Alaska Trees and Shrubs

Alaska Trees and Shrubs, by Leslie A. Viereck and Elbert L. Little, Jr., is a great reference for learning about the woody plants in Alaska (and extending into the Pacific Northwest and Russia). I pulled out my copy as a refresher before our trip to Anchorage earlier this month. The book is published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. My hardback version was published in 1972, but you can pick up a soft cover of the later version on Amazon.

The audience includes scientists, naturalists, and anyone interested in nature. The book includes a list of Alaskan tree and shrub species (mostly native, some naturalized), and notes that identification is easy because there are so few species (the 1972 version lists 19 plant families, 54 genera, and 128 species). It describes the main vegetation categories, including coastal forests, interior forests, and tundra; and provides a color coded vegetation map that identifies the vegetation types (coastal spruce-hemlock forests, closed spruce-hardwood forests, open growing spruce forests, treeless bogs, shrub thickets, moist tundra, wet tundra, alpine tundra, and ice and snow). The book provides identification keys, including winter identification keys for deciduous trees.

The descriptions of each species go beyond physical descriptions to include usage, history, and useful information. For example, the entry for Western Crabapple (Malus diversifolia) states that the fruit was eaten by Native Americans and is used in jellies and preserves. The entry for Sitka Spruce (Picea sitchensis) provides information about old growth trees and experimental trees planted on the Aleutian Islands. The illustrations, rendered by several artists, are beautiful and detailed. We studied many of the tree families in my Tree ID class at Merritt College—such as Betulaceae, Cupressaceae, Pinaceae, Salix, and Taxaceae.

This book is also special on a personal level. My dad, Arland S. Harris, is acknowledged for contributing information on trees and shrubs in Southeast Alaska (the Sitka Spruce tree is one of his specialties). Also, the bibliography includes names that I recognize from my childhood – scientists with whom my dad collaborated, or who came to dinner. Names like Wilbur (Bill) Farr, Paul Haack, Karl Hegg, Keith Hutchison, T. H. Laurent, and Ray Taylor (whom I mentioned in the Mill Creek post).