Plant ID Skills

• Identifying Plant Families Patterns with Field Characteristics – You don’t need to memorize every plant. If you can recognize what plant family its part of, you can sometimes make a solid guess about its edible, medicinal, or poisonous nature, and can more easily look it up.
• Botanical Terminology – In order to access the existing wealth of botanical knowledge you need to speak the language.
• Botanical Keying – Use of dichotomous keys to identify plants with certainty.
• Poisonous Plants: For safety, we will learn to identify plants that are poisonous and/or that may be mistaken for edible or medicinal plants.

Ecology and Sustainable Wildcrafting Practices

• Identifying Ecological Zones – The Rockies are home to many different ecosystems, and different plants grow or grow differently in each system.
• Plant Location and Stand Assessment – This is the skill of finding herbs in the wild and deciding how much can be harvested sustainably.
• Tending Stands of Wild Plants – Hands-on practice with techniques for promoting the health and longevity of groups of medicinal plants that we are harvesting.
• Wildcrafting Skills – How to harvest and process barks, roots, leaves, stems, and flowers.
• Indigenous History and Colonization- We will discuss how Eurocentric concepts of dominance, supremacy and power impact our relationship with land.

Herbalism

• Medicinal Uses – We will go in depth with plants we harvest in class so that you can go home with a family-sized apothecary of home remedies that you know how to identify and harvest for yourself.
• Herbalism Topics – We will have in-depth lectures that cover
  • Herbal actions and organoleptics: with a focus on bitters, aromatics, demulcents, astringents, and nerviness.
  • Herbs for the nervous system: including herbs that help with calming/grounding the nervous system during stress or panic, supporting sleep, and acute and chronic pain relief.
  • Herbs for digestion: including common imbalances like acid reflux (GERD), stomach/duodenal ulcers, gas and bloating, indigestion, cramping, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, and loss of appetite.
  • First aid herbalism: building out an herbal first aid kit that can address common injuries such as bugbites, scraps, bruises, sprain/strains, and minor infections.
• Medicine Making Topics – Together we will process all plants that we harvest, and participants will keep a sample of each preparation. Students will learn the skills of making:
  • tinctures
  • medicinal teas
  • vinegars and oxymels
  • infused honeys and syrups
  • oils and salves

Tuition:

Books (You’ll need to purchase these):

• Flora of Colorado by Jennifer Ackerfield, second edition. (You can buy this from us if desired: We get bulk prices from the publisher.)
• Medicinal Plants of the Mountain West by Michael Moore. (We will use the newer 2003 revised edition.)

Personal Equipment:

• Backpack that can hold your books and gear.
• Outdoor Clothing: The key to being comfortable at all elevations in all weather is proper equipment. This includes a sunhat, sunscreen or light-weight long-sleeve clothing, a poncho (it does rain a lot at high elevation!), winter coat (we’ve had snow mid-July in our alpine plants class), hats/gloves, layers, and shoes for walking in marshy meadows (going barefoot is an option if desired, but some prefer waterproof boots).
• Reliable Transportation: In past years we’ve arranged carpools, but we can’t guarantee this will always be possible. Ultimately, each student will need to commute to different field sites for class.
• Tending Gear: Ideally pruners, loppers, bow saw and/or folding saw. We will have some tending equipment available for loaning out as well.

Processing Equipment: Summer Harvesting Only

• Everyone will need a cutting board and sharp knife (a kitchen or pocket knife is fine), a small trowel (ideally a hori-hori knife), and pruning shears/clippers.
• When processing herbs into medicinal extracts, students will need to supply their own alcohol, olive oil, vinegar, honey, and wide mouth mason jars.