medicine. I think plants ha e grown the way they do and have been used as traditional medicines as a whole. Not to have their…

> Very good concern. Plants did not grow to become medicines; they grew to survive and give rise to progeny. And the medicinal chemicals they did produce were produced to achieve that end. So I do not think that the plant as a whole is always the optimal way to develop potent treatments to diseases. Rather, they contain medicinal value that we can utilize.

(Excerpt.)
Full thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/69e7ni/comment/dh68p9c/ · 5 points as of Nov 7, 2026