My first two weeks up in Alaska have been an adventure. Most of my time so far has been general exotic plant management training (in Anchorage) and some additional training (ATV and bear safety training whoo!) at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where I will be working for the rest of the season.

My first view of a glacier! Spotted along the Glenn Hwy during my trip from Anchorage to Wrangell-St. Elias Park

Most of my job will consist of surveying exotic plants in the park. Though we haven’t done much fieldwork yet, I have been learning to identify the various invasive plants and getting to use my plant ID skills! One of the most common invasive plants here is Taraxacum officinale, known more affectionately as the common dandelion. We just found a native dandelion near the office, which looks very similar to the invasive dandelion, so we have to be pretty careful when we are removing the invasive plants.

Native dandelion (Taraxacum ceratophorum)

Invasive dandelion (Taraxacum offinale)

Two other main invasive plants at the park are Melilotus albus (white sweetclover) and Crepis tectorum (narrowleaf hawksbeard). During training in Anchorage we also learned how to survey for an invasive aquatic plant, Elodea spp. They are trying very hard to control populations of Elodea in Alaska, as it has become an invasive species in many bodies of water, due to dumping of household aquariums into nearby ponds and streams.

Another long-term project that me and my fellow CLM intern, Jacob, will be working on this season is mounting and organizing collections of specimens from the park. Most of the specimens were collected and dried over 10 years ago by botanists at Wrangell-St. Elias, so we are now going through and mounting these specimens and recording them into the park’s database. This project has fulfilled a personal lifelong dream of getting to try herbarium work. It involves a lot of artistic detail in organizing the specimens on the mounting paper, and is a very careful process. I am having so much fun mounting these plants! Not only the creative aspect of it, but I get to learn about the various (and potentially rare) plants that have been found in the park. I have found it to be a very orienting experience, as it in part allows me to familiarize myself with the park and with the plant species in Alaska.

One particularly cool specimen that I mounted was Pinguicula villosa, also known as hairy butterwort. Butterworts obtain much of their diet through the ingestion of insects and other small invertebrates. I have never seen a butterwort in person, and didn’t know they they consumed insects, so getting to not only see this specimen, but learn about it as well, was a unique introduction to some of the interesting plants that this park has to offer.

In summary, my time in Alaska has so far been amazing – how can you not fall in love with Alaska? I am looking forward to be able to get out and do some more field work and survey for invasive species and getting to see more of the hidden gems in Wrangell-St. Elias.

Cheers,

Natalie

Exotic Plant Management Intern, Wrangell-St. Elias Park