Hi Everyone,
My name is Treena Ivie. BIOL F190 is my second botanical course. I stumbled across the Introduction to Ethnobotany course as my first course back to school in 10 years. It seemed like a wonderful fit, as I have spent the last 6 years doing my own research on the flora around my home in Wasilla, Alaska. It also made sense to me to learn more about this field, as a Sugpiaq, aka Alutiiq, from Kodiak Island. After receiving some additional information from staff in the Ethnobotany program, I decided to go ahead and enroll into it. These courses will eventually fulfill undergraduate requirements for the Occupational Therapy Graduate program I am planning on taking in the future. I occasionally forage but mostly appreciate nature’s plants. As I learn more of the ins and outs of the plants, I plan to start harvesting them with my kids. I am not good at gardening, so most of our property is wildly nature filled because I am not terribly good at landscape either. I am an artist that uses watercolor, leather, beads and fiber to create with. My favorite plant is the Silverberry Bush, I have included in a photo below- on the right hand side. On the left side of the photo is my microscope set up. I look forward to this course and learning all that is offered.
Welcome Treena,
Glad you found this course and I hope it will pave the way for you to successfully complete what you set out to do. Thanks for providing an image of your USB microscope. It will be fun to see additional details of the plants with it. Silverberry is a great plant, it is closely related to buffalo berry Shepherdia canadensis, which is common here in the Interior. Both have scales on the stems and leaves, those of silverberry appearing shiny and whitish, while Shepherdia has interspersed brown scales and of course the leaves are opposite, while Elaeagnus has alternate leaves. Both genera are in the Elaeagnaceae, the oleaster or russian olive family.