More spring stories and art about native plants spring into News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center for our #NativePlantChallenge and conclude our monthlong celebration of Earth Day.
Pervertum (Serrano)
Manal (Cahuilla)
Beavertail Cactus
(Courtesy of Aidan Koch)
Artist Aidan Koch shares her watercolor art of a beavertail cactus blooming in Native American homelands of the Mojave Desert. More than 120 years ago, anthropologist David Prescott Barrows also observed the plant’s beauty — and its usefulness:
“The Opuntia basilaris is an especially valuable plant to the Coahuillas. It is one of the small varieties and has a tender slate-colored stem in flat joints. The young fruit in early summer is full of sweetness. These buds are collected in baskets, being easily broken off with a stick. The short, sparse spines are wholly brushed off with a bunch of grass or a handful of twigs. The buds are then cooked or steamed with hot stones in a pit for twelve hours or more.”1
Pa'akal (Cahuilla)
Brittlebush
(Courtesy of artist Aidan Koch. See more art on instagram, @aidanalexiskoch)
Aidan Koch also shares this watercolor of Brittlebush (Encelia farinosa), a Native American medicine plant blooming in the homelands of the Mojave Desert.
Katherine Saubel recalled her grandmother boiling the plant blossoms, leaves, and stems into a mixture used to cure toothaches. A gum from the plant also was used to relieve pain. 2
Gardens
Ernest Siva (Cahuilla-Serrano), president of Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, shares stories and cultural memories about his grandfather and other Native Americans with gardens. (The Morongo Reservation, and the rest of the San Gorgonio Pass area, at one time had a strong industry of fruit groves, including apricots.)
Native Plants in the News
To read more about Southern California native plants and their relationship with Native American people, click and visit the News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center archives:
Acorn, Milkweed (video), Mugwort, Toyon
Barrel Cactus and Creosote (video)
Buckwheat
Chia
Creosote (selection from Cliff Trafzer’s Strong Hearts & Healing Hands: Southern California Indians and Field Nurses, 1920-1950)
Elderberry
Greasewood after Rain (selection from Dorothy Ramon)
Pinyon pine nuts and ceremony
Yucca, California cuisine (video)
Other: A Native Woman and her Garden (Kat High)
Thanking plants (Barbara Drake)
Recovery from fire
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Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, a 501(c)3 nonprofit, saves and shares Southern California’s Native American cultures, languages, history, and music and other traditional arts. Tell us what you’d like to see in News from Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. We value your contributions: EMAIL. Subscribe. Join us at dorothyramon.org and Dorothy Ramon Learning Center on Facebook. Thank you! Pat Murkland, Editor. April 28, 2021.
Barrows, David Prescott, Ethno-Botany of the Coahuilla Indians (reprinted from 1900, University of Chicago Press), © 1967 Malki Museum Press, p. 67.
Bean, Lowell John, and Katherine Siva Saubel, 1972, Temalpakh: Cahuilla Indian knowledge and usage of plants, Malki-Ballena Press, p. 69.