ADVISORY/The Arboretum of Los Angeles County Presents an Exciting New Ethnobotanical Lecture Series Beginning Thursday, April 5, at 7:30 p.m.

News & Garden Editors/Health & Education Writers

ADVISORY...

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Thursday, April 5: Dr. Michael Balick

On Thursday, April 5, Dr. Michael Balick of The New York Botanical Garden will present "Ancient Wisdom and Modern Medicine: Ethnobotanical Exploration in Central America and the Pacific." This first lecture in this new series will start promptly at 7:30 p.m. in Ayres Hall on The Arboretum grounds.

Dr. Balick, Director and Philecology Curator at the Institute of Economic Botany at The New York Botanical Garden, is a renowned expert in the field of ethnobotany. His research revolves around a central theme, the study of the relationships between plants and people. Most of his studies are in remote regions of the tropics working with traditional cultures. Other projects have included inventorying the fruit and vegetable markets of the Lower East Side of New York City, looking for durians, mangosteens and other exotic fruits and working with urban healers on a women's health project. His taxonomic and floristic research is focused on the palm family, one of the most useful and abundant families in the tropics.

This lecture will discuss the importance of the tropical forest for the discovery of modern therapeutic drugs as well as for plants used in traditional healing by indigenous cultures. Dr. Balick will discuss his work with Dr. Rosita Arvigo, a naprapathic physician and resident of Belize, Central America, with whom he has worked since 1987, on the Belize Ethnobotany Project designed to carry out a countrywide inventory of the useful plants of Belize. Over two dozen traditional healers and other local experts in forest utilization have participated in this effort to collect, identify and evaluate thousands of plant specimens gathered from the tropical ecosystem.

Dr. Balick will discuss the methodology of plant exploration in the tropical forest, as well as profile some of the traditional healers with whom he and his colleagues have worked in Central America and Micronesia. The importance of traditional knowledge in addressing contemporary ecological and conservation problems will also be discussed. A brief video, containing interviews with two Belizean traditional healers, will be shown.

Trained at Harvard University, Dr. Balick did research on the native oil palms of South America. Since 1987 he has been working under contract with the National Cancer Institute to screen bulk samples of higher plants as potential anti-AIDS and anti-cancer therapeutics. This work has been based in Belize, where Dr. Balick helped create the Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation to study traditional medicine and ethnobotany of the region. Other recent projects have included work in Brazil, Haiti, Thailand and India. Dr. Balick is an accomplished author of many books, and copies of his latest book on traditional healing, "Rainforest Remedies," will be available for purchase after the lecture.

Dr. Balick holds A.M. and Ph.D degrees from Harvard, and a BS with Honors from the University of Delaware. He is an adjunct professor at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Columbia University, New York University and The City University of New York. Recent awards and honors include Elected Fellow, American Association for The Advancement of Science, 2000, Janaki Ammal Medal for Ethnobotany, Society of Ethnobotanists, 1998 and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company Fellowship, 1999-2001.

Thursday, June 21: Dr. James A. Duke

On Thursday June 21, Dr. James Duke will present "A Tale of Two Ethnobotanical Gardens." In his program, Dr. Duke will review some of his ethnobotanical adventures in Panama, Colombia, Peru and Maine and how they led to the establishment of the Green Farmacy Garden in Maryland and The ReNuPERU Ethnobotany Garden in Peru for teaching and research purposes.

Dr. Duke, who is retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is currently president and CEO of Duke's Herbal Vineyard in Fulton Md., where he maintains his Green Farmacy Garden. In retirement from the USDA, Dr. Duke serves as Senior Science Adviser to Nature's Herbs.

He often acts as CE Teacher on Pharmacy Ecotours in Belize, Costa Rica, Kenya, Peru, South Africa, and Tanzania, pointing out living pharmaceuticals in our North American forests as well as in the rain forest and savannas of the world.

As the author of more than twenty books and many recurring columns and newsletters, Dr. Duke keeps abreast of the news about herbal and nutraceutical products. He has consulted for the agriculture, beverage, cosmetic, ecotour, food, fruit, herbal, nutraceutical, pharmaceutical, spice and wax industries. He retired after 30 distinguished federal years, 26 of which were with the USDA. He holds a Ph.D. degree in botany from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and has an aggregate of 6 years field experience in the neotropics. He was awarded the Distinguished Botanist Award of the Society for Economic Botany in June of 2000.

Wednesday, October 10: Dr. Wade Davis

On Wednesday, October 10, Dr. Wade Davis, Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic Society, will present "The Light at the Edge of the World."

This lecture moves throughout the world, from Borneo to Tibet, from the high Arctic to the Amazon, as Davis shares his experiences as an anthropologist and plant explorer. For three years he traveled in the Andes and the Amazon, living among a dozen or more tribes as he searched for new sources of medicines and studied coca, the most sacred plant of the Inca and the notorious source of cocaine. Collecting some 6,000 botanical specimens, working with traditional healers and shamans, Davis traversed the Andean Cordillera at 14 points and twice descended the Amazon from source to mouth.

In 1982, his research took him to Haiti to study zombies, the living dead of Vodoun folklore, and investigate the first medically documented case. Working among the secret societies, he identified a folk preparation that contained a powerful nerve poison capable of inducing a state of apparent death so profound that victims could actually be misdiagnosed as dead. This study, the basis of his dissertation research at Harvard, led to two books, "Passage of Darkness" and "The Serpent and the Rainbow," the latter an international bestseller that appeared in 12 languages and was later made into a feature film by Universal Studios.

From Haiti, Davis moved to Borneo where he lived among the Penan, a nomadic people of the rain forest whose way of life has within the last 20 years been compromised by the highest rate of deforestation in the tropics. He later chronicled their plight in "Nomads of the Dawn" and "Penan: Voice for the Borneo Rainforest."

More recently his research has taken him to East Africa, the high Arctic, Tibet and the Orinoco Delta in Venezuela. His other books include "One River," "Shadows In the Sun," "The Clouded Leopard" and "Rainforest."

Wade Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany from Harvard University.

Wednesday, December 5: Dr. Mark Plotkin

On Wednesday, December 5, Dr. Mark Plotkin, President, Amazon Conservation Team, will be the final presenter in this series.

Educated at Harvard, Yale and Tufts, and trained as an ethnobotanist, Dr. Plotkin has done extensive research throughout South America. Currently serving as vice president of plant conservation at Conservation International, an environmental organization based in Washington D.C., Dr. Plotkin was formerly director of the plant program at the World Wildlife Fund and research associate at the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. His research has been featured in a PBS Nova documentary and in Life, The Smithsonian and The New York Times.

Series Ticket Information

Series tickets for all four presentations will be sold for $50 for non-members, $40 for Los Angeles Arboretum Foundation members; cost for individual lectures is $15 for non-members, $12 for Los Angeles Arboretum Foundation members, $8 for students with valid identification. For more information, see The Arboretum web site, www.arboretum.org, or call Jill Berry, Education Program Manager, at 626/821-4624.

The Arboretum's focus on ethnobotany as a major theme for education, interpretation, and future development provides members and visitors with a unique way to relate to the diversity of its plantings and to appreciate the rich cultural traditions in the regions of the world where the plants occur naturally.

The Arboretum is located at 301 North Baldwin Ave., Arcadia, Calif. 91007; 626/821-3222; www.arboretum.org. The Arboretum of Los Angeles County is jointly operated by the Los Angeles Arboretum Foundation and the County of Los Angeles.