October 2024 Program

“Invasives as a Resource”

With George Hedgepeth, Naturalist, Educator, and Cultural Historian
Wednesday, October 23, 6:30pm

Join George Hedgepeth in a discussion about some of Michigan’s most pernicious invasive plants and ways to turn them into something useful. Food, medicine, dyes, and other utilitarian features of a rogues gallery of obnoxious trees, shrubs, and herbs will be explored. Japanese knotweed, black locust, garlic mustard, purple loosestrife, and others will be examined.

George Hedgepeth was born and raised in Michigan but has many fond memories of picking poke salad and yellow root with his older relatives in Alabama. He became interested in ethnobotany while in college and has been studying people’s traditional interactions with plants seriously for 33 years. He has taught plant and traditional skills in more than a dozen states. He learns something every time he goes into the woods.

This is an in-person event at Portage District Library, 300 Library Lane, Portage, MI. View Map
The PDL facility has free parking and is wheelchair accessible. Come early to enjoy some social time, information tables and snacks, beginning at 6:00 pm; program begins at 6:30 pm 
This program will be recorded and posted on our YouTube channel in the event you are unable to attend in person.