I took a lot of pictures of flowers while I was in the Rockies this past week. Partly because I like taking pictures of flowers, partly because they were everywhere, and partly because I didn't know what half of them were and wanted to be able to identify them when I got home. Summer was a bit delayed this year, so I was lucky that most of the June-July flowers were still out in August!
(My "trusty" plant book is Wild Flowers of Alberta, by R.G.H. Cormack. Reprinted in 1977. Inherited from who knows where. The pictures are a bit dodgy, so if I've misidentified anything, it's probably my fault, but I'll blame the book.)
Alpine Valley Plants: While these are not really technically "alpine" because I never saw them while I was on any mountains, red paintbrush is everywhere along the highways. I took this first shot along Icefields Parkway. (forcing Ken to pull over, because I was "worried we wouldn't see anymore". Well, there might have been about a 2km stretch with none...Cleary I don't go to the mountains in the summer much.) The thistle I found at Cedar Lake near Golden. There is also a ridiculous amount of Common Fireweed and Canadian Thistle and Ox-Eye Daisies all over the place.
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| Common Red Paintbrush |
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| Bull Thistle |
Mount 7 Plants: These next plants I found in a meadow at the top of Mount 7 (elevation 1942m). Mount 7 looks over Golden from the east, and you can drive up to almost the top, where there is a paraglider launch site. The field is very grassy, and chock full of Alpine Fireweed (shorter and redder than the common kind) and Ox-eye Daisies. In between, there are lots of little (less weedy) alpine plants. I was able to identify most of them, but there are a few that I have no idea what they are (which probably means they are not local). If anyone knows, please let me know!
(Thanks friends for the help identifying the plants! Think they're all accurate...)
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Kudos to Kerstin for identifying this as
Northern Gentian! Good to have a horticulture
teacher for a friend! |
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Best guess is that these are some kind of dianthus...
Which is definetly not native, so who knows where
they came from - thanks Lindsay! |
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| Mountain Goldenrod (foreground) |
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Thanks to Shawn who was able to
identify this as Round-Leaved Alumroot! |
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| Bladder Campion |
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Tiny bumblebee (size of my pinky fingernail)
in an Ox-eye Daisy |
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| Alpine Harebell |
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| Bunchberry |
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| Alpine Fireweed |
Kicking Horse Mountain (Terminator Ridge): The summit of Kicking Horse Mountain is a lot higher up than the launch site on Mount 7 (elevation around 2,300m), and the ridges are a much harsher environment for a plant to grow in (much less a flowering plant! All those delicate parts...) As a result, the plants that do grow there tend to be hardy, slow growing, and smaller. Flowers are smaller and more scattered, but I was still pleasantly surprised by the amount and variety that I saw! There was some overlap in species between Terminator Ridge and CPR Ridge, but I only wanted to post pictures of each type once.
We hiked the back side of Terminator Ridge, which was relatively sheltered (by Terminator Peak), and had lots of protected patches where tiny plants could grow (including ridiculous amounts of Saxifrage... it was everywhere!). I was able to identify all these plants, and I'm almost positive I got them all right!
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| Alpine Arnica |
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| Common Stonecrop |
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| Common Saxifrage |
Kicking Horse Mountain (CPR Ridge): CPR Ridge is much narrower, and doesn't have the shelter of a peak like Terminator Ridge. The plants I found there were much lower to the ground than the ones on the other ridge. Mostly there was lots of Mountain Heather. Mainly white, but some yellow (I didn't manage to take a decent picture of that).
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I think the little white ones are Pygmy Flowers |
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| Purple Beard Tongue and Pygmy Flowers?? |
(I would like to apologize for the dodgy-ness of some of these pictures... tiny plants on rock faces are sometimes hard to get to, and I am not a mountain goat.
I would also like to apologize for the ugliness of this post... moving these pictures around was a huge pain in the behind, so I kinda gave up on spacing them out nicely! I kept on accidentally deleting them, which involves lots of creative cursing and isn't good when you have to re-look up what they are! Sigh....)
