Gardens as Classrooms, Plants as Allies

A symposium focusing on the diverse roles gardens play in botanical education from kindergarten to extended adulthood will be a highlight of the five-day annual meeting of the Society for Economic Botany (SEB), to be held at Duke University.

 The symposium, to run from 9-5 p.m. Monday, June 2 at the Richard A. White Lecture Hall on Duke's East Campus, also will explore the teaching and research potential of economic botany and ethnobotany -- fields exploring plants' roles in the past, present and future of human activity.

 Peter Raven, president of the Missouri Botanical Garden and chairman of the National Geographic Society's committee for research and exploration, will present the keynote address at 9 a.m.

 Each day's annual meeting activities will be open to the public, though there are daily or meeting-long registration fees.

A 6-8 p.m. opening reception June 1 at the Doris Duke Center of the Sarah P. Duke Gardens, will feature a Native American blessing and dances by the AniKituhwa Warriors, representatives of the eastern band of the Cherokee Indians.

The SEB's 49th international meeting will also include three days of research presentations centered on ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology and ethnoecology. Information from these fields, which study plant uses by indigenous cultures, can be applied to developing new medicines. It can also foster sustainable agricultural practices that are linked to traditional environmental knowledge.

Agriculture itself began as "a human response to global warming at the end of the last ice age when much of the big game disappeared," said Mary Eubanks, a Duke adjunct professor of biology who will serve as the June 2 symposium's chair. Her own research centers on contemporary applications of genes from ancient varieties of corn.