Microcosms: Sharing the Inner Lives of Plants
a conversation with Steven F. White and Jill Pflugheber
Tuesday, October 22, 2024
12:00 - 1:00 pm Central US Time
Join us for this free online program sponsored by The Plant Initiative with Steven F. White & Jill Pflugheber about art, science, activism & the stewardship of sacred plants
What makes certain plants more culturally-significant than others?
What can we learn about plants and ourselves in a vegetal microscopic world suddenly made visible?
Join plant ally Steven F. White and Microscopy Specialist Jill Pflugheber in a conversation about the enigmatic and profoundly-revealing images from the Microcosms Project with moderator Plant Initiative board member Keith Williams.
You will learn about the website Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas that Jill and Steven have created as a means of paying tribute to nearly 50 different plant species as well as to the Amerindian wisdom keepers who have preserved traditional knowledge about them, including the plant narratives that constitute shamanic tales. The site presents confocal images and additional information about Cacao, Ceiba, Coca, Corn, Sweetgrass and Tobacco, as well as the powerful psychoactive plants Huanduj, Ololiuhqui, Palqui, Peyote, San Pedro, Toloache, Virola, Yagé, and Yopo, among many others.
Do the images of sacred plants as digital art make the known suddenly, and perhaps shockingly, unfamiliar? Can the agentic beings gathered in the Microcosms electronic herbarium jolt us into a necessary space of psychological transformation, reinforcing the need to take decisive action to heal the ecosystems that support these plants and the other species that are their co-inhabitants? Can this century’s technology become a means to facilitate paying homage to the plant-teachers that are the basis of Amerindian spirituality, food and medicine?
The creators of Microcosms will discuss how each stoma, each trichome, each patterned fragment of xylem and vascular tissue, as well as each grain of pollen in these vital portraits may not only be a way into previously unseen vegetal realms, but also a potential way out of our collective ecological crisis.
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About the image:
Turbina corymbosa was scanned at St. Lawrence University's Microscopy and Imagery Center, from Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas (https://www.microcosmssacredplants.org/), used with the permission of Jill Pflugheber and Steven F. White, © 2024.
About Steven F. White and Jill Pflugheber
About Steven F. White
Steven F. White is co-creator of Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas, a project at the juncture of art, science and technology that emphasizes traditional ecological knowledge and biocultural heritage. He is co-editor (with Luis Eduardo Luna) of Ayahuasca Reader: Encounters with the Amazon’s Sacred Vine (Synergetic Press, 2nd edition 2016).
His essay on Ceiba pentandra appeared in The Mind of Plants: Narratives of Vegetal Intelligence (2021). He also did a bilingual ecocritical edition of Seven Trees Against the Dying Light by Nicaraguan poet Pablo Antonio Cuadra for Northwestern University Press.
At St. Lawrence University, White was a founder of the Caribbean and Latin American Studies program and, for 34 years, taught Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese language classes as well as Latin American literature and film.
He currently serves on the Editorial Board of Plant Perspectives.
About Jill Pflugheber
Microscopy Specialist Jill Pflugheber worked for 17 years in biomedical research at Harvard, University of Kentucky, and University of Texas SW Medical Center, where she was able to contribute to multiple publications in academic journals.
At St. Lawrence University, from 2004-2023, she taught courses in electron microscopy, confocal microscopy, and research methods in cell biology.
She is co-founder of Microcosms: A Homage to Sacred Plants of the Americas and is currently conducting research in virology at the University of Kentucky.
The Seed Keeper - A conversation with author Diane Wilson
Wednesday, November 20, 2024
12:00 - 1:00 pm Central US Time
Join us for this free online conversation with Dakota author Diane Wilson about her novel The Seed Keeper and the cultural importance of plants.
Why are seeds so culturally important?
Join Dakota author Diane Wilson in a conversation about her book The Seed Keeper, a haunting novel spanning several generations that follows a Dakota family’s struggle to preserve their way of life, and their sacrifices to protect what matters most. The event will be moderated by Plant Initiative executive director Paul Moss.
Winner of the 2022 Minnesota Book Award in Fiction
A BuzzFeed Best Book of Spring
A Book Riot Best Book of the Year
A Bon Appetit Best Summer Read
A Ms. Magazine Best Book of the Year
“Compelling […] The Seed Keeper invokes the strength that women, land, and plants have shared with one another through the generations.” - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Join us for this interactive program!
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About the book (see also the book's Milkweed Editions web site)
Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakota people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn’t return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato—where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they’ve inherited.
On a winter’s day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband’s farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron—women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.
Weaving together the voices of four indelible women, The Seed Keeper is a beautifully told story of reawakening, of remembering our original relationship to the seeds and, through them, to our ancestors.
Discount on the book from the publisher! If you'd like to order the book directly from Milkweed Editions, here is a coupon code that you can use when ordering until December 1, 2024 for a 20% discount: PLANT20
About Diane Wilson
Diane Wilson is a Dakota author, educator, and bog steward, who has published five award-winning books as well as numerous essays.
Her novel, The Seed Keeper, received the 2022 Minnesota Book Award for Fiction. Wilson’s memoir, Spirit Car: Journey to a Dakota Past, won a 2006 Minnesota Book Award and was selected for the 2012 One Minneapolis One Read program. Her nonfiction book, Beloved Child: A Dakota Way of Life, received the Barbara Sudler Award from History Colorado. Wilson’s middle-grade biography, Ella Cara Deloria: Dakota Language Protector, was an Honor selection for the 2022 American Indian Youth Literature Award. She is a co-author of a picture book—Where We Come From—that was honored with the Carter G. Woodson Award.
Her essays have been featured in many publications, including We Are Meant to Rise; Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations; and A Good Time for the Truth. She has received numerous grants, including a 2013 Bush Fellowship and the 2018 AARP/Pollen 50 Over 50 Community Leadership award.
Wilson is the former Executive Director for Dream of Wild Health, an Indigenous non-profit farm, and the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a national coalition of tribes and organizations working to create sovereign food systems for Native people. She is an enrolled member of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Wilson is a gardener living on 10 acres north of the Twin Cities.
Visit Diane Wilson's web site here.
September 2024 Monthly e-mail newsletter
Each month, The Plant Initiative sends out an e-mail newsletter to provide timely information and resources about improving the plant-human connection as well as to keep you up to date on our work.
Here's the link to the September 2024 e-newsletter which was sent on September 15, 2024.
To subscribe to the e-newsletter, just visit our home page and enter your e-mail address on the form on that page. If you have a suggestion for a resource, event, or other item that may be of interest to subscribers, please consider sharing it with us at info@plantinitiative.org.
Thank you
the Plant Initiative's 2023 annual report
Check out The Plant Initiative's 2023 annual report to learn more about our work in the past year!
2023 was the third full year of The Plant Initiative and we experienced a lot of growth in our programing this year as is described in this report. This included online events, grants, our monthly e-mail newsletter, podcasts, a report, social media, and collaboration with Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene.
A big thanks to Plant Initiative board member Mya Hummel for donating the design for the report and to Betsey Crawford of The Soul of the Earth for allowing us to include her beautiful photos of flowers. Also, thanks to Vegan Printer for their generous discount on the printed version of the report.
As an all-volunteer organization with no paid staff, we have done a lot with a modest budget. Thank you for all of the support and interest you have shown over the past year!
Learn more about our work by reading or downloading the report here or by clicking on the report cover or the button below.
The Plant Initiative Podcast - New Episode
The Plant Initiative is posting podcast episodes on our YouTube channel.
Our fourth episode, recorded on March 29, 2024, features a wonderful conversation with Grant Wilson, Executive Director of the Earth Law Center and Plant Initiative board member Sue Fager about the Rights of Nature.
New online plant networking site!
Join the new Plant Networking site on Hylo!
This new free Hylo networking tool is a special interactive web site set up for those interested in the human-plant connection supported by The Plant Initiative and Networking with Plants in the Anthropocene. It's a space for sharing active research, collaborations, art, and any forms of humans and plant relations. Use this page to collaborate, share, and to connect with others interested in thoughtful ways of relating to plants.
Visitors to The Plant Initiative's web site are especially invited to join this online community!
13 grants awarded by the Plant Initiative in 2023!
We are pleased to let you know that 13 grants were recently awarded by The Plant Initiative!
These grants totaling $6,500 were provided in October 2023 to organizations working to increase respect for plants, encourage ethical behavior toward plants, and/or to support development of an effective movement toward these goals.
Grants of $500 each were provided to:
Center for Biological Diversity (Tucson, AZ) to support the Center's efforts to protect Florida’s endangered ghost orchids, which are being rapidly wiped out due to habitat loss, poaching, and a changing climate, with the grant supporting litigation and advocacy for this plant and the swamp ecosystems where it lives.
Center for Democratic and Environmental Rights (Spokane, WA) to support the Center’s work with Tribal Bands in Minnesota to protect the Rights of Nature, including the rights of manoomin (wild rice), by contracting with an Ojibwe attorney who will conduct legal research and legislative drafting involving the White Earth Band and other Tribal Bands.
Earth Law Center (Durango, CO) to create a model law concerning the rights of culturally significant plant species, which would be uploaded to the Earth Law Portal hub, including draft model text that can serve as a starting point for any community, NGO, or government looking to recognize the rights of plant species.
Fungi Foundation (Brooklyn, NY) to facilitate the Foundation’s participation in the 2023 More Than Human Rights (MOTH) Conference in Chile through covering essential travel and accommodation expenses, which will help to foster more profound integration of fungal conservation into the broader Rights of Nature movement, as well as to amplify awareness and advocacy for the symbiotic relationship between fungi and plants thereby strengthening the nexus between fungi and plant advocacy.
Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (San Francisco, CA) to support GARN's work to protect the Amazonia Shihuahuaco tree in Peru, which faces imminent extinction, with GARN’s International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature raising the alert for violation of the rights of this tree and calling for the Peruvian government to update the CITES list so that its timber extraction can be regulated or prohibited.
The Kerulos Center for Nonviolence (Jacksonville, OR) to promote respect for plants through developing a four-part webinar tentatively entitled Plant Voices: Guides to Understanding Nonviolent Living which would be scheduled for 2024, as well as creating a short educational video illustrating how vegans can put respect for plant agency and sovereignty into practice in everyday living and activism.
The Land Institute (Salina, KS) to support the Institute's foundational work in perennial grain crop research and education, which furthers the transition to diverse, polyculture cropping systems that hold the potential to bring grain crop agriculture to a level of ecological function on par with native grasslands and other natural ecosystems, sustaining human and plant needs within an ecospheric context.
Native Seeds/SEARCH (Tucson, AZ) to support the distribution of free packets of rare and endangered native crop seed varieties to Indigenous individuals and families living in or belonging to tribes from the US Southwest Region and/or northwest Mexico through the Native American Seed Request Program, which helps to conserve and promote the arid-adapted crop diversity of the Southwest in support of sustainable farming and food security.
Old-Growth Forest Network (Easton, MD) to help support the creation of a Choices in Forest Management guide, which will educate forest owners on the different forest management practices they can prescribe to their woodlands, including describing management options that quality a forest for recognition in the Old-Growth Forest Network, with the grant helping to support costs of researching, designing, editing and printing the guide.
Re:wild (Austin, TX) to protect Jamaica’s critically endangered Grey Birch of which there are believed to be fewer than 50 individuals left, with the grant helping to support costs associated with mapping and recording the locations of the trees, contributing to the ultimate goal of developing a species conservation action plan with local stakeholders.
Seacology (Berkeley, CA) in support of Seacology's seagrass project on Sucia Island in Washington State, which aims to replant .12 acres of native eelgrass while including Indigenous youth in eelgrass education and long-term restoration, with the funds helping to cover the expense of collecting seeds and storing them over the winter.
WildEarth Guardians (Santa Fe, NM) in support of WildEarth Guardians' Forest Fungi campaign that is working to bring forward the importance of mycorrhizae in forest resiliency, and ensure that the US Forest Service adopts policies and practices that restore and protect the mutualistic associations of fungal species in forest ecosystems.
The WILD Foundation (Boulder, CO) to help provide permaculture planning and implementation support to the 15 communities living within the Yawanawa Indigenous territory in the state of Acre, Brazil, with the grant specifically covering the cost of a permaculture expert and plan with one of the communities, which can lead to increased protection of the rainforest as Yawanawa communities actively participate in traditional, sustainable cultivation practices.
With your support, The Plant Initiative plans to continue to provide grants in 2024 to organizations working on behalf of plants!
The plant initiative is a friend of the journal
The Plant initiative is pleased to be included as a Friend of the Journal by The Ecological Citizen, a peer-reviewed free-access online journal that is working for an ecological civilization. Issues are published twice a year and are full of articles promoting respectful relationship with all of Earth's diverse beings.