Learning botany is like going to a wild party where you don’t know many folks. At first, you may feel intimidated, then you bump into someone and you learn their name. But, a name is just an entry point. Each time you run into your new friend, you learn more about...
Around Mother’s day we see innumerable cards and posts with adorable furry baby mammals with their doting and capable moms (click here for cute pictures). However, this mother’s day I want to celebrate a whole other maternal kingdom. This post is dedicated to all the...
Blue Elderberry (Sambucus nigra subspecies caerulea) is a tall shrub with beautiful lacy clusters of tiny white flowers that look like snowflakes. This fascinating medicinal and edible wild plant grows in North America, Europe, western Asia, and North Africa[i]. We...
We often hear stories that begin with “A long, long, long time ago, humans and Our Relations in Nature lived in harmony and spoke a common language…” This is not just the stuff of myths and fairy tales; the language of nature is not a dead language of a mystical...
I spent a lot of my youth in active defense of Mother Earth. This photo shows my arrest after I locked my neck to the Washington State Federal Building to protest the Fed’s disastrous logging policy targeting the last remaining ancient forests in the state. It...
Our Wisdom of the Oak program touches hundreds of elementary school students every year. I wanted to share this note from a girl who said that our program was the second best day of her life (her best day was the day she was born).
Let me dispel the misconception that botanists are geeks – the reality is we are in it for the sex! I can’t walk down the street without being blown over by the sexual exploits of the plant world this time of year. Just like some humans, when plants get ready to...
I woke up on Valentine’s Day morning with a river of love and happiness streaming through me. It’s not a mere romance that has filled me up today. Rather, I had the unbridled pleasure of spending a perfect spring Saturday in the company of eleven remarkably authentic...
Imagine belonging so deeply to the wild that you would breastfeed a motherless squirrel. The endangered Amazonian Awa people love wild animals so much that the women breastfeed and treat them as part of the family. In return, the animals help them with everyday tasks...
The California bay laurel tree (Umbellularia californica) is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most iconic trees. This tree is closely related to avocado, cinnamon and the European bay laurel, whose leaves we often throw into tomato sauces and soups. You can...
