Esparto grass (Stipa tenacissima) is a plant endemic to the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa that is essential to the landscape of south-eastern Spain and north-western Africa. In addition to its environmental importance, it forms part of the identity of the human communities that have inhabited and continue to inhabit this territory, in a history of millennia of coexistence, forged in countless uses that have given rise to an enormous body of knowledge, referred to by Swiss researcher Bignia Kuoni as the culture of esparto, declared a representative manifestation of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity in 2019. We will take a chronological and cross-cutting look at the cultural importance of this grass in the ethnobotany of the western Mediterranean, from its origins to the present day.

Presented by: José Fajardo Rodríguez, Professor of the Nature Classroom at the Universidad Popular de Albacete.

Date: Thursday, 27 November at 11:00 a.m.

Location: IVIA conference room

Carretera CV-315, km 10.7 - Moncada, Valencia

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