House of Roots and Bones: Trees, Plants, and the Southern Landscape Department

XVI. TREES, PLANTS & THE SOUTHERN LANDSCAPE
Land. Plants. People. Power.
HORB PLT 101 — Pine in Southern Black Folk Practice
Examines pine within Southern Black household life, landscape, cleaning traditions, burial environments, building, scent, medicine, and conjure. Students study needles, resin, cones, wood, roots, and the physical characteristics that contributed to folk use. Regional abundance and historical practice are explored alongside botanical identification.
HORB PLT 102 — Cedar, Protection & Household Tradition
Studies cedar and cedar-named Southern trees within household protection, scent, storage, boundaries, building, cleansing, and folk practice. Students examine physical qualities and spiritual associations while addressing botanical naming differences. Historical and regional uses are compared for home, cemetery, and protective work.
HORB PLT 103 — Oak, Strength & Endurance
Examines oak as a Southern tree associated with longevity, strength, shade, land, endurance, and rootedness. Students study bark, leaves, acorns, wood, and the cultural presence of oaks in yards, roadsides, church grounds, and community landscapes. Regional species and appropriate gathering practices are included.
HORB PLT 104 — Willow, Water & Mourning
Examines willow through water, flexibility, grief, burial imagery, landscape, folk medicine, and spiritual symbolism. Students study where willow grows and how its relationship to wet ground contributes to its cultural associations. Historical practice, mourning imagery, and appropriate handling are explored in depth.
HORB PLT 105 — Magnolia in Southern Folk Culture
Studies magnolia as a major feature of the Southern landscape, including its flowers, leaves, scent, evergreen character, yards, cemeteries, and domestic cultivation. Students distinguish actual Black Southern use from romantic plantation symbolism. Documented spiritual and household uses are examined alongside botanical familiarity.
HORB PLT 106 — Pecan, Peach & Orchard Conjure
Examines fruit and nut trees as parts of Black Southern yards, farms, gardens, foodways, inheritance, and conjure. Pecan and peach receive focused attention alongside orchard practices and household use. Fruitfulness, sweetness, nourishment, seed, and seasonal cycles are studied within folk reasoning and historical context.
HORB PLT 107 — Blackberry, Briars & Boundary Plants
Studies briars, thorny growth, blackberry patches, hedges, vines, and other boundary plants. Students examine how snagging, enclosing, and resisting passage inform spiritual reasoning. Blackberry is also considered as food, medicine, seasonal crop, and part of rural Southern life, with practical applications for boundary and protection work.
HORB PLT 108 — Tobacco in Southern Black Folk Practice
Examines tobacco as crop, commodity, labor history, household substance, social practice, and ritual material. Students study Black labor within tobacco economies and avoid separating the plant from the history of slavery, sharecropping, and exploitation. Historical uses are covered alongside safety, toxicity, and cultural context.
HORB PLT 109 — Cotton, Fields & the Material Memory of the South
Examines cotton as plant, commodity, labor material, historical symbol, household material, and object in folk practice. Students study cotton within Black American suffering, labor, resistance, skill, and economic history. Seeds, fiber, bolls, fields, and cloth are explored alongside documented spiritual uses and modern misappropriations.
HORB PLT 110 — Reading the Southern Landscape as a Rootworker
Teaches students to read yards, woods, fields, ditches, creeks, roads, and changing Southern environments as interconnected landscapes. Students identify plants while also observing human use, property boundaries, history, water movement, and land condition. Field exercises develop ecological, historical, and spiritual literacy for responsible materia gathering.