Character Studies is an INDY series about familiar faces around the Triangle—and the stories you may not know about them.
Derek Haynes shares his Durham apartment with hundreds—yes, actual hundreds—of plants.
Green leaves stretch out from pots of all shapes and sizes, with many illuminated under purple grow lights. Smaller species sit in aquariums that Haynes turned into miniature greenhouses, while larger plants, ranging from sunflowers to a mint variety called Berries and Cream mint, bask in sunlight on his small balcony.
Haynes estimates there are about 300 to 500 plants around his apartment “on a good day” and at least 200 at any time. (“I love all of you,” he calls out to a packed shelf behind him.)
Known online as “The Chocolate Botanist,” Haynes shares his plants and educates people about botany via social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and X. His largest audience stems from Instagram, where he has nearly 75,000 followers. Frequent content includes him casually chatting to the camera as he debunks plant-care myths, explaining the science behind fertilizers and growth methods, and smiling for selfies with his leafy greens.
The 35-year-old knows he may not look like a textbook scientist. Standing at six foot three, Haynes has long dreadlocks and a full beard, and you’ll never catch him in a white lab coat.
Haynes received his Bachelor of Science in plant biology from North Carolina State University and works in pharmaceuticals when he isn’t filming content. But before any of that, he says, he was just a kid growing up in New Bern with a fascination for the world around him.
He spent his childhood watching TV shows like Captain Planet, Bill Nye the Science Guy, and Beakman’s World. Although Haynes was always fascinated by the tall cane grasses and fuzzy dandelions around him, he could count the number of Black botanists he knew of on one hand. None were alive for him to look up to.
“I started going for it and then started working with well-meaning white people who would disillusion me from things I wanted to do,” he tells the INDY. “They only saw my complexion and what they put onto it. I knew I had to do something different. That’s where, with this platform, I show all people, but especially my Black and brown people, ‘Hey, look. This is what a scientist looks like.’”
Currently, Haynes is working on a paid service he’s calling Seed TV, a long-form video series with episodes posted on Vimeo. He describes the series as “a Black analog to PBS.”
The idea for Seed TV was developed as a counter to the lack of Black voices in educational programming. Instead of those voices being pushed aside or featured as an afterthought,
Haynes wants to bring them to the forefront of scientific conversations.
“I said, versus me continually begging for some TV series to see me, I’ll just make my own,” he says. “And then I’ll also make sure I feature people who—regardless of how many followers you have, I don’t care how big your platforms are—just make some dope content. Let’s talk about plants.”
When Haynes was in elementary school, he used to go to his local store and buy a three-liter bottle of soda. He discovered that if he filled the empty bottle with water, leaves, bark, and grass, then it would begin to expand and foam.
Haynes realized the concoction was reacting with the sun’s heat, so to speed things up, he decided to place it by the floor vents of his childhood trailer. To make it even faster, he then covered the bottle with a pile of clothes.
The next morning, when he went to school, he says, his grandmother began to wonder what the source of a rotten smell was. She got her answer when the bottle completely exploded from carbonation.
Haynes still creates fermented drinks with his plants, although they’re in proper containers and look significantly more appetizing than his childhood concoction.
“The scientist, inquisitive, questioning, creative person I am now is the same as when I was a child, except that I have limits, but the child didn’t,” he says, popping open an orange-colored bottle before pointing up to the ceiling that’s faintly stained from past fermented experiments.
“Child me is still blowing stuff up.”
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