Native American Uses of California Native Plants
Guest speaker: Kurt Rademacher
California’s great diversity of plant communities and species affords us countless hours of beauty, intrigue, and pleasure! To the Native Americans here, this diversity has also provided all manner of foods and medicines, as well as materials for clothing, tools, and shelter. They’re the original naturalists here, living among and intimately knowing the “where, when, and what-for” of plants in great detail long before botanical names were assigned to them! Illustrated with images of plants in situ, in harvest, and in preparation, Kurt will share from what he has learned from historic accounts, interviews with tribal members, and from personal experience on this fascinating aspect of our botanical lore.
Kurt is native to the Bay Area and earned both his B.A. and M.A. at U.C. Berkeley. He is fortunate to have worked his entire career in a field he is passionate about: as a ranger-naturalist, a wilderness guide, a field researcher, and conservationist, completing his career with 28 years at The Nature Conservancy. He has often found ethnobotany an effective means to interest people in native plants and to care about their protection.
Kurt will also lead a Marin CNPS field trip on this topic on Saturday, April 27; see field trips.