For more than four decades, Michael J. Balick, Vice President for Botanical Science at the New York Botanical Garden, has studied the relationships between plants and people — the field known as ethnobotany — in the Amazon Valley, Central and South America, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and most recently in Micronesia and Melanesia. In this Tuesday, April 14 lecture beginning at 6 pm he will discuss the relevance of working with indigenous cultures to document their knowledge of medicinal plants and evaluate their potential for broader applications. He will also highlight some of the medicinal plants used by non-Western cultures, such as ashwagandha and maca, which are becoming available and popular in the West and are discussed in his most recent book, Rodale’s 21st Century Herbal: A Practical Guide for Healthy Living Using Nature’s Most Powerful Plants.
This free Harvard Museum on Natural History lecture and book signing will be held at the Geological Lecture Hall, 24 Oxford Street. Free parking is available at the 52 Oxford Street Garage.
