Plant BINGO is fun. I brought my daughter with me to find and identify the proper species with the provided terminology. One thing we have seen all over Brooklyn is the Silique, the Catalpa Tree, and until this course we just wondered about it. To complete the course, I recreated the table in Word however I had to upload it as a jpg.
BINGO! (Pier’s BINGO Card)
Author: Pierette Imbriano
My name is Pierette Imbriano, but it would be great if you could call me Pier. I have always been interested in ethnobotany but didn’t have the language to know and articulate it. I was fascinated by natural survival although can’t claim the brave title of survivalist like others in the program. I have worked on farms and obtained a license in aromatherapy where I can practice medicinally. I grew up in a small town in the suburbs, lived briefly in a rural area and for the majority of my life in cities. I’m currently a Brooklynite in New York City but have lived in various places where I learned to love at times being a naturalist, other times a pragmatist and many times just simply adapting. I hope to learn how indigenous cultures live sustainably and interact with botany. I also hope to be able to adapt these lessons on a larger scale that I can transfer to city planning in NYC, accomplishing sustainable climate & culturally friendly universal trends that can be incorporated on individual and greater levels.
I want to reunite with my love of wild plants and ecosystems, while engaging on an intellectual level but mostly appreciating people and living beings w/instinct and common sense on a social, ecological, culturally sensitive/relevant level that will also provide insight into basic economic community insights. While my passion for plants is primarily around the medicinal use, I’m hoping to broaden that view again and love making pragmatic items such as baskets and clothes, toys and jewelry as I had in Minto, AK. I’m looking to understand the socio-economic cultural and ecological connections on many levels from basic necessities to adornments/enhancements, transportation, infrastructure and more. But I’m also looking for other skills. I want to know how to document individual studies and their connection/relativity to each other in a way I can share where appropriate and approved by the culture and especially in a way where I can pick it up and jump right back into the information in 10 years as if no time had passed. I’m especially excited to learn from each person in this course- everyone is so unique. The material is amazing and I have no doubt meeting everyone in person during field study will be awe-inspiring.
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Excellent job on these Pier! The only one I would have another look at is the Catalpa tree. It is a member of the Bignoniaceae and as such does not have a silique as a fruit, although the fruit is long and skinny, but it is actually a capsule with axile placentation. While a silique is characteristic of the Brassicaceae and has a central replum where the seeds are attached, and not to the carpel margins as in Catalpa (see below an image of an ovary in XS of another member of the Bignoniaceae) showing axile placentation and two carpels.
Thx Steffi. I actually swapped it out from pursalane b/c I found it in a book titled “Florida Ethnobotany” by Daniel Austin and he said it was a silique but without explanation. This is good to know.
*Purslane* (which I then used for another square so it’s all good.
Sorry- I’m multi-tasking and should have elaborated- the tree is here in Brooklyn, I found the ID in “Florida Ethnobotany.” The Catalpa Tree is all over Brooklyn- while not a pollutant- I’m sure it’s home here is anthropogenic. Before Brooklyn became so gentrified- even as recent as 10 years ago, we used to have the most beautiful gardens often filled with a mix of native and tropic flora. Most of those gardens have become luxury houses (like the Joni Mitchell song), but somehow these amazing trees have survived.