Emma Diaz | CLM Internship Program Blog

A favorite lunch spot of mine at one of our seed collection sites.

3 observations from this past month:

A thin layer of moss sits at the sill of the botany truck window. If you roll it down, you can run your finger over the soft mat of vegetation, sometimes still wet from rain.

Fallen trees contribute to the soft hills of the mossy understory. If one has been there long enough, placing your weight on its decaying wood will leave you finding yourself falling through to the other side, where water in some form awaits.

With the right timing and luck, you might witness black bears eating grass. Or berries and deer. Or rotten salmon.

Whether they know it or not, town is a safe haven for these young bucks, especially now that we have entered hunting season.

It is strange to think that I will only be in South East Alaska for one season, one summer. Especially when echoes of the year-round adaptations which have formed this rainforest are everywhere, so long as you take a second to look close enough.

Summer is go-time for everyone and everything here. Animals, plants, and Forest Service employees alike are all desperately trying to succeed in a frenzy of organized chaos, accomplishing tasks they’ve been waiting to do all winter long. Fishing, hunting, and foraging abound. Fawn learn how to walk on shaky legs. Plants expend energy producing colors and smells to tell the right pollinator where to land, and what animal it would like to poop out its seed. Fungi must spit out their mushrooms before it’s too late.

The island is alive! The last picture is of a yellow shore crab (Hemigrapsus oregonensis) clinging onto the fruits of Carex lyngbei (Lynbei’s sedge) that I was collecting!

A common goal sweeps through the area and permeates the air like fog. It challenges us. Achieve, and prepare. Because, as the Starks would say with furrowed brows and foreboding seriousness—winter is coming.

It would be a mistake though, to interpret this goal as a reason to not appreciate the land, especially at the height of its liveliness, for all of its beauty and quirks. How else might we learn from it? For example. Large, fleshy fruits are not found in the plant diversity here. The Tongass National Forest Botanist (and my supervisor), Val, points out that this is likely the result of a short growing season, too little heat, and too much rain. All of which make such an endeavor not worth it to many plants. Why attempt to make a fruit that may not have enough time to fully mature? Or even worse, to put all your carefully stored carbohydrates into making one that could rot before it ever gets eaten?

Consequentially, I have picked more berries in the past month than I have my entire life. As of now, the list stands at: blueberries (three kinds), salmonberries, five-leafed bramble (a tiny kind of raspberry), (red) huckleberries, thimbleberries, (stink) currants, and (red) elderberries. Each one of these fruits measures smaller than my big toe—but (with a bit of plant anthropomorphizing,) this trend towards the tiny-and-mighty makes complete plant sense.

The tiny jewels of Rubus pedatus (five-leafed bramble). It is hard to find but flavorful, making it a favorite of many animals here, including myself.

In this part of town, plants with fleshy, edible fruits know that any large animal able to carry your seeds to greener pastures will be on hiatus once the warm-ish weather leaves. So you’ll need to put out fruit, fast. Or at least as fast as you can, for a plant. Hence, small fruit. And a lot of them, to not only make it worth the bear’s while but to present perhaps a bird or mouse with the opportunity to take some of your seeds as well. Maximize your odds. Put lots of seeds in those fruits while you’re at it. Small fruits mature faster, and require less energy per unit. So even if one or two of them develops mold, it’ll hurt less. The risk of missing your opportunity to continue your genetic line is minimized. Plus, the ants will happily carry those leftover berries away, anyhow.

It is, figuratively and literally, the small things like this which allow me to endlessly marvel at the workings of ecology. Alaska is a prime example of how abiotic factors influence the dynamic of living organisms. How it has forced them for thousands of years to figure out a way to work in tandem with one another through stresses, all towards the basic endeavor of survival. Ecology reminds us that nothing which persists in nature does so in isolation. Especially not here.

A bit of truck botany ft. our plant press, old newspaper, the botany bible of the Pacific Northwest, a trusty multitool, and some wonderful *Vaccinium ovalifolium* (oval-leaved blueberry).

This same reason is why Levi (my field partner) and I work to collect a diversity of seed. Because no one truly understands, at least not yet, how exactly that web of organismal relationships operates, or how intricate it might reveal itself to be if it is teased apart. And we risk losing it all, forever, if we continue to ignore that fact. From the berries, to the sedges, to even the stubborn seed pods of western meadows rue that refuse to ripen; there is merit in appreciating seeds of the entire native community, even if limitations force us to prioritize a subset. Who knows where we would be without them?

See you next month,

-Emma

A ring of mushrooms found in the Karta Wilderness Area.

There’s little in Alaska that feels familiar to a city girl.

Sometime within the whirlwind of this past month, I found myself at the edge of a community bonfire in one of Prince of Wales’ numerous coastal towns, striking up conversation with a local resident, Frank. As we exchanged pleasantries, I disclosed to him that I was from New York, to which a most startled Frank asked frankly:

“—are you lost?”

I can see how that might be the case. The Tongass National Forest, I’m finding, is a place of extremes. In this temperate rainforest, there are trees that tower over you with an ease that demands respect, bracken ferns (Pteridium aquilinum) alongside skunk cabbage (Lysichiton americanum) that inch past your eye-level everywhere you turn, and devil’s club (Oplopanax horridus) with leaves the size of your face—alongside thorns in charitable quantities—undoubtedly ready to catch the next unlucky hiker who uses their sturdy branches to cushion a fall.

For the plants with limited access to resources, they tend to lead smaller lives. Not in the sense that their existence is less rich or impressive, but because typically, they are best appreciated from on your knees, and sometimes with a hand lens. Beds of moss define the spongey floors of muskegs, and are often found side-by-side with lingonberry (Vaccinium vitis-idea), bog cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) and the inconspicuous—yet carnivorous—round-leaved sundew (Drosera rotundifolia).

Bog cranberry (*Vaccinium oxycoccos*), now in bloom.

All of this to say that the Tongass is nothing like the skyscrapers and subway rats of home, even if both of those things are undeniably extreme in their own respects.

In Alaska, I am constantly asking questions. Simple ones, theoretical ones, stupid ones, and many, many icebreakers. There is no benefit to faking what you don’t know (it really could just kill you out here), especially when you have everything to gain by accepting that you might know nothing at all.

Without a doubt, I am grateful that college academia introduced conservation to me through a variety of principles, models, and research. I used those teachings to build myself a foundation. But now I get to revise it, and that’s worth appreciating as well. Because as a favorite professor of mine would often remind me: things will always be different in the field.

A meadowy stream. The rusty color is characteristic of water filled with tannins.

As efforts into scouting and collecting native seed begin, I have no doubt that my professor will prove right and that I will be challenged by all that I don’t know. I may find myself lost in the most literal sense…once or twice or three times. Ultimately though, what matters is that I focus on emulating the very same qualities pursued after in all conservation and restoration work—adaptability and resilience. I want to grow. So it’s hard to feel lost, because I believe Alaska is exactly the place I need to be to do that.