The Potomac Valley Audubon Society will sponsor a Natural History Workshop on medicinal plants the morning of Saturday, Nov. 14.

The workshop will be held from 10:00 a.m. to noon at the West Virginia University Health Sciences Center, 2500 Foundation Way, Martinsburg. It will be held in the Center’s Mountaineer Room.

The workshop will be led by an expert in the field: Dr. Wendell Combest, Professor of Pharmacology at Shenandoah University. He will explore past and current medicinal uses of plants and discuss their potential for the future.

The workshop is open to anyone with an interest but space will be limited and pre-registration is required. Register on the PVAS website at www.potomacaudubon.org.

There will also be a fee of $10 for PVAS members and $15 for nonmembers.

In addition to teaching at Shenandoah University, Dr. Combest is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the National Center of Natural Products Research at the University of Mississippi and Adjunct Professor in Plant Biology at the University of Vermont.

He received his Ph.D in pharmacology at the University of Arizona School of Medicine. His research interests are in Complementary/Alternative Medicine with specialties in the safety and efficacy of medicinal plants and the therapeutic benefits of gardens. He is also a certified Master Gardener.

Since 1999 he has maintained a medicinal plant garden at the Shenandoah University campus in Winchester. The garden features more than 200 species of medicinal and culinary plants many of which are on the United Plant Savers endangered species list. Plants from the garden are used in several ongoing faculty and student research projects and for herbal compounding of lotions, salves, and other preparations.

This event is one of a series of Natural History Workshops on different natural history topics the Society is sponsoring this year.

These Workshops are intended for people who are interested in learning about particular natural history topics in considerable depth but cannot commit to pursue the much more comprehensive natural history education available through PVAS’s Potomac Valley Master Naturalist Program, which can take a year or more to complete.

For more information contact contact Debbie Maiorano at 540-535-5145 or debbiemm58@aol.com.