A message from Kathleen Harrison, ethnobotany educator and program director for Botanical Dimensions, since it was founded in 1985 —

Hello friends and newcomers. As of late 2025, some changes are afoot for Botanical Dimensions. The Ethnobotany Library is not yet publicly accessible, but it is housed safely and, after a long hiatus, elements of it will soon be shared in new ways. Stay tuned.

The Mazatec Project in Mexico continues to benefit the descendants of the late curandero Don Rutilio Andrade, and others. Donations help to keep the lineages connected across their indigenous diaspora. We have collected much more video footage and material for our film-in-progress, about our Mazatec work over the past thirty years. We plan to complete this as a full film, when time and fundraising allow. Watch the award-winning, 12-minute version of Almost Visible here, on the website of the film’s director, Klea McKenna:

https://www.kleamckenna.com/films

 

Generous allies are helping us to make accessible the output of the Digital Herbarium Project, which Kat launched and ran from 2010-2014. Over those years, thousands of vulnerable herbarium specimens from the Herbario Amazonense in Iquitos, Peru, were scanned and identified.  These images and a vast amount of data are being put into a new form, for future access and research.

From 2015-2023, we housed a public education center, which offered our Ethnobotany Library for research, and a wide range of classes and public events. It was in Sonoma County in Northern California, and many of you came there to meet Kat and to absorb knowledge. Sadly, the burden of the pandemic and a series of wild fire seasons caused us to pull back.  The scholarship continues, though. The stories are being written and recordings gathered, from Kat’s four decades of devotion to medicinal and psychedelic plants and fungi, as well as to fieldwork, conservation, and education.

In recent years, requests for Kathleen Harrison to speak at international conferences has increased, as people realize that this kind of plant awareness is precious. The appreciation for traditional botanical and cultural knowledge, as well as our evolving innovations, is growing, as it must. Kat also guest-teaches at both the University of California and at regional learning centers.

Our Hawaii Project is Botanical Dimensions’ Ethnobotanical Forest-Garden, cultivated since 1977, and a private BD project since 1985. It is not open to public visits at this time. We and the land are actively looking for a new owner-steward — an institution, group or exceptional individual who have the financial resources, knowledge, assistance, and stamina to purchase the land and devote themselves to another generation of restoration and stewardship of forest, land, and specimen plants. Thirteen acres of possibilities and challenges await, in upland South Kona, on the Big Island of Hawaii. We will provide much more information to serious, viable inquiries. Contact us here: info at botanicaldimensions.org

BD carries on fundraising under the wing of fiscal sponsor Panax.earth, where you may make a welcome donation to our ongoing Mazatec program in Mexico, or to any of our projects.

If you appreciate our work, past and present, please donate to BD here: 

PANAX.earth

 

 

 

 

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