Theme: Growing Cultural
Understanding
Ethnobotany
The People-Plant Connection
Continued from previous page
Classroom Profile: A
Weed By Any Other Name
"Our school's focus on multiculturalism prompted my thinking
about how we might use studies of the diversity of plants to
help us appreciate human diversity," reports Chapel Hill, NC,
fifth grade teacher Barbara Elder. With support from the local
botanic garden, Barbara's students had explored plant habitats
and adaptations as part of their ecology unit. Their intrigue
with kudzu, an introduced plant that has become a pernicious
weed in the South, provided a focus for a range of cultural,
geographic, ecological, math, and other investigations.
"The kids here were familiar with kudzu, but didn't realize
that it was actually imported from Japan to feed cattle and
prevent soil erosion," says Barbara. Her class began questioning
why it did so much better here that it became a nightmarish
weed, then compared the latitude, climate, and other factors
in both countries to make some inferences. They explored ways
in which it was used in Japan - as a food source and thickener,
then tried making their own stir-fries thickened with kudzu.
"This got students curious about why we use cornstarch here
instead of kudzu, which prompted an exploration of the economics
of processing each plant." The 50-foot vines, she adds, also
provided fertile ground for a variety of math challenges. The
fast-growing, tenacious weed even became the inspiration for
some creative writing, as students first brainstormed appropriate
adjectives - out-of-control ... insane ... monstrous
- to describe the plant, then created their own kudzu-based
science fiction stories!
Classroom Profile: Herbal Village
To inspire creative problem-solving during an herb study, enrichment
teacher Marge Tirpak of Aurora, OH, created an imaginary situation
in which students were to be 17th century travelers shipwrecked
in the New World, having salvaged only a wooden box of herbs.
She charged students with developing a fictitious settlement
(they named it Herbaria), then creating characters and journaling
about why they had emigrated.
The herb plants and seeds students discovered in the box (such
as basil, thyme, and lavender), prompted investigations and
research on how to grow and propagate them, and what uses -
culinary, decorative, medicinal, and so on - they might have
for the colony. While the herbs grew in the GrowLab, Marge threw
out occasional challenges such as sickness hitting the colony
or holiday celebrations nearing, and encouraged students to
research how herbs might be used in these contexts.
"The discovery that herbs did not only exist on spice racks
amazed students and prompted their interest in growing them
and discovering more uses," says Marge. "They began to examine
household products such as shampoos, toothpastes, and cosmetics
to search for herbal additives." A culminating herb fest featured
student interpretations of their herbal adventures - from an
original song to a skirt decorated with hand-printed herbs.
Biodiversity Matters
Scientists have learned to breed and engineer crops that can
grow bigger and faster, and are disease resistant. But at what
cost to our cultural and ecological diversity? Although there
are certainly benefits to these advances, many experts are concerned
that this focus on "engineered" plants has caused us to rely
on too few species of crops and to lose vital genetic information
available from naturally evolved plants. Another threat to "genetic
diversity" is rapid deforestation, which destroys many wild
species of plants. Some scientists are increasingly recognizing
the importance of having access to wild native forms of plants
and old varieties of cultivated plants - with genes for different
types of natural resistance and defenses, nutritional value,
medicinal potential, and so on - and are searching for wild
plants and collecting and saving plants and plant varieties
that people have cultivated for generations.
When plants or entire habitats are lost, we also often lose
some of the knowledge, values, folklore, and even cultures associated
with them. We can find evidence of loss of plants and plant
diversity in our own backyards. Invite your students to explore
this loss in their own lives and neighborhoods, and to consider
actions they might take to preserve biodiversity. There are
gardeners who recognize the historic and ecological significance
of plant diversity who are working to grow, save, and maintain
seeds of a diversity of garden and crop plants, to maintain
these vital genetic resources.
Author: Eve Pranis
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© 2008
National Gardening Association