Topic: Medicinal Botany: Plants that Heal

Catalog description

Medicinal botany explores the use of various plants in treating human afflictions and disease throughout history. We will look at some of the ways different cultures co-opt plants for traditional healing and evaluate their efficacy based on scientific literature and assays. The course will teach you how to recognize major medicinal plants in the field, prepare herbal medicines, conduct assays to assess their phytochemical properties, as well as perform plant DNA barcoding to verify the botanical identity of herbs sold in New York City. Poisonous plants, hallucinogenic plants and remedial plants for various ailments will be discussed. We will visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and hear a guest lecture from an herbalist.