Berries
Gagilichuk
Iñupiaq Name: Gagilichuk phonetic spelling: gag-il-i-chuck plural: gagilichuit translation / other information something with thorns English Name: Alaska Wild Rose Scientific Name Rosa acicularis Source: Lindl. p.23
The Alaskan Wild Rose is a beautiful plant that has pink, four-petaled flowers in early summer and bright red rosehips in the fall. The rose prickles are something to avoid, but on the tundra, the plants are very small due to the harsh growing conditions found there. I was actually unable to locate any of the gagilichuk plants. There was a recent construction of an airport on the hill behind Golovin. They put in a road and a mile long airstrip. In the process of all this construction the rose population of Golovnin was destroyed. It did not grow very well in Golovnin however, and few people actually used the plant as a source of vitamin C in the rosehips or to make jelly out of the petals, but Maggie Olson reported that the plant was used some in neighboring communities. As the plant was not used much it did not have a traditional Iñupiaq name. Again, Maggie Olson helped me improvise. Gagilichuk means, "something with thorns", or "something that pricks." We thought this would be a suitable name; anyone who has fallen into an Alaskan Rose bush knows that the thorns are not large like that of garden roses, rather they are small, obnoxious, and hard to remove without a magnifying glass and tweezers.