Plants that existed on the Camas Prairies LHG site before Fall 2006

Body:

Yarrow, Achillea millefolium; from our site: Photo by Laura Donohue

millefolium: "thousand leaved": This plant is the first plant medicinal plant known to be written about, used for divination as early as 4200 years ago in ancient China. These inconspicuous feathery plants have diaphoretic and hemostatic properties: causing a sweat, and stopping blood.

Dry(er) sunny areas, with well drained soil. Found alongside roads, in disturbed areas, in grassy rural areas, prairies, alpine areas, rocky ledges, and near the sea shore. Genetically complex and one to many species recognized.

kinnickinnik:

kinnikinnik

smooth scleryphylous evergreen

northwest heather

sacred smoke

loves sunny slopes

colonizing entertwining

rootedness

spirally reaching for the

sun

Kinnickinnik likes the most open rocky exposed areas it can get in the Pacific Northwest. On the East side of the Cascades, however, Snowberrry favors the moister areas. Survival is a game of running from lacks to larders. Kinnickinnik is a sacred plant used in smoking mixtures with tobacco and other herbs.

Braken fern is pretty much the most cosmopolitan plant on the planet, growing on 6 continents and many different ecosystems. When Mt. St. Helens erupted, Bracken fern was on of the first plants to return. Bracken fern pollen is often one of the first found in the pollen record after natural disasters. With that said, it grows in wet ditches to dry sites, low elevations to high. Bracken fern roots were an important staple in many Pacific NW first peoples communities. Its long starch roots made it especially valuable, and yet one more reason to inhibit ecological succession by utilizing intentional fires.

Drier woodland sites, often on forest edges. within the camas prairie ecosystem, S. albus is found in the transition area between prairie and forest, this is especially appropriate because in this garden site, the snowberry is on the edge.

Name: Laura Donohue