Willow Elliot

Last Updated on June 16, 2026 by Tom Pratum

WILLOW ELLIOTT– 2026 NPSO Fellow

Willow’s early interest in plants began on a farm in Tennessee where she could observe nature alone for hours and started learning the names of plants and trees from her forest ranger father and homesteading mother.

Her high school and college years were spent in southern California where she majored in Environmental Science at Orange Coast College.  In 1973, she moved to Eugene and studied landscaping at Lane Community College.  Later, she also studied Human Physiology/ Pathology and became a Licensed Massage Therapist in Oregon and California.

Over the next three decades, she continued to nurture her skills in non-clinical herbalism and medicinal native plants, incorporating her herbal knowledge into natural skin care and aromatherapy products for her clients. Her fascination with ethnobotany took her on trips from Canada to Mexico where she studied with local Indigenous mentors. Forest walks with a traditional “Curandera” herbalist in Morelos, Mexico are where she gained valuable knowledge about medicinal plants, their uses, and their names in both Spanish and Nahuatl languages. She eventually settled in Arizona’s Sonoran Desert and continued botanical studies at the Sonoran Herbal Institute of Tucson.  A new part-time career teaching ethnobotany and edible and medicinal uses of desert plants began in 2005 at Cochise College Adult Education in Sierra Vista, AZ. There she helped to establish the first herbarium collection in SE Arizona. Eventually she retired from full-time massage therapy and moved to Portland, Oregon in 2007. Willow decided a change of pace was needed and joined her family’s commercial property management business.  She remained a vital member of the business for 14 years, until she retired in 2021 and became fully committed to the Portland Chapter of the Native Plant Society of Oregon.

Willow first encountered NPSO when a Portland Chapter program called “Endemic Rare Plants of Columbia River Islands” caught her attention. The speaker was NPSO member Russ Jolley, champion of the Columbia River. Inspired by the presentation, Willow joined the Portland Chapter in 2015. Since joining NPSO, Willow has been a hike leader in all regions and elevations of the Portland Chapter membership area in Oregon and SW Washington. During this time, she expanded her knowledge of native plants and their habitats. 

Willow’s first official role was as Portland Program Chair in 2018, bringing in new presenters to explore popular topics and significantly increasing the number of in-person attendees at each meeting. The following year she took on the Presidential leadership of the Chapter.  In all positions, Willow has shown her style of leadership to be inclusive, innovative, and collaborative, reaching out to volunteers to help her accomplish many ambitious goals. One example of this inclusion and collaboration, was initiating the first virtual monthly programs during the pandemic in 2020. Having virtual meetings allowed the chapter to connect all Portland Chapter members, including those from two adopted NPSO Chapters: Mid-Columbia in the Gorge and Filipendula on the Northwest coast. Benefitting both speakers and audience, as a result monthly virtual programming became the norm.

Willow oversaw the establishment of the first website created for the Portland Chapter. She opened more social media platforms to reach more young people and spread awareness to people who otherwise were not familiar with NPSO. The incentive to boost leadership and widen the responsibilities led Willow and her loyal board to update the Chapter Bylaws. The 2023 Revised Chapter Bylaws increased board positions from 5 to 13 and brought the Chapter into the 21st Century. She continues to find creative ways to support the NPSO-PDX Board as Past President

Over the years as a Portland Chapter member and Board member, Willow has fostered several other community partnerships and projects: She surveyed and created an updated plant list for native plants on Elk Rock Island in the Willamette River for N. Clackamas Parks & Recreation District over a 2-year period (2019 -20) and followed up by organizing invasive plant removal and restoration plantings for five years (2018 – 23). Willow organized annual “No Ivy Day” invasive plant removal events with City of Portland Parks & Recreation parks in Clackamas County (beginning 2022 – ongoing). During 2023-24, she organized volunteers for bi-monthly weed pulls with Chapter members at Leach Botanical Garden to prepare for restoration of the “The Back Five”, their newly acquired five-acre addition.

Willow used her wide range of connections to organize open houses and recruited volunteers for the Portland State University Herbarium and Rae Selling Berry Seed Bank to preserve native plant collections.  Willow has supported the work of Citizens Rare Plant Watch, monitoring rare plant plots along with other NPSO State Board members. She distributed native plant seedlings raised in the PSU Research Greenhouse for restoration projects. (Began 2021 – ongoing).  

Willow partnered with land managers of the Great Camas Patch in Carson, Washington to remove Scotch Broom for several years until Friends of the Columbia River Gorge Land Trust purchased the land in 2022. With the Oregon Dept. of Transportation, she established the NPSO “Adopt a Highway” designation in 2023 to protect two named waysides totaling seven acres on Interstate 84 near Mosier. She has monitored and made sure that the plant lists, which include many endemic species such as the beautiful and rare Barrett’s Penstemon (P. barrettiae) for the Russ Jolley and Jerry Igo Waysides, are now updated and maintained by NPSO members.

Serving at the NPSO State level during 2023 – 24, Willow became the State Membership Chair for eighteen months. She helped to integrate an online member database system, which included many new and convenient functions for members including payment of membership dues and making useful changes to a profile along with overall better tracking of the growing membership. This work included collaborating with Chapter Presidents around the state and the State Membership Committee.

During her tenure, Willow helped plan two statewide NPSO Annual Meetings hosted by the Portland Chapter, one in 2018 (Prineville) and the most recent, 2025 (Hood River/Columbia Gorge). As the immediate Past President, she guided the Portland Chapter’s 2025 Annual Meeting planners to initiate and premier an online payment by credit card for both the conference and its merchandise, a first for the state. An easier online hike selection system was also premiered and praised. Based on these experiences she is currently assisting the Willamette Valley Chapter as they plan for their Annual Meeting (Salem) in 2026.

Willow also won the 2023 Native Plant Appreciation Week poster contest with her photo of Western Anemone (Anemone occidentalis) in bloom on Mt. Hood.

Willow Elliott wishes to thank the bouquet of volunteers she has worked with over the past decade who have helped her inspire the members and increase their numbers from 230 to well over 400. She is especially thankful for four Board members, Mary Hayden, Frank and Nancy Howarth, and Lecia Schall who remained focused and devoted throughout the years and kept the Portland Chapter vital under her leadership.

-Lecia Schall, Portland Chapter, with contributions from Mary Hayden