Fall 2023
Rooting for the prairie
Protecting our Palouse prairie home companions » More ...
Native plants
Summer 2021
Wild berries at Greenbank Farm
Nancy Hindes often finds wild creeping raspberries while walking along the road in front of her home south of Coupeville on Washington’s Whidbey Island.
“It grows along the ground. It’s not a very dominant plant, but I think it really likes gravelly soil, and that’s why it grows right next to the road,” she says, cautioning those unfamiliar with the wild plant to take care. “It will trip you.”
In summer, she keeps an eye out for its bright red fruit. “It’s one of the best raspberries I’ve ever eaten. It’s very sweet and very flavorful. When I see it, I’ll stop and have a … » More …
Fall 2017
The people’s plants
The Dominican boy had a leaf draped over his head, secured with a length of vine. Anthropologist Marsha Quinlan was intrigued.
“I asked him, ‘Is that a hat?’” she recalls. “And he explained that, no, he woke up with a headache and the leaf makes your head feel better. And I thought that was so cool!”
Quinlan was a graduate student at the time, on her first trip to the Caribbean island of Dominica (not to be confused with the Dominican Republic). And that was the moment she realized she had to delve further into ethnobotany.
How people around the world use plants for food, … » More …
Fall 2017
Holy smokes
The straggly plant is easy to dismiss. Narrow leaves and white, trumpet-like flowers, fade easily into Northwest fields and roadsides. But Nicotiana attenuata, commonly known as coyote tobacco, contains medicinal and ceremonial properties long revered by Native American cultures.
For thousands of years, coyote and other types of wild tobacco have provided what many consider a versatile healing remedy and meditative, spiritual channel to the Creator. Much of the botanical lore was muddled, however, with the arrival of Europeans and subsequent cultural upheaval.
At Washington State University, researchers Shannon Tushingham and David Gang ’99 PhD are using a combination of archeology and high-end molecular chemistry … » More …
Spring 2008
Kathleen Sayce: Keeping a heritage alive
Wielding loppers, Kathleen Sayce cuts through brambles smothering a parcel in the heart of historic and otherwise tidy Oysterville on southwest Washington’s Willapa Bay.
Between a leaning red alder and a mangled Sitka spruce, Sayce (’78 M.S. Bot.) opens a narrow trail through native bittersweet, salmonberry, and red elderberry plants. With verve, she hacks invasive ivy and blackberry vines. In the center of the thicket she unveils shredded food wrappers, perhaps the plunder of black bears living on Long Beach Peninsula.
The science officer at ShoreBank Pacific, Sayce—-sporting a sheen of perspiration and bug repellant—-is no buttoned-down banker. She is the only working biologist or … » More …