Columbines School
Wildcrafting
Welcome to Columbines School of Botanical Studies Wildcrafting Pages
Wildcrafting is gathering plant material from its native “wild” environment. Wildcrafting is stewardship. This means we take care of the land and our plant populations or stands. We harvest in a way that insures the health of the stand for our children. We should be able to return to this stand year after year. It will teach us many secrets about ecology and population dynamics. It is not a one-night stand.
Wildcrafting Articles
Articles from Columbine’s School of Botanical Studies
Wildcrafting for Beginners: This article was written in the spring of 1995 for a local free magazine on healing arts called Healing Currents. I’ve made slight modifications and a few links to other pages, but all in all you will have to imagine yourself spending an endless winter under the constant grey clouds and wet drizzle of the Pacific Northwest in the USA. Finally the long, slow, green spring that makes all the rain worthwhile arrives.
Wildcrafting Ethics and thoughts about rare, threatened and endangered plants.
A Wild Winter: Some thoughts about the floods of the winter of 1995/96, and its impact on low elevation creeks.
Another Wild Winter: More thoughts about flooding, from the floods of the winter of 1996/97, and its impact on seed dispersal.
Additional Wildcrafting Articles of Interest
Wildcrafting for the Practicing Herbalist by 7Song from the Northeast School of Botanical Medicine.
Wildcrafting Links
Oregon wildcrafters, botanists, and the environmentally-minded folks will be happy to download a brand new copy of the 2016 Rare, Threatened, and Endangered Species of Oregon. Federal, State, and local species are listed.
On the bottom of this page from Oregon Biodiversity Information Center, we can find this information in a spreadsheet format. This is ideal for manipulation into plant lists and uploadable databases for your botany phone apps.
What plants are federally protected in the United States? Check the Endangered Species Homepage at the US Fish and Wildlife server for the complete federal listings.
Close to home, your own state may have locally protected plants. When traveling around and harvesting, you may not realize that the Lomatium you see only grows in a thirty mile circle around you. Better browse through the NatureServe Network Directory for the local listings.
