Ethnobotanist's Corner
Hello! My name is Rick Hederstrom. I worked as Associate Director / Ethnobotanist at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort from January 2011 until August 2014, at which time I began life as a monk. Prior to working at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort, I majored in Ethnobotany at Connecticut College (one of only a couple universities at the time to offer a major specifically in that field), and had spent time studying the uses of plants among Native Americans as well as the Quechua and Matsigenka peoples of Peru; managing the glasshouse at Connecticut College; identifying and mapping invasive species at The Holden Arboretum; doing horticultural maintenance at Cleveland Botanical Garden; collecting, recording, and analyzing remembered plant remedies with the Ethnomedica Project at Kew Royal Botanic Gardens; and conducting plant inventories, mapping plants, entering data into BG-Base, and creating plant labels in the Plant Records department at The Holden Arboretum.