𝔦𝔫 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔤𝔞𝔯𝔡𝔢𝔫

The names of either plant are sure to strike fear into the hearts of all those who have lived in the Pacific Northwest, though to many, 'pushki' might be better known as cow parsnip or Satan celery, government name heracleum maximum. The name 'pushki' (also puchki or poochki) is a relic of the Russian colonization of Alaska, though what exactly it was ever meant to mean isn't known. The most famous theory is that the Russians thought the dead pushki stalks which remain during winter looked like small cannons, for which the word is pushka in Russian. But it is also speculated that it may have come from the Russian word for fur (after the hairs on the stems) or puchok, meaning 'bundle' or 'bunch', in reference to the flower habit. Even less well known are the indigenous names for pushki: ggis in Dena'ina, vgyuun (meaning 'dead stalk') or ugsuuteq in Alutiiq.

Devil's Club, however, is a universal name in the United States - though it may sometimes also be called Alaskan ginseng, which in my area in Alaska is comically considered something of a marketing term, not generally used by locals. In Dena'ina it's heshkeghka'a, in Alutiiq cukilaparnak. Its scientific name is the appropriately metal sounding oplopanax horridus, and though I dislike being rude to my neighbors, I think it would appreciate being thought of as quite horrid. Related to the placid ginseng it might be, it lives up to its name by being covered in thorns and spines that snap off on contact and leave hard fragments and minor phytotoxins sitting in the skin, which causes irritation and infection on top of the surprising amount of damage it manages to do to clothes and hide.

To match the horror of the Devil's walking stick, Pushki's terror factor is chemical warfare: even brief contact with the stems or leaves can rub off its sap, which contains chemicals that react with the skin and make it extremely photosensitive, causing immediate sunburn and sometimes even blisters. The subsequent photodermatitis - a condition where exposure to UV causes skin inflammation - can stay for months to years after contact depending on how long the sap could work on the skin.

A handsome devil's club. The biggest leaves are about a foot and a half wide. Notice the spines on the leaf veins.

Few places in Alaska have an even distribution of both plants, as they occupy the same ecological niches and compete for resources fiercely. You will never have to wonder whose territory you're in, either, as both have a habit of growing in dense clusters in marginal open spaces. As a result, if you live anywhere remotely rural, needing to wade through seas of one or the other is practically unavoidable. Where I live on the Kenai peninsula there is an undisputed victor, at least for now. Pushki hordes march alongside me down every path and pasture, their great green hands brushing me as I trot past. I prefer living in pushki territory, being genetically resistant to their poison. My partner, who is easily affected, would rather be among the hoplite troops (if you got that joke, I see you linguistics nerd) some 10 hours north.

The pushki king is young and virile, like these boggy woods: his progeny lead his legions under his noble guidance. Pushki reproduces through heavy seeding before dying back in winter, bringing forth new soldiers with only few biennial veterans to guide them. But moreso than potent, he is also a talented strategist. He knows how to disperse his troops, how to hold his own and encroach on the other. He teaches his people how to create food stores, and how to negotiate with the locals. He lets the landscape do his work for him, allowing the wind to carry his forces wherever they are needed. They find meadows and margins to colonize, gulping up sunlight and shading the fragile borders of moss groves. The spruces allow them, because the pushki king agreed to shelter spruce children amongst their leaves. He even allied with his European cousins, whose men mingle with the Alaska natives. But all is not lost for his opponent. In all his ambition and productivity, the young king wastes energy, thinks the lord of thorns. Pushki may have leaves of similar size to a devil's club, but they use their stores quickly, and could never afford to be in the shade. So deep within the spruce trees, where needles obstruct soil and sky, scouts of the enemy team break between the lines.

Wizened by his exceptionally long life, the devil's club king is perhaps no king for battle at all. But he is cunning, and sly. When you first spot one of his kin, they look inviting. Huge, soft-green leaves like hands outstretched, bright red drupes delicately stacked on the whole. The entire plant possesses an air of elegant stillness. You wish to lay your hand on the leaf, to put into perspective how big it truly is. But as your palm lowers you find this soldier armed down to their wiry knuckles. Once wounded by this overzealous defense, the plant becomes quite menacing to the beholder; the elegant visage changes into a villainous creature peering out from its prickly armor. The stillness turns eerie and calculated. These warriors do not frolic in camps like their hotblooded enemies, waiting for orders. Here on the battlefront, they creep through the woods in silence, for they are many in the body of one. Once past the enemy lines, unbounded by the need for sexual reproduction, the spearbearers clone themselves through rhizomes, slowly forming thickets as dense as the opponent's. Once established, they entice bears with their bright berries to spread their seed. Strength and numbers they have not, not here. But they have arts unknown to the pushki king, of magic and medicine.

Both kings are people of immense contradiction. The pushki king is in many ways the very picture of stateliness, but he has not the courage to flaunt his defenses as openly as the devil's club. His forces feign an air of casual coexistence until an unlucky traveller brushes past with bare calves. While the other, in turn, seems wry and loveless, but in fact nurtures many, from the bears eating his berries to salmon growing in the shade of his leaves.

In some ways, the plants resemble each other. Notice the spines on the devil's club, and the malefic red stalks of the h. mantegazzianum, the giant bear claw.

Where devil's club is a relative I had never met before I came here, whose respect I gained simply because of their goodwill, pushki are a people I have an ancestral tie to. In my native language, we call pushki species bear claws. It is mete to respect the defenses of a plant my ancestors thought to name after an animal so revered its name was never to be spoken aloud, only called by the epithet of 'the brown one'. So unspeakable was it, that the original word has been forgotten. Unaffected I may be by their poison, but they have my utmost respect still. Many people go years handling pushki without effect, only to suddenly become severely allergic. And I have seen firsthand that the old belief is true: the redder the claw, the bloodier. Red is pushki's European cousin, which we call giant bear claw. That king has conquered before, brutally and without mercy. He is the cruelest of all the bear claw chiefs, his poison is the strongest and his stalks the very tallest. His tribe marks their victories by painting themselves in the lifeblood of their victims. I sometimes wonder if once the noble green-stalked pushki king wins his war, his bloodthirsty cousin has a coup planned for him. Undoubtedly that would be a fearsome battle, one not without collateral damage. The same logic that informed my ancestors of the nature of bear claw was applied by Alaska natives, who shared the belief that both pushki and devil's club were protective plants and strong defenders. Many of the natives on phalanxeer turf¹ use them as protective amulets, and striking amulets they are. Beaches here are littered with the bones of the devil, bleached by the sun, the dark cavities where their cruelest thorns used to sit made clearer against the grey.

On wet days, the plants of both tribes announce their presences boldly on the air. You either love it or hate it, the thick musk of soldiers at war permeating the atmosphere. Devil's club carries the distinct medicinal quality of ginseng, where pushki goes from an agreeable sweetness in flower to a dank, wild scent in the fall. Fragrance, good or bad, has been associated with purification since time immemorial. It is no surprise that Yup'ik peoples used the smoke of wild celeries² to purify bodies, Tlingit practitioners ate devil's club root to cleanse themselves ritually, and the Haida chewed on the sticks and bark for it. My faith has it that a home is just the body of a bigger beast we live in, and here too homes could be fumigated with the smoke of either.

The Bladder Festival is a Yup'ik feast which honors the yuit (personhood) of seals, which is believed to reside in their bladders. Wild celery played a role in this: offerings would be made to the celeries before they were harvested and hosted in the casgiq (men's house). An idol would be constructed with the celery stems, who would be honored like a living person. Based on reports from white anthropologists about the roots of wild celeries being believed to "represent each man's partner from the underworld,"³ and resembling ancestral spirits, it is thought that the rites of the Bladder Festival may have revolved around invoking the relationship between ancestral spirits and the yuit of the seals, to encourage the seals to be plentiful the upcoming year, on top of the veneration of the seals.

In their world, where kingship is divine providence, it makes sense that the features of the rulers are reflected in the individuals. Who knows who first started this war, and how long it will go on. Who knows who will reign as victor, if anybody. But it is customary for fairy kings to be at odds with one another, and competition is no evil in nature. My personal pushki platoon is one I am happy to see each summer. To the untrained eye it looks samesy, but it houses a diverse understory of grasses, bistorts, mint family members, chocolate lilies and horsetails. The pushki have stood this dutiful watch along the paths between our houses and the church since anyone here can remember, and with time a mutual respect has grown. I do not harvest much pushki - we do not tend to eat them, rather the nettles, and we have an abundance of angelica lucida around to take for roots. I have no need of them over my doorway for protection when they have chosen of their own accord to grow by the entrance. But though we do not speak much, I think we are good friends.

These kings I hope to never meet. I can only imagine the magnificence of their courts, contrasted against the terrible sight of their majesties. But I am not ready to be swept to the realm of the ancestors by their enchantments. Even here, in the land of the living, their generals and princelings command respect and reverence. Hail to them, who nourish the land with their sons, and buttress the veins of the earth.

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The Kenai Peninsula (Dena'ina: Yaghanen, the good land) is sacred land to the Dena'ina people, specifically the Kahtnuht’ana Dena’ina who historically inhabited this region. The Kenaitze Indian Tribe was federally recognized as a sovereign, independent nation in 1971 under the Indian Reorganization Act as amended for Alaska. The Kenaitze tribal government provides some of the most important care and education services on the peninsula. I used Outer Inlet Dena'ina (as spoken in Seldovia) for the Dené plant names to the best of my knowledge, as that dialect is most local to me. My interpretation of this landscape as an immigrant is transplanted with respect to the beliefs both past and present that continue to shape this region, and which inform my own interactions with the land. By interpreting the same land through diverse lenses with respect to the first inhabitants, something new can blossom.

Notes: ¹ The Tlingit used devil's club sticks to beat suspected witches, and the Haida place it above doorways and on fishing boats to ward off evil. The Tsimshian and Nuxalk, and probably others, wore the plant as a protective amulet. ² Pushki is also referred to as 'wild celery' by Alaska Natives, but that name serves more as a plant category defined by its relation to mankind than as a species identification. 'Wild celery' is a food category, and individual species within that category have their own names. Species of angelica are also called wild celery. Everything that follows when discussing the Bladder Festival is about wild celery, see Yungcautnguuq Nunam Qainga Tamarmi below. ³ That is not the only thing to suggest that wild celery has a special association with women's bodies. In the same book it is cited that a nursing mother with a newborn boy was not allowed to eat wild celery as it was considered to have 'female flesh', and that another woman was given wild celery as medicine when she was sick as a child, and thereafter she could never eat it again, but her body "grew fat and thin along with the plant each spring and fall." A different white anthropologist, Charles Gillham, recounts a legend about a Yup'ik man who mistakes a wild celery for a beautiful young woman.

Bibliography and Further Reading: - Alutiiq Museum Plant Gallery: pushki | devil's club - Medicinal Flora of the Alaska Natives - Ann Garibaldi - Traditional Use of Devil's Club by Native Peoples in Western North America - Nancy J. Turner, via ethnobiology.org - Alaska Native Plants Program - Russian history survives in Kenai Peninsula place names - Elizabeth Earl in the Peninsula Clarion - Yungcautnguuq Nunam Qainga Tamarmi: Edible and Medicinal Plants of Southwest Alaska - Ann Fienup-Riordan et al - The population ecology and ethnobotany of Devil's Club - Trevor C. Lantz - Tla Yahda: Haida Museology Makes Things Right - Lucy Sdahl Ḵ’awaas Bell - USDA FS Index of Species Information: Devil's Club | Pushki - Alaska's Wild Plants - Janice J. Schofield - Discovering Wild Plants - Janice J. Schofield