Ms. Cowie's Cool Biology 11 Project about mosses, ferns, herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees...here are the questions:
DIET
What plants would you eat? How would you get a nutritionally balanced diet?
SHELTER
What plants would you use to build a shelter; to build the frame of the shelter, to fill in the walls, floor, doors and seal them, to insulate, waterproof, and heat your shelter?
MEDICINE
If you got sick, what plants would you use to make medicines?
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The answers to these questions can be found in books in the Charles Best library or public libraries and online, especially university, museum and government sites. Because aboriginal people have lived here for thousands of years, you may want to research their successful uses of wild plants and how they built their homes . ( try books: 971.1004 - First Nations BC ). Books written in the early 1900's when people lived closer to nature are superb primary sources ( linked below).
American sources are excellent and useful, as wild plants do not respect borders!
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Here are some terrific sites chosen for you by the teacher-librarian. It took her 4 hours to find them; finding good online sources take about the same time as browing the shelves, leafing through books and indexes. Be patient!
Native American Ethnobotany
a database of foods, drugs, dyes and fibers of Native American Peoples, derived from plants. (search words: British Columbia)
Tree Book
Online book ( also in print), Government of BC , Ministry of Forests and Range. Includes basic identification and uses and links to scientific periodicals.
Wildcrafting in BC - medicinal plants E- FLORA BC ( click to Access our atlas page) USDA NRCS National Plant Data Center fact sheets ( e.g. Huckleberries ) American Medicinal Leaves and Herbs Chapters from: Useful Wild Plants of The United States and Canada by Charles Francis Saunders (1920)
This report lists many useful plants; scroll down for specific plants with excellent detail.
Upload this primary source book, published in 1911; covers both US and Canada, so verify the Habitat and Range.
- Phytochemicals; exactly what chemicals can be extracted from plants?
Search by plant's latin name
Constituents A-G Constituents H-P Constituents Q-Z
Dr. Duke's Phytochemical and Ethnobotanical Databases
Key in a "use" e.g. cancer, poutice and you will be linked to plants. Next step is to find out if the plant grows wild in BC.
