Yrjö (Ykä) Helariutta is a group leader at The Institute of Biotechnology in the University of Helsinki and at the Sainsbury Laboratory in the University of Cambridge. Recently appointed an editor at Development, his lab works on vascular development in plants and trees. We met Ykä in his Cambridge office to hear how a childhood passion for collecting led him to plant science, what Arabidopsis can tell us about trees and vice versa, and why he thinks there are many different ways of being successful in science.