A picture of me and my favorite sled dog, Betty

Hello! My name is Anna Ergish and I am originally from Raleigh, North Carolina. I graduated from the University of Alabama in 2018 with a degree in business administration. I fell into a career of banking in Nashville, TN after graduation. After realizing I needed a break from my life in Nashville, I decided to jump into the world of seasonal work. I began my journey of seasonal work in the Flat Top Wilderness of Colorado. I worked as a wrangler giving trail rides to guests on a ranch. I immediately became mesmerized by all the unique wildflowers. I was seriously so obsessed, I would study plant identification books and go out on my free time to find new flowers and learn what they were. I decided to continue on my journey of season work and found a job as a dog sled tour guide in Jackson, Wyoming. After an incredible season, I decided to stay in Wyoming and pursue another wrangling job. I could not wait to see similar or new flowers compared to my summer in Colorado. I purchased maybe 5 plant identification books in preparation for the summer flowering season. On the ranch in Wyoming, I truly became the flower girl and everyone would bring me new flowers to figure out what they were. I must have flipped through every page of every book in my free time just trying to understand the plant world around me.

A photo of me in Wyoming on a pack trip. I usually spent my time on the horse staring at the ground for new flowers!

I felt my flower and plant knowledge was purely from these incredible identification books; so, I decided I wanted to look into an educational program that will allow more of a formal education to better understand the plants. I realized that my business degree is useful; however, this is not the direction I hope my career goes into. I would prefer in the future to find some sort of environmental science career, thus I wanted some sort of official science education on a topic that interested me. This lead me to discovering the Ethnobotany program at UAF.

In September 2024, I moved up to Fairbanks, AK to pursue dog mushing as I found a job as another tour guide with an operation just outside of town. I decided to stay in Alaska for the summer and decided this was a great idea to take some classes and learn more about plants.

My mother was a horticulture major in college and had a passion for plants. So she exposed me to lots of gardening plants when I was a kid, however, I did not appreciate this growing up. In 2020, I moved into a house with a yard big enough to create some garden space. I had so much fun trying to grow tomatoes, mint, sage, squash, and basil. The garden was small and at times very unsuccessful. I really did not know much about what I was doing. When I transitioned into seasonal, I lost the ability to have space to grow anything. Now that it is finally summer in Alaska, my current boss has plants some vegetables and flowers around my cabin. We are growing broccoli, kale, rhubarb, sunflowers, and some other flowers that I forget the name.

My plant and growing knowledge is limited but I love planting and playing in the dirt. I am excited to continue to learn more and get involved with others that can teach me all about gardening, especially in the unique climate zone of the interior of Alaska.

(Penstemon strictiformis Rydb.) https://www.npsnm.org/wildflowersnm/Penstemon_strictus.html

My all-time favorite flower is the beardtongue or penstemons, specifically the (Penstemon strictiformis Rydb.). They  just look so unique and I love the vibrant colors they have. I found them in Colorado and Wyoming.

Lately, I have been fascinated by the horsetail (Equisetum arvense) and mares tail (Hippuris vulgaris) grass that is all around me! I had no idea this unique grass ‘flowered’. (In the picture, I believe the horsetail is the larger needled grass but I was really confused the more I tried to decide if these were in fact two different plants). The forest is covered with this grass and it makes the ground look so lush and green! Here are two pictures I took showing what I think is horsetail and mares tail. They surprisingly are two different plants not related although they look so similar.

Coneflowers (Echinacea) https://gardenerspath.com/asteraceae/

My favorite family of flowers is the Asteraceae family or the Sunflower/Daisy/Aster family. This plants attract many insects and bugs creating beautiful pollinator gardens to promote environmental biodiversity. This family of plants helps regrow devastated areas. The flowers are known for their composite flower heads or florets. So basically, the flower is actually composed of many small flowers to make the bigger flower. This is a picture of a common coneflower.

Because dogs are a huge part of my life, I have to show the class my two personal pets. Amy is the all white Alaskan husky mix (a retired sled dog) and Lulu is the white and red dog and she is a Brittany spaniel. I currently take care of 40 sled dogs (not included in any pictures but they are also very cute and amazing working dogs!