How to Learn the Plants of Your Area

I was really lucky when I started my herbal apprenticeship years ago. I worked for Wilderness Awareness School and helped design the Kamana Home Study Course. At the time, I was director of the program. Kamana is a home study program that covers nature awareness, knowledge of place, birds, trees, mammals, tracking, plants, ecological indicators, hazards and much more. It is a comprehensive and complete naturalist training course.

While I was learning about herbs and remedies, I started taking the Kamana Home Study Course at the same time. Doing this was profound, for while I was learning herbal skills I was also learning about the native plants of my bioregion.

In no time at all I was making remedies with the wild plants as well as the garden-variety herbs. I also learned the toxic and poisonous plants, plant families, ancient plants, basic botany and much more. I found doing this made me much more confident in making wild edible dishes as well.

As an HerbMentor member, you have an unique opportunity. Rather than having to join the entire Kamana program, you can  just to do the plants section. The plants section for Kamane Two, Three and Four are included with your HerbMentor membership.

What you'll cover in this course...

• The basics of plant identification using flower parts and leaf patterns
• What are the four lines of questioning you need to know to identify plants?
• The ancient plants, how plants are categorized botanically. Also, why knowing basic botany really helps.
• How to make a plant journal, including the 13 points of identification and field information AND the 12 points of plant use information.
• You will journal 10 plants, including poison hemlock (good to learn the poisonous plants first!), Indian poke, poison ivy (or oak), nettles, a local nightshade, a local buttercup, dandelion, chickweed, plantain, cattail in Kamana Two. 40 more plants of your area will be covered in Kamana Three & Four Plants.

How this all works is explained in the article links below, where you can download the course as a PDF file.