Transcript Plants of the Day - Western Washington University

Plants of the Day
 To Know
Datura stramonium
Jimson Weed
 Dicotyledonous
 Venation
 Plant Secondary
Metabolite
tropane alkaloid
"blind as a bat, mad as a
hatter, red as a beet, hot as
a hare, dry as a bone, the
bowel and bladder lose their tone, and the heart runs alone."
Dose Response Curves
18
saturation
poison
16
14
12
10
8
6
Moonflower
Use r
threshold
4
2
dead
0
Dose (Datura)
Think about this.
Rubus spectabilis
Salmonberry
Rhizomes
Clones
Leaves Alternet
Salmonberry bird…
• Local (NW) flora,
• Ethnobotany,
• Fun!
Buy locally, or at Amazon ($16.47).
Oplopanax horridus
Devils Club
• Ethnobotany,
– Medicinal uses,
– Sacred uses,
– herbalgram.org
• Modern uses,
– Empirical studies,
– NCBI.
USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database / Britton, N.L., and A. Brown. 1913. Illustrated flora of the northern states and Canada. Vol. 2: 619.
The Tree(s) of Life
Kwakwaka’wakw
Western Red cedar
(Thuja plicata)
-
and -
Alaska cedar/ Yellow cedar
(Chamaecyparis nootkatensis)
Thuja plicata
The Tree(s) of Life
Kwakwaka’wakw
Western Red cedar
(Thuja plicata)
-
and -
Alaska cedar/ Yellow cedar
(Chamaecyparis nootkatensis)
Chamaecyparis nootkatensis
"In a small clearing in the forest, a young woman is in labour. Two women companions
urge her to pull hard on the cedar bark rope tied to a nearby tree. The baby, born onto a
newly made cedar bark mat, cries its arrival into the Northwest Coast world. Its cradle of
firmly woven cedar root, with a mattress and a covering of soft-shredded cedar bark, is
ready. The young woman's husband and his uncle are on the water in a canoe carved from
a single red cedar log and are using paddles made from lengths of yellow cedar. Wearing a
cedar bark hat, cape and skirt to protect her from the rain and cold, the baby's
grandmother collects berries. She loads them into a basket of cedar root and adjusts the
broad cedar tumpline across her forehead and returns home.
The embers in the centre of the cedar house leap into flame as the grandmother's niece
adds more wood. Smoke billows past the cedar rack above, where small fish are hung to
cure. The young girl takes red-hot rocks from the fire with long tongs, dips them into a
small cedar box of water to rinse off the ashes, then places the rocks into a cedar wood
cooking box to boil water. The young girl then coils two fresh diapers from soft-shredded
cedar bark and goes to tend a crying baby, while the child's father prepares long, slender
cedar withes to lash a stone hammer to. With the hammer finished he uses it to pound
wedges into a cedar log to split off a plank for a tackle box to fit in bow of his canoe."
Hilary Stewart's Cedar: tree of life to the Northwest Coast Indians (1984)
Look at me friend! I come to ask
for your dress; For you have pity
on us; For there is nothing for
which you cannot be used...For
you are really willing to give us
your dress, I come to beg you for
this, Long-life maker; For I am
going to make a basket for
camus-roots out of you.
Kwakwaka’wakw prayer
Secondary Growth
Fig. 35.21