Portland Ethnobotany Project

I’m sure that the first few brave donors to this new project are waiting to see us get out the office and into the field. I have been out doing some casual surveys but we need to get a group of people out visually identifying culturally important species.

One thing to report is that we have refined our focus and broadened our scope to:

- Focus on inventory of traditional native plants in the urban region - Create accessible resources for food and cultural purposes - And establish partnership to enhance the cultural resource and opportunities for tribal members to gather and utilize the resources.

We’ve mentioned a few of these culturally plant resources in previous reports but most people living in Portland probably have little idea of the great diversity of species that were harvested. Acorns, hazelnuts, and wapato were major subsistence foods but the ecological environment supported hundreds of important medicinal, food, shelter and decorative plant species. Devil’s club, huckleberry, valerian, fern, Oregon grape and so many were harvested and prepared seasonally for their uses. We know from oral history and archaeological evidence that oftentimes the people were actively managing for the production of these resources through fire, selective harvesting, and other techniques. Finding these patterns in the contemporary landscape is challenging for sure, but there are bits and pieces of information around to help piece the history together.