Max Licher1

Native Plant Walkabout  SOLD OUT!!!

Rain or Shine

Note:  Maximum of 15 attendees able to walk on uneven ground

The primary focus will be the identification of our native plants. I’ll will show what things to look for, and give a greater understanding of our flora in the context of our bioregion. I will touch on some of the traditional uses, and share some of our experiences with distilling a few of these plants for essential oils (I’ll have a several samples of these with me from some of the plants that we will see). I’ll be open to any botanical question, and will do my best to share either my knowledge or my ignorance, if that is warranted. We’ll look at the little things as much as the big ones, and nothing is off limits. I can talk about the importance of collecting and cataloging to our knowledge of taxonomy and ecology, and demonstrate how to make a collection, if there is interest.

Max Licher is an architect with Design Group Architects and has been a resident of Sedona for 36 years. He has been involved as a community planning volunteer, working as an organizer of the original Sedona Forums, and most recently as a participant in the Wastewater Treatment and Schnebly Hill Community Focus Area City Planning efforts. He has had a lifelong interest in nature and has focused this interest primarily in the area of native plants. After early training with Jean Searle and Norm Herkenham, he has gone on to document the native and naturalized flora of Sedona and Oak Creek Canyon (approx. 1200 species) and has made this work available on the SEINET website. He is also helping coordinate the Plant Atlas Project of Arizona (PAPAZ), which is training amateur botanists in collecting techniques and organizing documentation efforts in northern Arizona. He is an assistant curator at the Deaver Herbarium at NAU, and has recently co-authored with Glenn Rink a new treatment for the genus Carex (sedges) as part of the ongoing Arizona Flora revision. In addition, he and his wife Clare have an interest in plant medicines, and distill essential oils from a number of our local native species. He received the Herkenham Award in 2011.