Most of us know the study of plants is called botany. Most of us know Native Americans and other indigenous people are well versed in plants of their region and use these plants for medicinal and other purposes. Combine the two and you have ethnobotany. 

Ethnobotany is the study of how people of a particular culture and region make use of indigenous plants. Plants provide food, medicine, shelter, dyes, fibers, oils, resins, gums, soaps, waxes, latex, tannins, and contribute to the air we breathe, removing CO2 and emitting O2. Plants are also used in indigenous ceremonial or spiritual rituals.

The term ethnobotany was first used in 1895 by the American botanist Dr. John William Hershberger to describe his research as the study of “plants produced by primitive and indigenous peoples.” Although ethnobotany did not emerge as an academic discipline until the end of the 19th century, its roots reach back to Greek, Roman, Islamic sources and Old Testament times. It is a complex study, not a pure science, involving a multidisciplinary approach of botany, genetics, evolution, history, anthropology and sociology. It is rooted in observation, relationship, needs and traditional ways of knowing. One can travel many paths of ethnobotany. Mine is one of understanding and appreciation - recognizing what plants do for us and the gifts they give us, as well as the interrelations between humans and plants. Maurice Iwu professor of pharmacognosy describes ethnobotany’s central theme as, “the recognition of the reciprocal and dynamic nature of the relationship between humans/indigenous communities and plants.”

Many indigenous people possess a previously undervalued knowledge of native ecology gained through years and generations of close contact with their living environment. I was recently introduced to the book “Braiding Sweetgrass” by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a mother, scientist, professor, and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. The author graciously explains that what we refer to as natural resources, native people refer to as gifts.

Plants know how to make food from light and water, provide materials and food, and they hold so much knowledge … and they give it away. This understanding is thought of as a gift economy. Kimmerer explains, “When we think of these resources as gifts, we know what to do with a gift - we are grateful for it, take care of it and want to give back.” Natural resources are often taken for granted and taken without consideration of the consequences. The thought of these resources as gifts gives us a new perspective, softens our hearts and fosters a new relationship with and appreciation for nature. The author states, “It invites gratitude, not expectation that I’ll get more and more and more, but gratitude for what I have been given. It generates a kind of self-restraint in return for that gift. When you know it’s a gift, it somehow makes you less greedy and more satisfied and appreciative of what you have. When we’re given a gift, it also opens the door to reciprocity, to say, in return for this gift, I want to give something back and that’s the gift-giving economy.”

Kimmerer also speaks of plant blindness, the inability to notice or recognize plants in one’s environment. “Most people find it easier to discern or recall an image of an animal than of a plant; this deficit diminishes interest in the critical role that plants play in our environment and human affairs.” She suggests that learning the names of plants instantly develops a relationship with them, “an antidote to plant blindness.” If plants are directly tied to human health, but we don’t know them, how can we learn from them and unlock more of their gifts?

Plants led us to modern medicine. According to Joseph I. Okogun, author and chemistry professor,  “It has been established that up to 25 percent of the drugs prescribed in conventional medicine are related directly or indirectly to naturally occurring substances mostly of plant origin. This contribution is a credit to ethnobotany in drug discovery. Natural products from plants, microbes and animals contribute to about half of the pharmaceuticals in use today.” 

According to culturalsurvival.org, in recent years, the discipline of ethnobotany has become increasingly associated with the search for new medicines and other products from plants. Researchers use ethnobotany to identify plants that may contain compounds that could be used for marketable products. This approach has been called biological prospecting - using indigenous cultures’ plant knowledge as a way to pre-screen plants for medicinal or other properties, which can increase the possibility of finding marketable products.
Some ethnobotanists argue that biological prospecting for plant products to be used by another culture like mainstream society is a form of economic botany rather than ethnobotany. Releasing culturally sensitive information like medicinal plant data can be antithetical to the ethnobotanical objectives of promoting and protecting biological and cultural diversity and spoil the trust of indigenous people. This leads to the “publish or perish” dilemma. However, withholding research data discounts a moral obligation to share potentially beneficial information with society. This is an issue that academic research guidelines, ethical review criteria and professional codes of conduct need to acknowledge.

Stop and consider in your daily life how plants touch you indirectly and directly. We eat plants. Wood from trees is used to build our homes. Cotton and other fibers are woven for clothes, towels and fabrics. Medicines are derived from plants. Wildlife needs plants to survive, and they in turn provide us with a balanced and healthy environment. Kind of blows your mind when you consider the many facets of our lives that plants touch!

There is a huge diversity of potential uses of plants that has not been tapped. Continued bio-prospecting is critical to the discovery of new, previously unknown uses of plants, as foods, medicines and materials - there is so much that has yet to be discovered. Researchers will continue to utilize ethnobotany to enhance their research. The local, traditional knowledge of indigenous people is often rapidly lost once they become integrated into modern, materialistic society. Conserving this knowledge is critical to their culture, heritage and contribution to science. 

In Kimmerer’s book, she speaks of braiding sweetgrass and the metaphor it provides. She describes the book as a braid of stories, which are made up of three strands. One is the indigenous knowledge and traditional environmental thinking about plants from the Native perspective. Two is the scientific knowledge about plants. The third strand is the knowledge that the plants themselves hold - not what we can learn about plants, but what we can learn from plants. Her hope is for the reader to use these three ways of knowing plants “to reawaken our relationship with plants and to fully engage with all of our human ways of knowing the gifts that plants hold for us.” 

by Tish Gailmard

Lookout Mountain volunteer Jimmy Campbell proudly announces the completion of a new park located on Whitt Road across from the Carter Soccer Field in Lookout Mountain, Ga. A beautiful, shaded path connects the garden to Fairyland Elementary School and has been named “The Jimmy Campbell Connector Trail.” 
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Planning for the garden began in 2020 when the city received a grant from the Riverview Foundation to develop the one-acre plot. Mr. Campbell and Lookout Mountain, Ga., city manager Kenny Lee spearheaded the grant requests and then formed a planning committee made up of representatives of local garden clubs and the local Bee City USA committee chairs. Meeting off and on during the pandemic, Denise Taylor and Lulu Brock represented the Garden Club of Lookout Mountain, which donated $5,000 for the purchase of perennials. Penny Simmons represented the Lookout Mountain Beautiful Garden Club, which donated 1,000 bulbs for the garden. Laurelwood Garden Club, represented by Chrissy Jones, donated $100 to help develop the garden. Candace Wells and I, Bee City USA advocates, helped by creating a list of native plants indigenous to the Cumberland Plateau to attract birds, bees, and butterflies to the garden.

Dennis Bishop, owner of Going-Native Landscape, was hired to clear the area of invasive plants, design the garden, and oversee the purchase of plants. A water source was added to ensure the sustainability of the plants. Over 150 trees and shrubs were planted in November of 2020 and over 2,500 perennials were planted in May and June of 2021. More plants will be added later this fall.

Stone paths and seating areas with beautiful teak benches were installed for residents to pause and enjoy the lush, colorful, woodland setting. Mountain stone borders beds of echinacea, rudbeckia, milkweed and other pollinator-friendly perennials. Many species of native bees, as well butterflies such as monarchs and swallowtails, are finding a home in these new beds. Butterfly host plants are an important part of the garden so butterflies can complete their life cycle. 

Plant identification signs will be added to let visitors know what plants are beneficial to pollinators and birds. The Fairy Trail Garden adds one acre, or 43,560 square feet, of pollinator habitat to the mountain! What an amazing gift to support and sustain our bees, butterflies, and birds. As an advocate for pollinators on Lookout, I am very thankful for Jimmy Campbell, Kenny Lee, and the committee of mountain residents for this contribution in conserving this invaluable group of insects and birds. Mr. Campbell points out, “Even though this garden is on the Georgia side, it is a garden to be enjoyed by all the residents on Lookout Mountain.”

More good news is that the committee is under budget and has about $10,000 to further enhance the garden’s footprint on Lookout. For more information and plant lists, contact Ann Brown at [email protected]. 

by Ann Brown

Once upon a time there was a professor who lived a good, long life on Lookout Mountain, eventually moving to Signal Mountain. He will go unnamed to protect the innocent and the guilty. As a young teacher at the McCallie School, he taught English literature and the art of weight lifting. As an English professor at UTC, he taught the glories of Shakespeare, which he frequently embellished with colorful language and bawdy anecdotes. His flair for the dramatic lifted and energized the Holy Scriptures when it was his appointed time for the liturgical readings at his beloved Church of the Good Shepherd. 

Some of you may have guessed who this legend might be, but I wonder if you’ve ever heard this story. On one of his journeys to England, the professor had occasion to visit the Shakespeare garden in Oxford, where, with stealth and cunning, he snipped several stems of mint. From thence he proceeded to smuggle the purloined mint through United States customs to be planted in his own garden on Lookout Mountain. 

Being a generous good fellow, the professor shared the bounty of his garden with his brother-in-law Rolph Landry. (Now, can you guess the culprit of this story?) The English mint moved in a pot from the Landry home on East Brow to its present home in Black Creek. My friend Rolph, also a generous good fellow, shared some of the Shakespeare mint with me. After it had rooted and was flourishing in my garden, I espied, by chance, a director of this mountain tabloid purchasing mint at a local nursery this spring. I offered to share some of my English mint with her, promising that her writers would find inspiration from the magical herb.

And so it goes, the wandering mint spreads its fresh summer fragrance around the world and beyond the statutes of limitations for thievery and smuggling. May it continue to bless our Southern sweet teas, our Derby Day juleps, Rolph’s gin gimlets, and my Sunday morning mimosas as we worship online at “kitchen church” during the present plague.

Here’s an interesting footnote from the New Yorker, May 7, 2020:

Shakespeare lived his entire life in the shadow of bubonic plague. On April 26, 1564, in the parish register of Holy Trinity Church, in Stratford-upon-Avon, the vicar, John Bretchgirdle, recorded the baptism of one “Gulielmus Filius Johannes Shakspere.” A few months later, in the same register, the vicar noted the death of Oliver Gunne, an apprentice weaver, and in the margins next to that entry scribbled the words “hic incipit pestis” (here begins the plague). On that occasion, the epidemic took the lives of around a fifth of the town’s population. By good fortune, it spared the life of the infant William Shakespeare and his family.
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by Wiki Carter