With Dracula lafleurii in the field at Reserva Los Cedros, Ecuador. 2011.

Tobias Policha, PhD has been studying plants for 20 years, including how to use them, how to grow them, where they grow in the world, and the interactions that they have with other organisms. 
These pursuits have led him from the garden to the wilderness, and from his original home on the Canadian prairies to the rugged mountains of South America, where he completed a doctoral dissertation on the pollination ecology of neotropical orchids in 2014. 
He has published in both the popular and scientific press and authored a field guide to the plants of the Andean cloud forest. 
Tobias co-founded the permaculture education collective Cascadia Food Not Lawns in 1999, and has taught botany and ecology for a number of institutions including the University of Oregon and Portland State University. 
He is a member of several local natural history organizations, and is on the Citizen Planning Committee for the Whilamut Natural Area. (Last updated March 2016)