In the Company of Plants and Rocks: juneberry

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Thursday, June 7, 2018

Botanical Perplexity in the Southern Utah Desert

The bush on the left isn’t dead.

On the Waterfall Trail behind the San Rafael Reef, west of Arches National Park, I came across an unfamiliar shrub. From a distance it looked dead, but up close I saw small green oval leaves with serrated upper margins, and fruit that looked like tiny immature apples. These suggested serviceberry, the genus Amelanchier, and I felt that pleasing cognitive dissonance that comes when something is both familiar and strange. I looked forward to solving the mystery, putting a name on this shrub.

The small glabrous (not hairy) leaves were problematic.

Developing fruit, with anthers and styles still visible.

Serrated leaves and pomes of Amelanchier (Juneberry, Serviceberry); source.

This was supposed to be a short post—put together quickly, just a few photos and some information about the serviceberry, finishing with a sunset. But identification proved elusive, in part due to the small glabrous (hairless) leaves that didn't fit any Utah species, but mainly because of the legacy of struggling Amelanchier taxonomists.

The overlapping and highly variable “species” of this genus confound even the experts. In 1946, eminent botanist Merritt Lyndon Fernald went so far as to claim that no other genus in North America, except perhaps Rubus and Crataegus (raspberries and hawthornes), offered as much “perplexity” as Amelanchier (1).

The serviceberry I saw along the Waterfall Trail is a case in point. For a century botanists have debated its status, moving it from species to subspecies to synonym and most recently back to species. Not surprisingly, my path through the literature was tortuous. But I did meet some interesting characters, starting with Ivar Frederick Tidestrom.

I.F. Tidestrom, photo courtesy USGS.

Ivar Tidestrom ran away from home in Sweden in 1880, and headed for the United States. He served in the US Army (cavalry), enrolled in the University of California as an engineering student, and soon switched to botany. In 1919 while collecting plants in the Charleston Mountains northwest of Las Vegas, Nevada, he found an unfamiliar serviceberry with small glabrous leaves in the “piñon belt near Wilson’s ranch”. Four years later, he published it as a new species: Amelanchier nitens.

Amelanchier nitens, collected by Ivar Tidestrom on May 27, 1919; US National Herbarium.

In the late 1930s, Ira Waddell Clokey, a mining engineer and botanist, was finishing up his intensive study of plants of the same Charleston Mountains. He went to Tidestrom’s site to collect more material of Amelanchier nitens. He concluded it didn’t warrant full species status. Instead, he called it Amelanchier utahensis ssp. covillei (Clokey 1945).

Ira Clokey died in 1950, just after his Flora of the Charleston Mountains was accepted for publication (source).

Around the same time, G. Neville Jones took on a revision of North American Amelanchier, published in 1946. He described Tidestrom’s serviceberry from the Charleston Mountains as an “extreme form” that “intergraded completely with the typical pubescent [hairy] forms” of Amelanchier utahensis, a widespread and highly variable species (2). Thus Amelanchier nitens was reduced to synonymy, becoming part of Utah Serviceberry, where it remained for almost 60 years.

The latest revision of Amelanchier was done by Christopher Campbell and five colleagues, for the Flora of North America (2015 online). In it, I found a species description that matched the serviceberries along the Waterfall Trail pretty well—Amelanchier nitens! So we’ve come full circle. Tidestrom’s serviceberry has been resurrected as a species, now with a common name—Shining Shadbush (shining for the glabrous leaves; shadbush is one of many common names for Amelanchier).

Does Shining Shadbush grow in the “piñon belt” of Utah?

Did I finally have a name for my mystery shrub? Maybe. Unfortunately, Shining Shadbush is said to grow only in the Charleston Mountains in Nevada and in a limited area near Sedona, Arizona, i.e., not in Utah. But then I read the fine print (emphasis added):

“The authors have observed incomplete herbarium specimens conforming to Amelanchier nitens morphology from Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.”

So the serviceberries along the Waterfall Trail may be the Shining Shadbush, Amelanchier nitens. But given the “perplexities” of serviceberry classification, it’s probably best not to worry about a name. Instead, just enjoy Amelanchier’s approach to biodiversity!

Thus ends my winding tale ... except for the sunset. Here’s one looking south from the Waterfall Trail.

West side of San Rafael Reef, Henry Mountains in distance.

Notes

(1) In the Introduction to his American Species of Amelanchier, G. Neville Jones (1946) summarized the evolving struggle of taxonomists to classify serviceberries, with wild swings in numbers of species (emphasis added):

“The earlier students [19th century] of the North American flora, including Michaux, Pursh, Nuttall, Torrey, and Gray, took the view that [Amelanchier] in the western hemisphere consisted of only one, or at the most very few, highly variable species. … there now may be found in botanical literature nearly two hundred binomials and trinomials representing the species of Amelanchier in America.”

(2) Jones also described convincingly the challenge of serviceberry identification:

“Anyone who studies Amelanchier in the field, or who examines large series of specimens in herbaria, is at once struck by the extraordinary variation of the foliage that occurs even in the same species, as manifested in different stages of development and from various habitats. … When placed side by side, specimens of the same species in these different stages of development often show an almost incredible dissimilarity and have been not infrequently mistaken for different species.”

Sources

Most of these were accessed online via the Biodiversity Heritage Library. Their wonderful collection is newly enhanced with Full Text Search, more information here.

Campbell, CS, et al. 2015 (online). Amelanchier, Flora of North America vol 9. http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=101333

Clokey, IW. 1945. Notes on the flora of the Charleston Mountains, Clark County, Nevada. Madroño 8:56-61. https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/47877692

Clokey, IW. 1951. Flora of the Charleston Mountains, Clark County, Nevada. University of California Press (Amelanchier pp 119-120). https://books.google.com/books?id=GuBVI1nC-50C&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Jones, GN. 1946. American species of Amelanchier. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press (A. nitens pp 92-93). https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/105913

Tidestrom, IF. 1923. New or noteworthy species of plants from Utah and Nevada. Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 36:181-184. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/34510710#page/201/mode/1up

Tidestrom, IF. 1925. Flora of Utah and Nevada. Contributions from the United States National Museum 25 (Amelanchier nitens pp 282-284). https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001494238

Tuesday, October 11, 2016

Plant on a Pedestal

Awe-inspiring!

This month I’m making an oblique and tenuous segue from Tree-Following, for I have no news to report of my serviceberry. After a long vacation, all kinds of things have to be done right away! (of course ;-) Instead, this post is about one of its brethren growing nearby under challenging circumstances. Though it’s only a meter tall and technically a shrub, it’s as impressive and inspiring as a tree.

The serviceberry doesn’t sit directly on the ground but rather on a pedestal—which sounds lovely, but it was created by “erosion of soil from around the base of a plant such that it appears to be on a pedestal” (source). [Pedestaling usually refers to erosion, but frost heaving and accumulated soil or litter can create pedestals too. And I stumbled across a webpage that mentioned plants with pedestals of lateral roots—news to me.]

Plant on a pedestal created by erosion. Arrow points to exposed roots (source).

Range managers consider pedestaled plants indicators of over-grazing. A healthy allotment (pasture) has no pedestaling. If mature plants are on pedestals, the allotment is said to be at risk, and the stocking rate should be reduced. In worst cases, erosion has pedestaled all plants and exposed roots. These allotments are classified as unhealthy. Complete removal of livestock may be necessary for the range to recover.

The pedestal has all but disappeared, leaving the serviceberry standing on its roots.

But this serviceberry grows where no cow would ever think of going—on a steep slope where there's little to eat. However, slope and rock type make erosion inevitable. At the same time, the tilted beds of sandstone and siltstone offer benefits. Soil develops from softer siltstone. Seeds germinate, grow into seedlings, and send roots down to the water that falls as rain, and accumulates in underground fractures in the sandstone.

Serviceberry on Boulder Ridge (center of photo); Hutton Lake behind. Photos taken in August.

A wild currant grows here too, just visible behind the serviceberry.

In spite of the tough situation, these shrubs have enough vigor to produce fruit!

A wild currant (red) lies next to where the root enters the ground (click on image to view).

Serviceberries.

Boulder Ridge on the south side of Hutton Lake, Laramie Valley, Wyoming.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Where the Juneberries Grow

I zipped up my jacket, put on my pack, pulled the camera out of the case … and was hit by that sinking feeling that still surfaces even though we humans left the dangerous bush long ago. I had the wrong lens! Should I venture into the wilds of the Laramie Basin armed only with a mid-range telephoto?

It was an exceptional February day: 52º F, virtually no wind. Surely a camera wasn't necessary to enjoy the spring weather, expansive landscapes, and ice patterns on the frozen lakes. I walked west along a dirt road, stopping now and then to photograph ice and other things that fit in the field of the 100 mm lens.

Ice slabs and salt-encrusted mud in front of a brown snow bank (windblown dirt).

These lakes sit in a large depression in the southern part of the Laramie Basin. They're fed by creeks and irrigation canals, but there’s no way for the water to leave aside from evaporation. This is one of the reasons they're “alkali.” Technically the lakes are saline, not alkaline, but people around here would look at you strange if you said Hutton Lake was saline. Whatever the term, it's immediately obvious—by the distinctive smell and the white crusty dried mud along the margins.

Hutton Lake lies in the Laramie Basin SSW of Laramie (Google Earth; click on image to view details).

We may find alkali wetlands smelly and distasteful, but they're important habitat. Salt-tolerant terrestrial and aquatic invertebrates thrive here, providing tasty and nutritious bird food. For much of the year, the Refuge is popular with birds (146 species have been reported) and the attendant birders.

Bulrushes in Hutton Lake; Medicine Bow Mountains and the Snowy Range behind.

But currently the lakes are still mostly frozen. There are few birds and even fewer human visitors, aside from an occasional nature lover suffering from cabin fever.

I was at Hutton Lake National Wildlife Refuge in search of juneberries, aka sarvice or service berries, saskatoon, amelanchier and more. I want to follow one this year. (Unfamiliar with tree-following? Read more here.) There are two juneberry specimens from Hutton Lake in the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, but as I walked through saltgrass meadows, alkali wetlands and stands of greasewood, I felt like a sucker. The uplands nearby were no more promising—heavily-grazed grassland full of prickly pear cactus. There were no trees anywhere. I saw nothing that looked like potential habitat for juneberries. They are moist-woodland trees needing adequate water, and it has to be sweet, not alkaline.

At the west end of the lake near the Refuge boundary, I walked to a high point (by about six feet) to plan a return route. In the distance, I spotted ... another visitor! A man walked slowly my way, stopping to scan the lake with binoculars. I assumed he was a birder, and maybe a well-rounded naturalist as well. Maybe he would know where the juneberries grow.

As we approached, I waved; he waved back. Closer, I saw he wore a broad-brimmed felt hat, day-pack, and canvas jacket, all in subdued colors—greens and browns. He used a walking stick. Then when we were close enough to speak, I started laughing. So did he. That’s what you do when you meet someone you know in the middle of nowhere.

I explained my mission, expecting more laughter, but Tom immediately replied, “Oh yeah, I know where the juneberries grow. See that knob? [pointing with walking stick] They’re on the slope below. There are some small cottonwoods too, and willows. Just walk across the causeway.”

After discussing when the ice might melt, what notable birds come through, candle ice (more on that later), cures for cabin fever, and the pluses and minuses of recent refuge improvements, we parted ways.

Does the causeway lead to where the juneberries grow?

From the end of the causeway, I made my way along the lakeshore through snow, mud and grass. I was skeptical. But then … there they were, a cluster of small juneberry trees! … maybe. They were barely large enough to have striated bark, needed for winter identification.

Juneberry "trees"?

The one on the right looks more promising.

For comparison: mature Amelanchier alnifolia in the Black Hills.

This old dried fruit looks like a juneberry.

Ripe juneberries for comparison. Photo by Meggar.

I also found the cottonwoods and willows that Tom mentioned, as well as some aspen, all within an area of less than 300 square meters. What an interesting spot—something makes it just right for a tiny woodland.

The Knob stands as a high point because it’s made of harder erosion-resistant rock. Does water accumulate underground in rock fractures, where it's accessible to tree roots?

Trees are on the shady slope below and left of the Knob's summit.

The Laramie Basin, with the Medicine Bow Mountains and Snowy Range beyond. Hutton Lake is mid-photo, the Knob on the left and causeway on the right.

I love Nature's puzzling surprises! So even though it's barely a tree, I think I will follow this juneberry—if that’s indeed what it is. Stay tuned.

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Monday, January 4, 2016

Juneberry Dreams

Juneberry in its prime.

It's time for tree-followers to pick a tree. For 2016, I want to follow a juneberry—a tree with a rich store of stories and yummy fruit. But first I have to find one.

June “berries” are pomes—from Latin for apples. They look like little apples and are in the same subtribe, but the flesh is juicy instead of mealy. Source.

You may know juneberry as serviceberry, sarviceberry, shadbush, shadblow or some variation thereof. The US government chose Saskatoon serviceberry as the official common name for our juneberries (USDA NRCS). I prefer juneberry or sarviceberry. The scientific name is Amelanchier alnifolia.

Sarviceberries grow here in southeast Wyoming, but no specific locations came to mind. So I turned to the internet. Many herbaria (plant specimen repositories) are digitizing their holdings and putting them online, creating digital (virtual) herbaria. These are wonderful resources! I was sure I'd find herbarium records for sarviceberry in our area.

Amelanchier specimen from the Laramie Plains. Rocky Mountain Herbarium Specimen Database.

Fortunately for Wyoming botanists, the Rocky Mountain Herbarium (RM) at the University of Wyoming is in the process of digitizing. This is a truly Herculean task. The RM is the tenth largest herbarium in the US, with about 800,000 specimens. Still, they’ve made enough progress that I found 56 locations for Amelanchier in Albany County:

Juneberry collection locations in Albany County, Wyoming. These are on public land; locations on private land do not display. Rocky Mountain Herbarium Specimen Database.

Some locations are rough approximations—that’s the usual case for older collections. Early botanists didn’t bother so much with collection data. And many of these places won’t be easily accessible until the snow melts. But I found a half dozen specimens from well-described locations near roads, including three with GPS coordinates noted by the collector. I should be able to find these, hopefully in the near future.

Juneberry in June. Black Hills, South Dakota.

The next challenge is identification. Juneberry is easy to recognize in flower or leaf, but I don’t want to wait until May or June. So I had better hone my winter id skills—become familiar with its bark, buds, leaf scars and so forth.

In the University of New Hampshire’s guide to Winter Shrub Identification (Amelanchier includes shrubs and small trees), winter buds are described as “pinkish, long, tapering; bud scales overlapping and twisted at the tip.” Virginia Tech’s fact sheet says they are “about 1/2 inch long with red, imbricate scales that are hairy along the margin.” [Bud scales are small tough modified leaves that protect the bud. Not all plants have them.]

Winter buds of Amelanchier alnifolia (Oregon State Dept. of Horticulture).

Bark descriptions include “smooth, gray or brown, often with longitudinal stripes” (source), and “thin, light brown and tinged with red; smooth or shallowly fissured” (source).

Trunk of Amelanchier alnifolia, about two inches across. Black Hills.

I'm optimistic that I will find at least one juneberry patch in the next few months. Stay tuned for progress reports. They will come monthly as part of the virtual gatherings of tree followers kindly hosted by The Squirrelbasket. The upcoming one began January 7, and lasts a week. See more information and reports here.

Tree-following is always interesting and sometimes an adventure—consider joining us!

Juneberry memories, from a greener time.

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