Alberta Wanderings

[cohan]

A pause in posting the mountain pics.. from a short walk up the road, some Castillejas... the Flora shows only C miniata in my area, but lutescens and occidentalis are not terribly far away, and I do wonder how carefully surveyed this 'agricultural' area has been! I saw mention of a possible hybrid for similar plants to those I have seen in my area on flickr.....
I posted elsewhere and earlier, photos of Castilleja a couple miles from here, a varied colour colony, with many beautiful mixed colours; even closer to home, starting about a 1/4 mile up the road, and continuing in varying densities on both sides for at least a half mile.. this colony is not as mixed--most plants are in the salmon to orange/scarlet range, but there are some of the near whites and other pale colours, and an occasional true red (less orange)..
full album: https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/July102011Castilleja
and the companion album of other plants, not yet captioned:
https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/July102011BesideThePaintbrushes

just a sampling here

[Lori S.]

Nice range of colours!  Can't help you out, off-hand, with IDs though... I've lacked the concentration to apply the key myself.  It seems to be largely the shape of the bracts, at any rate...

[cohan]

Nice range of colours!  Can't help you out, off-hand, with IDs though... I've lacked the concentration to apply the key myself.  It seems to be largely the shape of the bracts, at any rate...

Thanks, Lori--yeah, I haven't sat down with the glossary myself yet, either...lol.. I had basically thought it was really variable miniata, but I just have not seen anything online (which I no means not that much!) showing this level of variation.. I happened on a flickr posting  taken a little south of here, with a mixed colour plant similar to those at the other site nearby,(see this album:
https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/Castilleja2009

and someone more knowledgeable was suggesting it looked like a hybrid..he was hoping to get into Canada to see some of them, so I'm watching that thread for further replies...
If I get a chance and think of an easy way to tag that I can find and doesn't draw too much attention from the road, lol, I may go mark some of the colour forms just up the road to see if they come at all true from seed (something I really doubt)

[Hoy]

Colour variation of flowering plants are rather common! Especially albino/luteo forms pop up now and then. Here the common cranesbill (Geranium sylvaticum) often have white or pink flowers rather than the common red-violet(?) forms.

[cohan]

C miniata does have some normal colour variations, but not usually this much.. still, with no clear alternatives, I was just assuming that these populations had more variation than what I could find in any of the  books I have, or online; recently, though, I have been in touch with someone in U.S. who is more familiar with the genus, and he believes these may be hybrids with one or more species besides miniata; I'm waiting till he is back home from fieldwork to take a closer look at my photos from two sites near here
Interestingly, there is not much colour variation in most of the local wildflowers (that come to mind now!) and mostly quite subtle.. Geranium richardsonii is my local geranium, and ranges from pure white to white with pink veins to almost pinkish white...lol

[cohan]

Okay, I thought at least I should finish that May 31 trip to the mountains started so long ago!
https://picasaweb.google.com/111492944361897930115/AlbertaRockyMountainsMay312011IHildaRidge
On the way home, not so very far from the Columbia Icefield, and still at fairly high altitude- below the timerline, but not by a whole lot---
Hilda Ridge. This is a roadside pullout area, between the Columbia Icefield and where the road drops back down again, going south. Based on the notices posted at the entry to the site, there is some sort of access to skiing from here, not sure where/how.. never been up there in winter, and not likely to do so, driving through a long stretch of avalanche prone roads to get there!... I go there for the plants...



Not a large area, it has fairly steep to steep gravel/stone slopes, treed to varying degrees, which fall down to a river on three sides, and the highway  and then higher slopes rising on the fourth side. There are some exposed areas with nice plants along ridge edges and down the slopes, as well as among open trees and bushes on the flat top of the site, and also down into shadier places among denser tree growth and shaded slopes. Shaded areas still had significant snow on May 31, and it was not long gone in the open it seemed...

[cohan]

Still at Hilda Ridge.  https://picasaweb.google.com/111492944361897930115/AlbertaRockyMountainsMay312011IHildaRidge
Earlier, we were talking about Anemones I'd seen in a few places, including on this trip, a half hour or so (? rough remembering) up the road at the Columbia Icefield. There, what was presumably Anemone parviflora was found, commonly growing through Arctostaphylos rubra. Here, it was growing in mats of Arctostaphylos uva-ursi... Still generally no more than 10cm high...

Anemone parviflora with Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

      

   

Arctostaphylos uva-ursi

[cohan]

https://picasaweb.google.com/111492944361897930115/AlbertaRockyMountainsMay312011IHildaRidge

Some little Crucifers; I just don't have enough knowledge of these to attempt names- and I don't think I've ever seen these plants in seed, so no help there.. I presume the yellow flowers (though there are bright and creamy yellow flowers) and the white (leaves also look different) are different species, but wouldn't swear to it!

Unidentified Brassicaceae

   

Unidentified Brassicaceae, with Arctostaphylos uva-ursi and Zigadenus elegans in first image

           

Unidentified Brassicaceae, white flowers, with tiny Sedge (Carex sp?)

                                 

[cohan]

Last two for this site:
https://picasaweb.google.com/111492944361897930115/AlbertaRockyMountainsMay312011IHildaRidge

Salix species;  a mid-sized willow as far as I remember- i.e. a metre or so tall, at least; I think I photographed ground hugging species at this site later in the year (not this year) but no sign of them this early..



An Antennaria species in an exposed spot in gravel at ridge's edge; definitely not attempting these, and especially without flowers.. these higher altitude plants seem to have slightly proportionately wider, shorter leaves, and a less tight mat than those in dry places farther down..

[Hoy]

Very nice, Cohan!
Had I found those brassicas here I had taken them for some Draba species but over there .. no idea

[McDonough]

Yes, they surely look like Draba species to me too (the yellow and pale yellow ones).  Not sure just how many Draba species are in your area, but it would be fun (at least for me, it would be fun) to hit the floras and keys to attempt an ID on those little beauties.  They would make good subjects for a trough garden.

[cohan]

Thanks Trond and Mark-- yeah, I figured Draba too, likely; there are a lot of them in the mts here! And so far I only have the very tiny maps in Flora of Alberta-- the whole province in a couple of cm- so I can't tell exactly where those tiny dots are, other than in the mountains, near a large river, etc
As for keys, I've glanced at them, but without seedpods (none present so early  in the year) it seems very unlikely I can tell much for sure... Likely that site has been officially botanised, but I have not seen any such information yet... I agree, they are very charming plants I'd be happy to grow

[cohan]

Continuing on the May 31, 2011 trip into the mountains...
Continuing on from the last site, still on the Icefields Parkway which goes between Banff and Jasper townsites; The road has been up not too far from the treeline, and continues at that altitude for a while longer as we head back south, then drops down much lower, following a river valley  much of the way back to our turn west at the Saskatchewan River Crossing..
At the high levels at the end of May, there was still snow in many places, and only the earliest plants were growing or flowering.. farther down, things were beginning to green...
These are just shots taken from the vehicle while we were driving (no, I wasn't the one driving while taking photos

 

   

[cohan]

Another break in sequence, I wanted to post some images of Gentiana, and decided the full posting should go here...

Here is a plant that I don't think is too common around here ( mind you, I have realised I have pretty stiff standards for common, as we do have numerous species that will be found at nearly any site you look at, and certainly in nearly every spot with a suitable habitat)- I have only run into it twice so far, in quite different spots maybe 10-12 miles apart as the crow flies..
The funny thing is, the first time I saw it, on of my earliest bicycle botanising trips, in 2009,  it was on a spot of medium moisture, in a strip of land between a field and the roadside ditch, not far (100 metres at a wild guess, maybe less) from a farmstead, and since this site also had the only presumably escaped colony I've seen of Campanula rapunculoides, I actually thought this was another garden escape- especially since the only wildflower book I had at the time did not mention any true Gentians in my area!
It wasn't until I found it again, in 2010, that I realised it must be a native, and once I looked in some other books, realised it could be Gentiana affinis- I still haven't carefully compared it to the formal description, but it should be the only true Gentian in my area...
This first plant (and I only saw one plant maybe 2) was fairly robust, probably around 30 cm, with numerous flowering stems. My old camera has issues with blue/violet, and I don't think the colour is quite right in these photos, I think it should be a bit deeper and bluer (I've edited, but still take it with a grain of salt); though I don't remember the other population as being so blue--they exactly matched the Gentianopsis they were growing with- more violet; maybe it was just about the kind of light on those occasions! I'll have to try to find some this year with the new camera!

 

I did get back to this site, September 24 of the same year, and got some seed (unsown- thinking it was a garden escape at that time, I didn't give it much priority! wonder if it's still viable?), here's what it looked like then:

 

[cohan]

Now the other site, from 2010- a bit later, Aug 25 (Aug 18 above), yet the plants seem not as far along- first off, much smaller plants- single stems and not as tall, a wetter location in a roadside ditch, and I think a cooler August, I believe Aug '09 was quite warm, whereas we'd already had frosts at this time in '10- I was thinking it very late for plants to be just getting going on their flowering-- surely a risky strategy in this climate- I wonder if they got to make seed even that year? They seemed a bit later even than the Gentianopsis crinita they were growing with, which were also in flower, but did have a number of spent blossoms and some seed capsules coming along even if not fully ripe...
These plants had some red on the leaves as well as stems (possibly from the cold nights) and overall charmed me more than the larger, more floriferous specimen had the year before!