Hi, my name is Owen (he/him). I live in Anchorage, Alaska. I work for UAA, which, for those of you who aren’t from Alaska, is part of the University of Alaska system along with UAF. My position is basically a data analyst for Enrollment Services. One of the best parts of my job is the tuition waiver benefit, which allows me to take courses from all three Alaska universities! I am taking this class as part of the OEC in Ethnobotany, but I am also just very interested in learning more about plants and wild Alaska flora. It is hard to name a favorite plant, so I’m going to go with the iconic fireweed (Chamerion angustifolium (L.) Holub). While I’ve always appreciated it for its beautiful flowers, I have only recently become familiar with it as an edible plant. The fireweed isn’t currently in bloom right now, but here is a photo of one opportunistically growing through a rock wall.
Hi! My name is Sarah Duot-Kelley and I’m going to be a sophomore at UAF this upcoming school year. I’m a Wildlife Biology major, but I’m heading towards the veterinary medicine path where I plan to be an exotic or wildlife vet. I’m from Anchorage, Alaska and I’ll be doing this class from there! This summer I am working at Wildscoops and volunteering with the Alaska Zoo. I grew up with a gorgeous garden that my mom maintains, but I love helping her. She grows peony’s, lilies, delphinium’s, and so many other flowers. I have two geckos named Freckle (crested gecko) and Nemo (leopard gecko) and I have a yellow lab named Lilly! I also enjoy taking care of house plants. Last summer I built my crested gecko, Freckle, a bioactive terrarium with some pothos, snake plants, and monsteras.
Some of my favorite flowers are hyacinths, lilacs, lilies, and lily of the valley. I like taking lilacs and making them into sugar cookies or putting them in sugar. My favorite tree is weeping willows. I’ve always thought they look so peaceful and pretty.
My name is Dana Miller and I was raised here in Alaska exploring the woods and tundra! I originally moved her when I was about 5 years old and kind of jumped around the state until I landed in Fairbanks for college. I have always had a slight interest in plants, my journey started right in the middle of my paternal grandmother’s garden in the HOT state of Texas. She gave me a love for plants and I definitely brought that love with me when my family moved up to Alaska. I am currently a wildlife biology major, and even though I choose to take this class to complete a requirement, I am very excited to see how much I can learn about the plants here! When it comes to Alaska flora I don’t think there isn’t a plant I don’t find interesting, expect maybe cattails… I currently work at Denali National Park, so I am hoping that by taking this class I will be able to learn more to help educate out of state visitors about the amazing plant life we have here in Alaska! My favorite plant that is found in Alaska is definitely the fireweed. When we moved to Alaska my maternal grandmother was already living here and she had a deep love for fireweed and the stories or legends that went along with them. She told my sister and I those stories and we both also love the plant now. I decided to use a photo I have of probably some of the most important beings in my life enjoying the fireweed, my dogs!
Hello dear friends, my name is Adelys and I live in Orlando, Florida. I am in the process of finishing my OEC in Ethnobotany, and this class was one of the requirements. I am excited to get to know all of you and the plants in your environment.I am a stay at home mom and an amateur herbalist, I enjoy hiking and forage occasionally. Recently i did a death doula course and am curious as to how ethnobotany and that path intersect. Plants have been apart of my life since a very young age, and something I’ve always struggled with is remembering the scientific terms and hope this course can help me grasp a better understanding of the terminology associated with plants, and their taxonomy. One of my favorite plants to connect with is the Cameilla tree, in the Theaceae family. It’s a small tree almost shrub like and it produces these beautiful flowers that almost look like roses. My local botanical garden, mead gardens has an orchard full of different varieties. I hope you enjoy this picture of a unique one.
I’m excited to be in this class and to meet all of you! I’m a long-time plant lover and bird lover, and since it’s been a long time since I’ve taken plant taxonomy as part of my wildlife degree (finished in 1981… so a long time!), I took UAF Plant Systematics last semester. That was a really good class- I highly recommend it. That class was good for re-awakening my systematics and plant keying. For all these years, I’ve basically learned the natural history of my areas, not IDing plants with keys but just by recognition. I really want to up my game and be able to recognize families and ID plants by keys, etc. Last spring we didn’t have blooming flowers here in Alaska, so I’m so excited to explore all the plants as they come into bloom and learn parts, etc.
I’m an oldster at 65 and my path has been looping and branching… and sometimes I’ve wandered absolutely lost as to where to go with my career. I’m trying to gain acceptance that I need to try to do meaningful things and make my own path. I have 4 grown sons, two of which have attended UAF. Knowing I wanted to have kids, I decided to get a teaching certificate in Biology. I haven’t actually taught, moving around so much with my then husband’s job as a state park ranger, moving up. I actually worked for AK State Parks in the 80s with teens at the Twin Bears Camp with a residential program with kids for all over Alaska, building trails and doing other park work (ACC program). This is partly what got me interested in teaching. Later, in 2011, I decided to get my degree and license in cousneling, which I have now. I worked in this for 8 years and got tired of telehealth during the pandemic and quit. I’m now trying to figure out what to do again!
My youngest got his BS and MS at UAF in geophysics and is now at Cornell for his PhD, but is actually in Fairbanks for the summer working remotely. Though he often looks at satellite data, he loves the small stuff like moss and slime molds. He’s got a girlfriend who is getting a masters in Botany (I think). I have so many favorite plants but my son who is in Fairbanks now just took these photos…one of my favorite plants, such a delight to find- the Sundew. When my kids were growing up we called them sun dudes. I believe this one is Drosera rotundifolia.
Photos by Rowan Eagle Biessel
my macro…
my relic press from the 80s…. happy to reawaken. The small one is a small one I got to use with kids.
Hello, my name is Dorene Asay, I live just north of Fairbanks. I have been gathering plants for medicine and food since I was a child. I grew up in Anchorage and have lived in many places throughout Southcentral Alaska, Southeast Alaska and now in the Interior. I have found that learning the plants around me has grounded me, as I moved from place to place. I love to share the knowledge I have about plants and I am always eager to learn more. I do not have a firm understanding of the technical aspects of botany and I am excited to learn more about that throughout this course.
My favorite plant is Arnica angustifolia ssp. angustifolia Vahl. Arnica is usually the first flowering plant I harvest in the spring. It’s yellow flowers bring joy and signify the long days of sunshine and warms ahead.
Hi colleagues! Although I spend some time here in my late teens and early twenties, I just moved to Alaska in January for a job at UA Southeast in Juneau. The plants are one of the things I love about it here– both the ones that remind me of where I grew up in Oregon and Washington, and the ones which are new. I am slowly going to take the Ethnobotany certificate, which this course is part of, and I thought it would be fun this first summer to spend time poking around flowers, while waiting for the berries to ripen! I have very little formal knowledge in botany or really science in general, but have some informal knowledge and enjoy foraging. I will likely be in SE for the duration of this course, with a trip planned to Glacier Bay next week– but I may end up a few days in Karaburun peninsula in Turkey, where I visit most summers when I can. I’ve started learning some of the local harvesting practices from the women in the village there; there seem to be hundreds of local plants with uses. We don’t share too many here in Alaska with the Aegean region, except that they also have a type of samphre (Salicornia something), and of course purslane which seems to grow everywhere.
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Pictured is a plant I really enjoyed harvesting last year in Turkey; caper vines (Capparis spinosa L.) grow all over the hillside, and have beautiful white flowers with purple (what I think are) stamens. You can pick the tiny buds of the plant early and then preserve them in salt to make the capers we buy at the store, you can use the flower petals in teas which are supposedly good for digestive issues– and then the plant forms a little seed pod (I’m sure I’ll learn the right name for it!) that you can also preserve in salt, and is commonly called caper berry. The bees and other pollinators love the plants, which can grow in terrible soil and even the cracks of stone walls.
Hi all! My name is Basil Harper, I’m in the last stretch of my OEC in Ethnobotany at UAF. I live in Shawnee, KS, a suburb of the Kansas City, MO metro area, and I’m excited to learn more about the flora in my area this semester. My main focus with my ethnobotanical studies is on bringing traditional ecological knowledge of the Grain Plains bioregion to early childhood education. I also babysit in my free time and work a day job making pizzas. I just turned 20 (yesterday as of writing this) and this school year was my first college experience, so I’m really glad to have picked and school and program that I did. Also, I’m a huge nerd. I think that’s all of the important information about me, but feel free to drop a comment if you have any questions. I look forward to learning with you all this summer.
Hi! I’m Carrie and I moved to Fairbanks three years ago when I started earning my bachelors in wildlife biology and conservation. This summer I am living in Anchorage while I work at the William jack hernandez sport fish hatchery. My favorite plant is fireweed because I love its colors! I’ve always wanted to learn more about other plants in Alaska and to broaden my knowledge!
Hi everyone! My name is Emma and I will be a sophomore at UAF studying wildlife biology and conservation. I’m from Nevada and will be there for part of the class, but I will be in Montana this week and next, then in Michigan the final week of the class. I’m mostly familiar with desert plants but my knowledge of plants farther north such as the Arctic is pretty limited. I have some experience gardening with my mom, but keeping a thriving garden in a place like Nevada with the little rain and the heat is pretty hard.
I’m definitely more familiar with animals, being a wildlife major and all, but a huge part of the job is knowing how the animals interact with the plant world in their habitats so I’m looking forward to this class because I’d love to learn more about the plants in Alaska. I’d love to stay up here after I graduate and work since I’ve met lots of incredible biologists in my first year as a student there.
My favorite plant is a Jeffrey pine (Pinus jeffreyi). They are pretty common in my area and I learned a lot about them in a summer camp I was in a few years ago. The reason it is my favorite is because if you press your nose right up to the bark and sniff, you’ll find that it smells just like vanilla extract. One of my favorite memories from that camp is how everyone would sniff the trees from time to time on the hikes because we were so amazed they smelled sweet like that.
