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Our Gardens of the Future Will be Rooted in the Past

Richard Hebda and Nancy J. Turner

Master Gardeners Association of BC Mary Winspear Centre January 28,2017

Growing Native Plants in your garden…

• Adds interest, value and diversity• Supports local wildlife (e.g.

songbirds, native pollinators, amphibians and reptiles)

• Provides new foods, materials and medicines to you & your family

• Brings new opportunities for learning, experimenting, fostering new knowledge and insights

• Helps restore damaged habitats & maintain ecosystems

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At your doorstep…

Build on and Design habitats that are special to this region, to grow a broad diversity of native species, each with its own requirements and its own gifts: • colour, texture, scent, flavour, wildlife

habitat, • foods and beverages, • materials for dyes and crafts, walking

sticks, garden poles, and • herbal medicines (which you should

use only with great caution and understanding of their effects)

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Many of these plants have been tended in the wild; “gardening” isn’t far removed

Traditional Land and Resource Management Practices• Use of fire to maintain

prairies, upland meadows, and other habitats and to renew individual species

• Pruning and coppicing trees and shrubs

• Tilling, weeding and selective harvesting of root vegetables

• Re-planting, scattering and transplanting propagules

Black huckleberry (Vacciniummembranaceum) Using perennials’ capacity to

regenerate through partial harvesting

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Land and Resource Management Practices, cont.

• Creating habitat through structural alterations

• “Ownership” of patches, stands

• Distributed use and harvesting across landscapes and over time

• Multi-generational monitoring of plant (and animal) populations

Flower and Edible root of Pacific silverweed (Potentilla egedii), often enhanced by “traditional root garden” cultivation on the Northwest Coast

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e.g. Camas prairies: cultivated for generations

• Christopher Paul, Tsartlip (WJOLELP)

Common camas (Camassiaquamash) ḰȽO,EL OR SPÁNW̱

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Camas, cont.

• Not only burning and clearing prairies

• Selective harvesting; replanting smaller and biggest bulbs

• Timing of harvest (when seed capsules are ripe)

• Ownership of tended patches

• Rotations of harvest

Bulbs of giant camas (Camassialeichtlinii), tended and weeded by Dr. Brenda Beckwith (as part of her doctoral research on camas); and R. Hebda “super-bulb”

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Clearing the land for camas…

The way that the family group... would establish claim to a plot of land [for camas harvesting] would be by clearing it. Once a family cleared a plot, it would “just naturally” become their plot to use, … clearing was done in the fall or spring before the gathering season, … The plot from which the bulbs were to be gathered would be cleared of stones, weeds, and brush, but not of trees. (Ethnographer Marguerite Babcock, from interview with Christopher Paul, Saanich, 1967)

Dr. Pakki Chipps, Scia’newBeecher Bay

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Blue camas (Camassia spp.)Camas bulbs, different ages, from a 1 m2 plot (Kate Proctor’s MSc research, Garry Oak Preserve, Somenos Lake, Duncan, VI)

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BERRIES

• Evergreen huckleberry (Vaccinium ovatum) YIYXEM: beautiful evergreen shrub, lovely bee-attracting flowers; delicious tangy berries, ripening in fall

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Red huckleberry (Vacciniumparvifolium); S,₭EḰĆES

Likes to grow on rotten wood; green twigs in winter; tangy beautiful berries; great for pies and muffins and jams

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Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis);ELILE (berries) / ELILE IȽĆ

Early spring hummingbird attracting flowers; juicy early ripening berries; edible sprouts, ŦÁ,ŦKI (peel, and eat raw or cooked)

(Rufous Hummingbird: Glenn Bartley photo) 12

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Trailing blackberry (Rubus ursinus)

Berries contain flavonoids; reddish leaves used to make a tea, which is considered medicinal; also used to sweeten medicinal teas from tree barks

S₭ELÁLṈEW̱); best flavoured blackberries ever; ancestor of logans & others 13

Named after Cree word misâskwatômina. Saskatoon’s founder, John N. Lake, named it in 1882 after tasting a handful of the berries from along the riverbank Pemmican (Cree pimîhkân, cf. pimî(“fat, grease”) – an energy rich food for travel: Dried meat or dried salmon; suet from deer, bison, or salmon oil; berries; seeds or nuts… pounded together and formed into a dense loaf

Saskatoon berries (Amelanchieralnifolia) SĆI,SEN – key berry of Canadian history

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Wild Nootka Rose (Rosa nutkana); ḴȺL,Ḵ

• Hips well known as a source of vitamin C; only the outer rind is edible, not the seeds

• Shoots and leaves made into a tea used for digestive tract and as an eye medicine

• Other rose species also used for tea (ḴELḴE IȽĆ)

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Stink Currant or grayberry (Ribes

bracteosum); SPEȾIȽĆ

Grows in damp, mucky ground; Berries somewhat resinous but great mixed with others; bark used traditionally as medicine

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Skunk-cabbage, Swamp lantern (Lysichiton americanus)

• Leaves used as a poultice for severe burns (Nuu-chah-nulth) (ȾOQI,)

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Wapato (Sagittaria latifolia), SḴÁUŦ: ancient edible tuber

• Pitt Polder archaeological site: 3,500 year-old wapato tubers in almost pure patch, with digging sticks in context (with thanks to Katzie First Nation, Amy Homan and Tanja Hoffmann)

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Clover Point Clover… (Trifolium wormskioldii)

• Traditional root vegetable, almost extirpated from Victoria, but not quite! (thanks to Fiona Chambers)

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Beverage teas

• Also often medicinal

• Often good sources of vitamin C

• Need to be a little careful not to make them too strong

• Can be sweetened and flavoured with licorice fern, blackberry leaves or mint

Field mint (Mentha arvensis); Labrador tea (Rhododendron groenlandicum); yerba buena(Satureja douglasii), grand fir (Abies grandis), Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis)

“MAḰEM (méqwəm)-tea”

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Nodding Onion or “barbecuing onions”(Allium cernuum); S₭EX̱ or ₭EX̱IEĆ

• Beautiful, perennial, cluster-forming bulbs; attractive pink flowers; can grow in hanging baskets…

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Fireweed (Epilobiumangustifolium) Haas (Sm’agyax)

Grows from branching rhizomes; young shoots edible (rich in Vitamin C); Flowers a great source of honey nectar; mature stems produce fibre for cordage

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Licorice fern (Polypodium glycyrrhiza); ṮESIP

• Rhizome contains polypodoside A, 600 times sweeter than sugar by weight;

• Sweetener, mouth freshener, appetizer, cough medicine and more

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Wild lily-of-the-valley (Maianthemumdilatatum)

• Leaves used as a poultice for stings, insect bites, cuts, itching, infections and burns

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Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica); ȾEX,ȾEX

• Edible greens (cooked) in spring• Used as a counter-irritant for

arthritis and muscular aches• Major source of twine and fishing

line; commonly grows in village sites

(t’thə´x-t’thəx)

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Oceanspray, or ironwood (Holodiscusdiscolor); KÁȾEȽĆ

• Hard wood used for digging sticks and tools

• Brown seed-heads made into a tea to treat diarrhoea; said to be learned from Interior peoples

(q’éy’t’th-əlhch)28

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Hardhack (Spiraea douglasii); TÁ,ȾEȽP

• Bark used to make a women’s medicine; a related species is another original source of “aspirin”: named after spiraea(now Filipendula, meadowsweet)

teet’th-ə´lhp

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Medicine

Elsie Claxton’s “10 Barks”Medicine… Boil barks of 10 different trees and shrubs until dark brown;

She taught us just how important these medicines are for survival; one day Belinda (Seliliye) and I went out with her to learn how to make this medicine

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Oregon-grape (Mahoniaaquifolium); SENI, IȽĆ

• Contains the alkaloid berberine, a yellow-coloured crystal

• Used as a yellow dye and also as a blood and liver tonic, and eye medicine

• Berries eaten as an antidote to shellfish poisoning (Elsie Claxton, whose mother told her this)

(səní’)31

Waxberry (Symphoricarpos albus)

• Berries poisonous to eat but rubbed on warts to eradicate them

• Twigs boiled and solution used as a wash for swimmer’s itch and paralysis of the limbs & to relax muscles

(PEPKIYOS, PEPKIYOS IȽĆ

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Lomatium nudicaule, “wild celery” or barestem lomatium –KEXMIN; seeds are a flavouringand medicine; used in spiritual healing as well

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SLA´WEN ET SXEA´NEW

• “frog’s mat/mattress”- broad-leaved

plantain (Plantago

major) - leaves used as

a poultice for burns

and sores

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A little promo…

• Saanich Native Plants Nursery & Consulting - Kristen and James Miskelly

• http://www.saanichnativeplants.com/

“a wide selection of plants and seeds that are native to southern Vancouver Island.”

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Sooke HarbourHouse entrée

Thank you!HÍSWKE!

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Thank you!

Huckleberries: Vaccinium parvifolium, V. ovatum37

Thank you!

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Fall time

Pacific Crabapple

Fruit: ḴÁ,EW̱ (qé7əxw)

Tree: ḴÁ,EW̱IȽĆ (qəxwi7-ilhch)

- Fall fruits

- Fishing; drying

and smoking for

winter

- Wood for

implements

- Medicines

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Acknowledgements

HÍSWKE! to the WSÁNEC´First Nation, on whose traditional territories we are today, and to all the other First Nations of the Salish Sea, whose ancestors have tended and drawn their sustenance from these lands and waters over thousands of years.Elsie Claxton, Elder of Tsawout,

with xpay’ - western red-cedar

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Special thanks…

To our WSÁNEC´ teachers, Elsie Claxton, and Violet Williams, Christopher Paul, Dave Elliott, and all their families.

“Traditional knowledge never stops developing and there is a vital role for it today, though the nature of that knowledge might be bit different.” (Richard H.)

Richard with Violet Willliams, ca. 1993

Christopher Paul, Elsie Claxton, Dr. Earl Claxton Sr., Earl Jr. & Seliliye

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With appreciation to:

• Master Gardeners Association of BC, especially Linda Cross and Program Committee

• University of Victoria and Royal BC Museum

• Our friends, colleagues and family who have supported our work over the years

• Dr. Eric Peterson and Christina Munck of the Tula Foundation and Hakai Institute

Camas: ḰȽO,EL (qwlhá7əl) OR

SPÁNW̱ (spéenxw)

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