A Wandering Botanist

Summer is ending, in fact, has ended for many people. Here are photos of the summer past, in the Rocky Mountains:

From meadows with knee-high grasses

Hiking in Estes Park, Colorado at 7,500' elevation on the east side of the Colorado Rocky Mountains, last June, I climbed a rocky slope and shared the plants and views a couple weeks ago (link). The next day I walked downhill and along a clear, turbulent stream. The plants were quite different.

Stream, Estes Park, Colorado

The difference wasn't elevation as much as habitat. The stream provided water in the soil and humidity in the air. These supported leafy trees that cast shade and trapped the water that evaporated off the stream. And finally, streams periodically flood, leaving silt to build and enrich the soil along their banks. So for all these reasons, the streamside plants were different from the hillside plants. 

 Hike with me up a dry mountainside in Estes Park, Colorado. It is late June, almost July. But mountains are fun; climb a few hundred feet or turn a corner and the season is two weeks earlier or later, because it is cooler or warmer, shadier or sunnier, moister or drier there. Elevation and aspect make dramatic differences. (And so does location, going north or south changes your season too.) So you might see these plants in bloom in other months. 

western wallflower, Erysimum capitatum

arctic tundra in Sweden, 1980s

The tundra is the coldest ecosystem on earth, found in the Arctic and high on mountains. As the coldest, it is changing rapidly from global warming. World temperature is up by about 2o Fahrenheit over the last 100 years (link) but at the poles it is up twice that (link). The average temperatures on high mountains (Alps, Rocky Mountains) are up 3o Fahrenheit during that time. In arctic tundra, the permanently frozen ground is melting, forming lakes, in other places it is drying out and has caught fire, while glaciers and sea ice are melting, all of these imperiling cold-adapted animals and plants and the people who depend on them. At high elevations, conditions are rapidly changing as well. On mountains, animals and plants will migrate higher for cooler conditions, but when the summit gets too warm, they will die out.

Life is hard for plants of the alpine tundra (previous post link). Alpine tundra is the ecosystem above treeline, in the United States from about 10,000' elevation up. The growing season is short, about three months. Frosts occur most nights all year and snow can fall any day. 

                     

The soil is unstable as the water in it freezes (expanding) and thaws (contracting). The soil shifts and the rocks steadily move around. Plant roots are displaced, making them sprawl. There is little cover, thin atmosphere, and less distance to the sun, so sunlight is very strong, despite cool temperatures, making sun damage to tissues much more common than better-protected places.

Walking in Rocky Mountain National Park, there are many places where fallen trees lie. It looks messy. 

                        

The visitor might think: they should clean that up, but perhaps they don't have the budget, or the spot is inaccessible. 

It is more complex than that. Leaving fallen trees lie may be the best use for them. 

In September, 2013, the Big Thompson River flooded, sweeping down its channel from Estes Park to Loveland, Colorado and out onto the plains, overflowing its banks all the way. Small rivers seem placid, even when they are rushing down from the mountains. The power of those same rivers in flood was a revelation to those of us who had not seen it before. The water swept away all the river-side vegetation, leaving naked gravel and all sorts of debris. 

It is a bright spot under the trees of the Rocky Mountains, that patch of yellow flowers of golden banner, Thermopsis rhombifolia. This is a plant of the pea family, Fabaceae, with rather typical compound leaves of three to five leaflets, flower like a garden pea and, ultimately, pods. The flower is a dramatic yellow.

It has been some years, but we flew to Calgary, Alberta, Canada, rented a car and drove the Ice Fields Parkway through the Canadian Rocky Mountains. It is 277 miles from Banff (a hour west and a bit north of Calgary) to Jasper, Alberta, where the road divides and most vacationers turn around and head back to Calgary. It makes a spectacular vacation.

I live on the foothills of that same mountain chain, about 1000 miles south. So wouldn't it be the same?

It is fall in the Rockies. The aspen leaves are turning colors. As I write this in early October, Trail Ridge Road at the top of Rocky Mountain National Park is closed due to snow. It should reopen, but, clearly, it is winter now at 11,000 feet. Where I live, at 5,000 feet, we have not yet had a frost. As cold temperatures move down the mountains, aspen and other deciduous trees will change color and then lose their leaves at successively lower elevations. Lots of opportunity to enjoy the spectacle.

"Kathy, I was at your plant walk Saturday at Devil's Backbone and today, there are hundreds, maybe thousands of butterflies there!"


I'd read something about a butterfly migration in the Denver Post : more than the usual number of painted lady butterflies moving south along the Colorado Front Range.

I went to see for myself.

No plant enthusiast passing through Steamboat Springs, Colorado should miss the Yampa River Botanic Park. Website

The Painter's Garden

This gem is snuggled along the Yampa River on the north side of the city of Steamboat Springs. The six acres are divided into dozens of individual gardens, tended or supported by the Steamboat Springs community. Some have themes--the Blue Garden, the Butterfly Garden, the Painter's Garden--some just feature plants the gardener loves.

I walked the grasslands by Pinewood Reservoir in Larimer County on June 14, 2017.

From a distance it looked like rather dull grassland

I've been out in Larimer County Parks, checking out sites for spring wildflower walks. I took lots of pictures to get a head start identifying the common plants on those trails. I thought my walks to be "early spring drab" ... then I reviewed my slides.

Look!

The trail beckons south end of Sundance Trail, Carter Lake

We looped through the mountains of northern Colorado and southern Wyoming this last week (June 28-July 3 2015). In May the snowfall in this area was particularly heavy, resulting in a relatively late snowmelt and an abundance of water for wildflowers.

miner's candle, Oreocarpa virgata,  forget-me-not family Boraginaceae

   Miner’s candle, Oreocarya virgata, formerly Cryptantha virgata, grows on rocky slopes of the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains extend 3000 miles (4800 km) from northern British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southern United States, so there would seem to be a  lot of similar terrain where miner's candle could grow. But it doesn't . It is found only in Wyoming and Colorado. (See records in Rocky Mountain herbarium)

miner's candle habitat

   Why?

   I have no idea. 

    The genus Oreocarya has 62 species, all in the western United States. Some are widely distributed but others are found only on sand or deposits of volcanic ash. Weber and Wittmann imply miner's candle prefers gravelly granitic slopes, but I don't think those are confined to Colorado and Wyoming.

   Despite its narrow geographic distribution, miner's candle can be quite abundant where it is found.

    Miner's candle sends up a flowering spike that can be 2 feet (70 cm) tall. The flowers look like large white forget-me-not (Mysotis spp.) flowers, because they are in the same plant family, the Boraginaceae, the forget-me-not family. The leaves have coarse hairs. 

    How long does miner's candle live? Nobody has studied it but is certainly a perennial, living two or more years.

miner's candle

   I could not find one paper in the professional literature on miner's candle. It is mentioned in plant lists for natural areas and included in papers relating the species in the its genus to each other, but that's it.  
  
  The contrast with common mullein is striking--only one common name, no studies of life cycle or plant chemistry, no reported medical uses, no folklore. 

miner's candle Cryptantha virgata

     Easily recognized, of limited distribution, unstudied, miner's candle is a plant of more questions than answers. We think we know so very much here in the 21st century, but at best that's only true relative to the past, not to what there is to find out.