Acknowledgements
Links and Information
Culturally
Significant Plants Links, and information about Culturally Significant Plant Guides, the
NPDT Ethnobotany Office, or Ethnobotany and Ethnoecology.
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Digging stick and blue dicks (Dichelostemma
capitatum) corms. These underground storage
organs, called "Indian potatoes," are eaten
raw, boiled, or baked by tribes in the Southwest,
California, and the Great Basin. (Photos © M.
Kat Anderson, National Plant Data Team) |
Culturally Significant
Plants Links
Click here for a
list of links to other sites with information
about culturally significant plants. |
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Culturally
Significant Plant Guides
One of the exciting tasks of the NPDT, in collaboration
with Native American plant authorities, NRCS plant
material centers, and university specialists, is assembling
a series of culturally significant plant guides and
technical notes for each NRCS region. These guides
can help Native American tribes and NRCS field offices
to establish and manage culturally significant plants
and restore traditional gathering sites.
These guides provide information and images
of plant species that play a significant role
in the lives of Native Americans involved in
cultural activities utilizing plants. The guides
feature one native plant species each, and provide
botanical identifying features, morphology, general
information about the plant's reproductive biology,
range, distribution, and habitat requirements.
Each guide has a horticultural section with tips
on how to collect seed, propagate and grow the
plant, and how to maintain existing stands of
the plant with standard and indigenous horticultural
practices. Guides also contain cultural information
about where the plant grows, when and how it
is harvested, how it is prepared and used, and
its general role in maintaining tribal ethnicity.
There is a list of possible seed and container
sources, a bibliography of references, and images
if available. Pertinent links to other sites
containing ethnobotanical species abstracts are
also included. |
Cleaning elderberry (Sambucus mexicana) fruits
by the Sierra Miwok family, which will be used
in the making of jams, jellies, and pies. |
Click here for a list
of plants for which we have Culturally Significant
Plant Guides. |
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Mission
Statement of the Ethnobotany Office, National
Plant Data Team (NPDT)
NPDT ethnoecology and ethnobotany activities are led by
M. Kat Anderson, who is cooperatively located
with the Department of
Plant Sciences, University of California at Davis.
Rich in nutrients, cattail pollen (Typha
spp.) was used to make cakes and mush
by tribes in many parts of the United States. |
This office develops, conducts,
and coordinates field research and outreach programs
that relate to ecological and cultural interactions
between indigenous people and land use nationally,
with emphasis in California. The findings from
this research have relevance to the development
of NRCS conservation initiatives, ecosystem-based
management, policies, and planning, including
those activities relating to the development
of sustainable land uses, addressing current
cultural needs of tribes, and restoration of
biodiversity in natural ecosystems. Research
results are disseminated through published reports,
professional journals, and NRCS activities, such
as plant guides and training. |
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Activities
of the NPDT Ethnobotany Office
Ethnographic Studies
This work is based upon contacts with indigenous peoples
and involves documenting different indigenous harvesting
and horticultural practices and their potential effects
on the maintenance of biological diversity and other
indicators of ecosystem health and productivity. Tasks
include interviews with Native Americans, archival
research in libraries, cultural museum artifact studies,
and field visits to traditional gathering sites.
Ecological Assessments
This involves assessment of the inter-relations and
impacts of indigenous cultural practices on plant populations,
communities, and ecosystem characteristics and dynamics.
Two levels of study are employed:
Observational Studies - Design and implement
observational studies of the environmental and
ecological background of anthropogenic plant
populations and plant communities, and of the
complex of processes involved in the maintenance
of long-term productivity of traditional gathering
sites. This approach focuses on spatial and temporal
relationships and on processes as well as potential
effects on different levels of biological organization.
Ecological Field Experiments - Document the
effectiveness of horticultural techniques in
conserving biodiversity and/or sustaining the
productivity of vegetation types by conducting
of field experiments to measure the effects
of simulated indigenous horticultural practices
on specified features or characteristics of
individual plants, populations, or plant communities. |
Baskets, such as winnowers and wokas scoops,
are made with the stems of tules or bulrushes
(Scirpus spp.) by tribes in California,
Oregon, and the Great Basin. |
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What
is Ethnobotany?
Ethnobotany is the study of how different cultures
(usually indigenous groups) use, manage, and generally
interact with plants. Major topics include ways that
different cultures perceive, classify, and evaluate
plant species and ways that cultures enhance native
plant populations for their own needs using such techniques
as pruning, burning, sowing, weeding, and coppicing.
Comparative research on how plant resources are used,
maintained, and changed by different societies is useful
for developing general theories and methods for using,
managing, and conserving these resources.
Native American Cultures and Useful Native Plants
Of the 18,000 vascular plant species in the United
States, each Native American tribe traditionally used
hundreds to thousands. Some of these plants are still
gathered today: Sioux women still dig edible prairie
turnips (Psoralea esculenta) in the wind-riffled
Midwestern prairies; Western Mono women still pluck
long golden flower stalks from deergrass (Muhlenbergia
rigens) tufts for baskets along sandy California
riverbanks; the Lac du Flambeau still harvest wild
rice (Zizania spp.) and tap maple sugar from
sugar maple trees (Acer saccharum).
Hidden within the simple act
of gathering frequently lie complex rules that
safeguard the plant stock from being over-harvested.
For example, Klikitat basket makers of southern
Washington dig the roots of western red cedar
(Thuja plicata) every three years, giving
the trees time to re-grow and replenish the supply.
For many curative plants, Navajo medicine men
still refrain from harvesting from the same stand
two years running, granting periods of rest and
re-growth between those of tillage and extraction.
Other resource management techniques are practiced
to augment wild plant populations in special
places. The Timbisha Shoshone prune honey mesquite
(Prosopis glandulosa), a very important
food resource, keeping areas around the trees
clear of undergrowth, and also of dead limbs
and lower branches. The Dena'ina of south-central
Alaska still dig the edible tubers of Alaska
carrots (Hedysarum alpinum) with a moose
leg bone or horn, cut off the thick end of the
tuber, and then bury it to insure that more potatoes
will grow. |
Chia (Salvia columbariae) is a major
edible seed still gathered by tribal families
in the Great Basin, Southwest, and California.
The parched seeds are ground into a meal from
which cakes or mush can be made. |
Traditionally, native plants were integrated into
every facet of daily living among indigenous people:
used for adornments, basketry, building materials,
ceremonial events, clothing, cordage, cosmetics, dyes,
foods, games, household utensils, medicines, musical
instruments, poisons, tools, toys, transportation,
and weapons. Plants were gathered from below sea level
to above timberline and all vascular life forms were
used, from herbs, to grasses, sedges, shrubs, trees,
and vines. The vegetation was the grocery store, the
pharmacy, and the hardware shop, tailored by each cultural
group into its own unique ethnobotany.
Acorns from the California black oak (Quercus
kelloggii) are harvested in the fall
by many Native American families and made
into a mush, soup, or paddies and eaten with
beef or venison. |
This collective wisdom about
how to tend, judiciously harvest, and use native
plants has evolved over thousands of years and
gives us models of human intervention in nature
that demonstrate a common ground between the
conservation and utilization of plants. Some
of these plants may have importance to modern
society in the form of new food crops or medicines. |
As populations of useful native plant species continue
to dwindle on tribal and public lands, there is increasing
need expressed by Native Americans to the NRCS Plant
Material Centers (PMC) and field Offices to assist
them in the re-establishment of culturally significant
plants in various landscapes. Ethnobotanical projects
involve increasing partnerships between NRCS offices,
Native American tribes, public land agencies, and private
landowners. NRCS Plant Material Specialists in different
parts of the country have begun using their skills
to assist tribes in propagating, out-planting, and
managing populations of culturally significant plant
species in reservation and rancheria settings. Some
of the plants that the PMC's are working with are featured
in PLANTS--native plants that are still vitally important
to Native Americans to continue their traditions of
basketry, ceremonies, preparing traditional foods,
and other customs. |
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What
is Ethnoecology?
Ethnobiology is the umbrella
term for the study of human cultures and their
interactions with other organisms. It includes
ethnomycology (uses of mushrooms); ethnozoology
(uses of wildlife); ethnoentomology (uses of
insects) and ethnobotany (uses of plants), and
ethnoecology.
Ethnoecology explores how human groups see
nature through a screen of beliefs, knowledge
and purposes. It also investigates how humans
use, manage and appropriate both biotic and
non-biotic natural resources. Systems of production
for food, basketry, cordage, medicines, etc.
are studied directly in the field. Ethnoecologists
record detailed information about the human
behavior in these systems, such as their actual
horticultural practices and harvesting strategies,
and the traditional ecological knowledge upon
which these systems are based. The ethnoecologist,
in addition to relying on ecological methods
and concepts, draws upon linguistic, cognitive,
and evolutionary theory and methods. |
Long straight shrub shoots of sumac (Rhus
spp.), willow (Salix spp.), deer
brush (Ceanothus integerrimus), and
redbud (Cercis occidentalis) are harvested
by weavers in the West for prized basketry
material, one or two years after pruning
back the old growth. |
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