Botany 105

Ethnobotany

General Information

• Instructor: Dr. I. Abbott (St. John 607; 956-8073)
• Teaching Assistant: Benton Keali'i Pang (St. John 411; 956-3931)
• Lecture: St. John 11
• Lab: St. John 152

Topics

• Early man in the Pacific
• Tools and early agriculture
• Settlement of Polynesia and Polynesian outliers
• Settling the Hawaiian Islands (Archaeology)
• Plants brought by Polynesians
• Plants and Religion
• Plants I: Vegetatively propagated
• Lab: Taro and propagation of plants
• Plants II. Food plants -- taro
• Plants III. Food plants -- sweet potatoes
• Lab: Taro and sweet potato varieties; folk taxonomy
• Plants IV. Food plants -- breadfruit, bananas
• Plants V. Food plants -- yams, coconut, sugarcane, ti, "famine" foods
• Lab: Ever eat breadfruit? Are yams orange? What about those famine foods?
• Food from the sea: limu and fishing
• "Fish and Poi" Hawaiian diet: was it good for you?
• Lab: A diversity of food plants (land and sea)
• Nets, featherwork and basketry ('upena, hina'i, mahiole)
• 'ie'ie basketry, fishtraps, nets
• Clothing I. Tapa: the fabric
• Clothing II. Tapa: ornamentation and comparisions
• Lab: Tapa
• Cordage: Tying, supporting, carrying things
• Houses
• Lab: Uses and functions of cordage; house building
• House furnishings: Storage, mats, hardwoods
• Canoes
• Lab: House furnishings; canoe woods
• Musical instruments
• Lei and lei making
• Lab: Ever make music with a courd? A pieceof bamboo?
• Medicinal plants
• Endemic plants I. How they got that way
• Endemic plants II. Why they are endangered
• Lab: See the "showcase of evolution," some endemic Hawaiian plants
• Indigenous and introduced plants. Weeds
• A balance between endemin and introduced plants
• Hawaiian conservation values
• Strategies for saving native ecosystems
• Lab: Common Hawaiian plants and medicianl plants
• Review of plants seen in the semester
• Review