Do you want to deepen your relationship with plants through taste, touch, and discovery?
This interactive workshop invites you to embark on a gastronomic exploration of the plant world, cultivating an embodied understanding of plant structures and the diversity of major food plant families. Together, we’ll explore the world’s most common food plants—did you know that over 60% of global food calories come from just three species?—and learn to recognize their distinctive forms, textures, and patterns through guided observation and tasting.
Participants will engage directly with a rich array of 25+ types of plant materials—fruits, seeds, stems, and leaves—and uncover how their anatomy connects to flavor, ecology, and everyday life. By the end of the session, you’ll not only know more about the plants you eat, but also feel more connected to the living systems that sustain us.
About Dr. Renee Richer:
Dr. Richer is a terrestrial ecologist working in semi- to hyper-arid environments in Africa and Asia for more than 30 years. She received her BA in biology from the University of Chicago and her PhD in biology from Harvard University in 2004. She joined Duke Kunshan University in 2021. Her work focuses on the intersection of biological processes, sustainable development and human health in regards to photosynthesizing organisms (plants and cyanobacteria). For the last decade she has been working to elucidate routes of human exposure to naturally produced bioactive compounds in desert environments and their physiological effects. She has co-authored two guides to the flora of Qatar including Hidden Beauty (Akkadia Press 2022). Hidden Beauty, a photographic guide to the plants of Qatar, summarizes all records of plants in Qatar, adds an additional 12 species records and clarifies previous plant mis-identifications. She has also co-edited a book on developing university courses for environment, development and sustainability studies in the former Soviet Republics and Soviet bloc countries (Central European University Press). She served as guest editor for a Journal of Arid Environments special issue, Toxins in Desert Environments, and has published numerous peer-reviewed papers. She is a full member of Sigma Xi and Senior Ecologist of the Ecological Society of America, where she serves as Chair of the Applied Ecology section.