Join co-leader, Amanda McQuade Crawford and myself on behalf of the American Botanical Council and the Amazon Center for Education and Environmental Research for an unforgettable journey to Peru. After arriving in Lima, Peru, we transfer to the airport for a short in-country flight to Puerto Maldonado in the heart of the upper Amazon basin along the Madre de Dios River. Our first few nights are at Inkaterra Lodge, an extraordinary doorway into the flora and fauna of the Peruvian rainforest. See itinerary link right for specific details. The facility and gourmet meals based on regional cuisine will cater to your creature comforts while the knowledgeable professional guides will provide us a doorway into the vast biological diversity just outside your cabin door. After a few nights at Inkaterra, we head up river by boat to catch a plane from Puerto Maldonado to Cusco, a brief 30-minute flight that takes us to the oldest city in the Western Hemisphere. At Cusco we will be met by our guides for the Andes portion of the trip. We will head for Ollantaytambo, and hop the trains to Aguas Calienté for the trip up to Machu Picchu. After that we will spend a few days exploring the ancient Quecha culture of Peruvian Andes. I love this trip and I know you will too. If you have any questions feel free to send me an email.
The American Botanical Council (ABC) presents a photo workshop with acclaimed botanical photographer and herbalist Steven Foster, at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge in Costa Rica from May 12-18, 2010. Spend six nights at the beautiful facilities at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, an ecolodge and Certified Biodynamic herb farm in the heart of the Costa Rican rainforest, located, just ten miles from one of the world’s most active volcanoes, the Arenal Volcano.
Plants provide more than simple visual aesthetics. Photography offers an excellent medium to begin to explore simple beauty and gaining a deeper understanding of how to relate to plants. We will focus on techniques for improving your plant photography. Rather than dry optical theory or studio techniques, we will spend most of our time on techniques for field work.
ANYONE CAN TAKE GREAT PHOTOGRAPHS! JOIN US NO MATTER WHAT YOUR SKILL LEVEL. IT’S NOT THE CAMERA THAT COUNTS. WORKSHOP REQUIREMENTS: ENTHUSIASM TO LEARN AND ENJOY A FABULOUS TROPICAL VENUE.
The workshop fee includes six nights (meals inclusive) at Finca Luna Nueva Lodge, airport transfers from San Jose International Airport (SJO), and the workshop itself. Priced at only $1,250 (double occupancy) to allow anyone who has dreamed of taking a photography workshop in a lush tropical location to fulfill that dream. The price does not include roundtrip airfare from your originating airport. Single rooms are $200.00 additional. Participants will also be required to purchase their own travel/medical insurance. Sign-up deadline is May 1, 2010.
Hollyhock Alcea rosea like many members of the mallow family is a useful medicinal plant due to its high content of mucilagin. Mostly associated with flower gardens, it’s a great addition to the herb garden, adding color and beauty, as well as being a suitable substitute for marshmallow Althaea officinalis. Many gardeners assume that hollyhock originates from Europe, however it is a relatively recent European garden introduction, first grown there in the sixteenth century. It actually originates from South China. Here’s our recent post of Hollyhock photographs. Those images with water in the background were naturalized plants growing on the edge of Kotor Bay in Montenegro in the eastern Adriatic.
Having recently visited Finca Luna Nueva in Costa Rica with the opportunity to shoot the plants in the wonderful ethnobotanical collection at Luna Nueva’s Semillas Sagradas (Sacred Seed Sanctuary), I have new images of Uncaria tomentosa (Cat’s Claw, Una de Gato). See also our images of the closely related Uncaria guianensis, shot on various trips to the Peruvian Amazon. In addition we also have images of the bark from markets in Peru. Note that Uncaria tomentosa has upturned “claws” (along with hairy “tomentose” stalks) while the claws of U. guianensis are downturned. These herbs are valued for antioxidant and immunostimulant activity and are widely used by native groups in the neo tropics.
The calcareous soils of the high mountain glades and plateaus of Montenegro is the home of yellow gentian Gentiana lutea spp. simphyandra, the root of which has long been valued as a bitter tonic. Gentiana lutea is one important medicinal plant that has become threatened in Montenegro and throughout its range in mountainous regions of Europe due relative scarcity to over-harvest. The export of the root is now banned from Montenegro. Now former traders in gentian root are keenly interested in its conservation. When traveling in mountain villages and among seasonal shepherds, they stop and ask that when cutting hay, mostly done with a scythe in the traditional way, that the flowering gentian plants not be cut, so that they may produce seed. Attention to simple conservation measures, such as this has resulted in an increase in gentian, where it had once disappeared. Veselin Vucinic is the “King of Gentian” in Montenegro due to his conservation efforts. (See 14 December 2006 blog below, “A Visit with Veselin Vucinic”). That’s Veselin in the picture above, and his daughter, Ms. Gordana Vucinic, with a group of Gentian in the photo below.
Each year in northeastern Montenegro in Plav, a beautiful mountain city located on the shores of Plav, lake the annual Blueberry Festival is held, celebrating the harvest season of this native wild fruit. “Blueberry” as it’s known locally in Montenegro is Vaccinium myrtillus traded in world markets under the common name “bilberry.” A small shrub with sweet black berries, it grows in heaths and woods of northern Europe and mountains of southern and central Europe. An ancient food plant of Europe, bilberry emerged as a medicinal herb in the twelfth century, mentioned by the German Abbess Hildegard of Bingen, and later in the sixteenth century herbal of Hieronymus Bock, who gave extensive detail of the plant’s medicinal properties. During the Second World War, pilots in the British Royal Air Force reported improved night vision after eating bilberry jam. In the 1960s, these reports led Italian and French scientists to research the berries for their effects on vision problems. Bilberry fruits (dried, powdered, and extracts) are sold in the form of dietary supplements in the United States, perceived useful for increasing venous circulation, particularly to the eyes, thus benefiting eyesight. In Germany it is an approved phytomedicine for the treatment of nonspecific acute diarrhea and as a local therapy for mild inflammation of the mucous membranes of the mouth and throat. Preparations of bilberry fruit are used to enhance poor microcirculation, thus improving eye conditions such as night blindness and diabetic retinopathy. Pigments called anthocyanosides help regenerate a pigment in the retina that is essential for the eye to adapt to light. The dried leaves are also used as a beverage tea ingredient and have been the subject of research, particularly in Italy, for potential antidiabetic activity. The fruits are also known for strong antioxidant activity due to anthocyanins in the fruit, which help to strengthen and protect blood capillaries and stimulate the formation of new ones. Bilberry jam and juice products are widely available in markets in Montenegro.
