Discovering Alaska’s Flora: Outdoor Leadership Plant Identification Class
by V. Heisser |
This semester, outdoor leadership students and natural resources technician students
took a closer look at Alaska’s wild lands in a plant identification and classification
class taught by Paul Nylund.
Students learned to recognize edible, medicinal, and poisonous plants across different
habitats while focusing on:
Species ID and classification: Differentiating plants, understanding their relationships
to each other, and the taxonomic system that we use to study and understand them.
Ecological Roles: Understanding how plants support healthy ecosystems.
Successional stages and the plants associated with them, and how they each prepare
the land for the next stage of ecosystem development.
Safety & Stewardship: Avoiding harmful species and practicing leave-no-trace principles.
Through fieldwork and hands-on practice, students built the knowledge to understand
the land, strengthen their outdoor survival skills, and deepen their connection to
the natural world.