Flower colors

The flowers of any species are typically controlled by genes and are usually of a certain color: bog cranberry typically has pink flowers, starflowers are white, forget-me-nots are blue, and so on. Biologists often think that deviations from those norms would break up the important relationships with the usual pollinators of each species, causing failures of reproduction. And perhaps that often happens. However, over the course of thousands of years of evolution, there must have been many mutations of flower color (including UV) and many of them must have found an adequate pollinator—otherwise we would not see the array of flower colors that we do. Natural selection favored some of those mutants, and they persisted, then becoming more common (and eventually the norm) in a population.

So it may be interesting to consider flower-color variation in some of our local species. In some species, flower color is almost constant across the population: e.g. lupines are blue, with occasional pink- or white-flowered individuals; northern geraniums are pink, with rare white-flowered individuals. In other cases, there’s a continuous range of hue: wild iris flowers are usually deep, rich purple, but some are paler, even lavender, while others are various shades of reddish purple. Rice-root (chocolate lily to local folks) flowers are usually maroon-brown, but some plants make flowers that are mostly yellow with brown lines, and there are many intermediates. On the road above Eaglecrest, there’s a stand of white-flowered river-beauty, not just one individual but an aggregation of them, quite unlike the usual pink-flowered ones.

Photo by Denise Caroll

Photo by Deana Barajas

Photo by Denise Carroll

That raises obvious questions about the pollination of these variants. Are the variations determined simply by genes or are there environmental effects too? Who pollinates the variants? Do pollinators favor the normal deep purple irises, or the brown rice-roots, thus reinforcing the norms? How well do the variants reproduce: Do pink or white lupines reproduce (as either pollen donors or pollen receivers) as well as blue ones; do yellow rice-roots do as well as brown ones? If so, could the variant colors spread? Could the white-flowered river beauties show how a variant could spread more widely?

There are cases of environmental effects on flower color, with potential consequences for pollinator interactions. The hues themselves are presumably determined genetically, but the environment affects gene expression—which genes are turned on or off, for instance. The best known, perhaps, is that in certain species of hydrangea the colorful sepals can be blue, or red, or something in between. Flower color in this hydrangea is sensitive to soil conditions: in acid soils that contain aluminum ions, the flowers are blue, but if the soil is alkaline or neutral, the flowers are pink or red. The color change may affect visitations by pollinators, but so far I have found no information about this.

However, in two other, less well-known, instances, flower-color changes on individual plants are associated with pollinator changes:

Moricandia arvensis is a type of mustard that grows in semiarid and arid ecosystems in the western Mediterranean area. Recent studies have found that the difference between spring climate conditions (mild, wet) and summer conditions (hot, dry) produce quite dramatic changes in the flowers produced by each individual plant. In one set of conditions, the flowers have large, purple petals that reflect UV light; in the other set of conditions, the petals are small, white, and UV-absorbing, with a different shape as well. Experiments showed that the floral changes are a response to changes in temperature and photoperiod that correspond to the seasonal shift. Conveniently, there were corresponding changes in the pollinators of the flowers (from long-tongued bees to small bees, small beetles, and butterflies) and seed production was achieved.

Equally intriguing is a recent study that found effects of herbivory on floral traits. Black mustard (Brassica nigra) is native to parts of the Old World and considered to be invasive on the Pacific coast of North America. Individuals of this species altered many floral characteristics in response to insect herbivory—reflectance of the petals, morphology, composition of volatile compounds, nectar and pollen production. If that’s not sufficiently amazing, then consider that the particular floral response varied with the specific insect herbivore. The pollinator fauna shifted too and successfully effected seed production.

These two examples, both from the mustard family, raise interesting questions. They are present-day examples of pollinator shifts; individuals of these two are sufficiently flexible to engage different sets of pollinators under different conditions. By so doing, they may extend their reproductive seasons or overcome some effects of herbivory. What is it about these plants that allows them (but not many others) to do this, and do any other plants do so? Maybe they do–and have yet to be discovered? It’s a fertile area for more research.

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Cowee Meadows observations

A splendid, sunny day at the end of May called for a visit to the flowery meadows on the Pt. Bridget trail. The day started off well—in the first muskeg near the trailhead, we saw flowers of eight species. As a bonus, “Quick, three beers!” sounded repeatedly from the edge of the muskeg—my first olive-sided flycatcher of the year.

Bracken fern was still unfolding along the trail into the forest and a few more flowers there were added to the list. A Pacific wren sang and a sapsucker called from a dead tree. Small white butterflies made courtship pursuits and a few tiny blue butterflies flitted by. The skunk cabbages were fading, but many of the sturdy inflorescences entertained a variety of small flies and beetles; the beetles are thought to be the main pollinators of skunk cabbages, but perhaps the flies can do the job too.

Emerging into the main lowland meadows, we were greeted by a wide expanse of bright yellow, chiefly buttercups in full bloom, with some tall blue lupines adding a bit of micro-topography. Below that cheerful canopy was an understory of pinky-purple shooting stars, and in certain places there was an under-understory of white strawberry flowers. It would be a while before the irises bloom; as expected, the buds were still small and safely enfolded in the vertical leaves. Wilson’s warblers sang along the edge of the meadows and savannah sparrows popped up out of the meadow greenery briefly, before diving back into cover.

Dawdling along, looking at flowers and bugs, we finally reached the estuary of Cowee Creek and settled onto a log at the very upper edge of the beach for a picnic. There we were greeted by strident calls and a black bird with a long red bill (and oddly pale legs) marched toward us while his mate lingered down by the water. I hadn’t been scolded by an oystercatcher for ages, so this was a welcome sound. This fellow walked up from the water-side, over a stretch of cobbles, until he was about thirty feet from our log. There he walked back and forth, parallel to the upper edge of the beach but below the highest tide line, as if patrolling a boundary. When we showed no signs of further encroachment, he settled down on a rock to watch for many minutes. He took time off to chase a raven upstream but came back to his guard duty. As we packed up to leave, he ambled down to his mate by the water. They will nest just above the high tide line, laying eggs in a shallow cup of sand.

Photo by Kerry Howard

Meanwhile, four female mergansers floated on the big creek, causing me to wonder if they were not nesting this year. A kingfisher hovered for a long time over a side channel, then dove and flew downstream out of sight, so its hunting success was unrecorded.

There are several large stands of sweetgale out in the meadows. This aromatic shrub has separate sexes, distinguishable by the flowering spikes: female spikes are smaller and bear a red tuft on the tip. As we’ve observed on previous trips out here, female individuals seem to be much rarer than males. But why??

By the time we got back to the car, we’d tallied over thirty species of flowers. Not bad for a partial tour of those big meadows. I was pleased to see small flies of several types visiting some of these flowers, along with a few small bees. Bumblebees were scarce, but a few zoomed around and one landed on a lupine. This activity was a big contrast to a recent walk up the Crow Hill trail, on an equally nice day, when not a single flower had an insect visit.

The main trail has been greatly improved by the trail crews, and it looks like they intend to deal with a few more spots. No-see’ums and mosquitos were all too active and will become more so…

July explorations

Toward the end of July I hiked with some friends around Cropley Lake at Eaglecrest. It was the first full day of sunshine after something like three weeks of nearly continuous rain and cool temperatures. We reveled in the dazzling light and warmth. Some of us hoped we’d find yellow fireweed and sky-blue gentians blooming on the soggy back side of the lake, but apparently we were too early. Maybe the unseasonable weather slowed them down.

Swamp gentian. Photo by Bob Armstrong

But there were other things to be seen. Millions of swamp gentians starred the meadows, interspersed with the tiny pink dots of bog cranberry. As we approached the elevation of the lake, there were clear signs of late spring: the last of the spring violets and Jeffrey’s shooting star, and swathes of bog laurel. Late spring mingled with summer: little iris-like Tofieldia and leatherleaf saxifrage, with inflorescences of varied shades of red, were common; grass of Parnassus was about to bloom. Pink paintbrush prefers this habitat to the lower-elevation gravelly flats occupied by the yellow paintbrush species. The big treat was seeing dozens upon dozens of butterworts in bloom. Sometimes called ‘bog violets’ for a supposed resemblance to true violets, butterworts are not related to violets at all (although they both may have purple flowers). Butterworts are insectivorous, catching bugs on their flattened, sticky, yellowish leaves that are not a bit like violet leaves.

Paintbrush. Photo by Bob Armstrong

Earlier in the month, during all that rain, we made a special trip to Cowee Meadow. On a previous visit, we’d finally discovered what the female inflorescences of sweetgale looked like when they were in flower, and now the goal was seeing the mature form. By luck, our timing was good—the female inflorescences made slim, brown, cone-like structures, whose scales opened up to release seeds. By traipsing around for a while in the meadows, we also found more female plants than we’d found earlier, so females aren’t quite as rare as we thought (although still vastly outnumbered by male plants).

We happened to look at some fireweed flowers. I don’t know what attracted our attention, but when we looked attentively, we noticed that many of the flowers had no visible female parts. Fireweed flowers are both male and female, with a set of stamens with pollen-bearing anthers around a conspicuous, white, four-branched stigma for receipt of pollen. But some of these flowers seemed to be missing the big stigma.

After much closer attention, we found that the female structure was there, but small and drooping and apparently with the four branches both short and closed up tightly, as if they’d never fully matured. Fireweed inflorescences bloom from the bottom up, so older flowers are borne below younger ones, with unopened buds up at the top. But age of flower did not account for the development of female parts; both young and old flowers often lacked fully developed stigmas.

What is going on here? Is this just something I should have noticed long ago? Or could the long spell of un-summery weather have made the plants decide not to even try to receive pollen and make seeds?

Everywhere we wandered in the meadows, we found recent bear digs, usually for angelica roots. In some cases, the edible root-nodules of chocolate lily (rice-root) had been incidentally dug up too, but were left uneaten.

Back in the middle of July, on the Crow Point/Boy Scout trail, I watched a hummingbird visiting yellow paintbrush. It dipped in, then floated (or so it seemed) high into the air before coming back down to try another flower in the same patch. It tried a few flowers but soon zipped away, as if to seek better foraging elsewhere.

Red fruits of baneberry decorated the sides of the berm edging the goose flats. The felwort that we often see later in summer wasn’t blooming yet. But the wide meadow between the trail and the river was covered with white arctic daisies (Chrysanthemum arcticum), not to be confused with the weedy, alien white daisies on the roadsides.

A search for Salicornia in the big goose flat was futile for what seemed like a long time. But finally we struck the right microhabitat and found a lot of it—a tasty snack! This highly salt-tolerant annual plant is known as glasswort or saltwort or sea asparagus, among other common names.

Rambles in Gustavus

I recently spent a couple of days roaming the trails in Gustavus, along with three other curious naturalists. Gustavus lies on the outwash plain created when the melting glacier of Glacier Bay poured its silty, gravelly meltwaters through Cooper’s Notch. Post-glacial rising of the land made the sandy plain more expansive. Now Gustavus offers a different array of habitats than are found in the nearby spruce-hemlock forest at Bartlett Cove or in Juneau. I love to visit Gustavus to visit friends but also because I enjoy the variety that’s just a nice ferry ride away.

One of our excursions took us on the Nagoonberry Trail, which passes through meadows, shrublands, and young spruce groves. Just for fun, we counted the number of wildflowers that we found in bloom. There were at least forty-seven species, exclusive of grasses and sedges. For comparison, a similar recent count in the lower subalpine zone on Gold Ridge turned up over fifty species—and there would have been more if we’d gone to the top of the ridge. A few years ago, we found over seventy flowering wildflowers in Cowee Meadows. I think that’s quite impressive. We don’t have to go to the tropics to find good diversity.

For some reason, lady-slipper orchids of several species are found in Gustavus, although I’ve never seen one in Juneau. A favorite one is the sparrow’s-egg orchid, with its very small ‘slipper’; it is also reported to be common in the Yukon. This species self-pollinates, and we found a robust specimen in which every flower had produced a fat seed pod. Nearby, there were three other kinds of orchids in bloom. I don’t recall any place in Juneau where I’ve seen four kinds of orchids growing within a few feet of each other.

We were entertained by bird families wherever we went. Lots of little ‘chip’ notes or thin ‘seet’ notes drew our attention to fluttering wings in the vegetation, which turned out to be little groups of juveniles with their parents—ruby-crowned kinglets, juncos, savanna sparrows, and chickadees. Young barn swallows were on the wing too. Lincoln’s sparrows were singing frequently, perhaps thinking about second broods. Sadly, we found two dead, well-grown juvenile hermit thrushes, in two different locations and so presumably not of the same family. They were very thin, and we wondered if the recent dry conditions had made it hard for them to find their own food.

We made a now-traditional visit to the gravel pits to look for toad tadpoles (aka pollywogs). Thousands of them were tightly clustered in the shallows at the bottom of a pool. At this time, only a few had started to grow hind legs; most of them were still just tadpoles. Presumably most of the remainder (if they survive lurking predators) will metamorphose and disperse as tiny toadlets later in the summer. I was curious about the derivation of their names. An internet source claims that both names come from Middle English: the first means ‘toad-head’ and the second one means ‘head-wiggle’.

One morning we were gifted with a boat exploration of the lower part of Glacier Bay. Around the long, low moraine at Point Carolus there were humpbacks breaching and kittiwakes foraging. Little flocks of red-necked phalaropes flitted about. Phalaropes are unusual because in these species it is the males who do the parental care and the females who are more colorful and aggressive; sometimes a female has two males on her territory, rearing their chicks. On the way back into Bartlett Cove we paralleled a roving pod of transient killer whales. Even the tourists ashore in the cove could watch these whales, but they probably could not observe that a sea otter speedily departed in the opposite direction from that of the killer whales.

Everywhere we looked in the lower bay there were sea otters, foraging and loafing. Our boat captain reported that on trips up-Bay, sea otters were observed hauled out on icebergs and reefs, a behavior seldom reported (in my hearing or reading, at least). This observation reminded me of the historical accounts of the emergency camp of the St Peter’s crew on Bering Island during the winter of 1741-1742, when Captain Bering died and Georg Steller discovered the now-extinct sea cow. The stranded, sickly crew unwittingly wiped out an entire species of flightless cormorant, as well as uncounted numbers of foxes, ptarmigan, and other animals. They slaughtered many hundreds of sea otters, partly for the furs (to gamble with, while passing the time!) and partly to eat. Great numbers of sea otters were hauled out on beaches, where they had never experienced any predators, and were (at first) ignorant of predatory humans, making them easy to slaughter. It seems that sea otters are more inclined to use terrestrial (or icy) haulouts in times and places where they are not harassed or persecuted.

We interrupted the boat ride with a short beach walk on the west side of Glacier Bay. Here we found that others had walked the beach before us, leaving evidence of their passing. Big moose tracks, indistinct prints of canids (wolf or coyote), and very impressive tracks of a big brown bear (at least eight inches wide), along with some prints of a quite small bear. That made us extra-alert.

On many of our Gustavian rambles we saw the purple and pink flowers of beach pea. Or so I thought. A more knowledgeable naturalist said No, not all of those are beach pea. Some have smaller, paler flowers and tend to be less sprawling than ordinary beach pea. So then we began to look more closely and, indeed, there were two different kinds of pea (closely related, in the same genus). The vibrantly colored beach pea has angular stems with no flanges (or ‘wings’), while the paler, smaller-flowered one has stems with wings. That one is called ‘wild pea’ in one field guide but is not even mentioned in another. So now I must revisit some of the Juneau beaches to see if wild pea grows here too.

Altogether, a highly satisfactory Gustavian visit in the company of fine companions.

Summer ending…

Summer seems to be closing down all too quickly. Bird song is past, replaced by the chips and squeaks of juvenile birds scuttling in the underbrush. Even the late-hatching mallard ducklings have their full-on adult plumage and no longer hang out with Mama all the time. Fireweed is already done blooming in most places (in very early August, yet!), a sure sign that fall is upon us.

Here and there we can see some late-season wildflower stragglers, putting out their last flowers of the year. However, a few wildflowers are just getting started: the little blue-flowered felwort (a.k.a. star gentian) along the Boy Scout trail in the grassy meadow near the slough; the purple-flowered northern gentian and the sky-blue gentian on Gold Ridge.

For many plants, this is a time for dispersal of seeds (although cottonwoods and most willows accomplished this earlier in the summer). Mature seed capsules have opened on fireweed, releasing the seeds with their fluffy, white parachutes to float on the breezes. Lupine seed pods have begun to pop open on warm days, scattering the ripe seeds that pitter-patter as they fall through the surrounding vegetation. All over town, the non-native mountain-ash offers its orange, fleshy fruits to willing avian foragers that gobble up the free lunch and excrete the seeds elsewhere.

The whole point of seed dispersal is to send a plant’s offspring away from the mother plant, landing in new sites where they may be able to germinate and grow. If all the seeds just dropped at mama’s feet, so to speak, the competition among those densely packed seedlings would be ferocious, and seed-eaters would be likely to come and demolish the lot in one go. So there are advantages to traveling, but it is always a sort of lottery: most seeds and juvenile plants die, landing in a bad site or picked off by a predator. On the whole, however, it seems to be better to disperse than to congregate.

Plants have evolved many different ways of dispersing their seeds. Here is just a sample, from species here in Southeast.

–By wind: Some seeds bear devices that can lift them on a puff of wind: the fluffy parachutes of fireweed, willow, cottonwood, and dandelion; the propeller-like blade of a twirling maple seed; the small flat wing around the seeds of alder, spruce, hemlock, and rattlebox. Orchid seeds are as small as fine dust, because they (unlike other seed plants) contain no stored material to nourish seedlings; so they easily waft away on a breeze.

Fireweed seeds. Photo by Bob Armstrong

–By water: The seeds of the yellow pond lily are surrounded by a buoyant matrix that keeps the seeds afloat for a few days.

–By animal consumers: The succulent, fleshy fruits of blueberry, salmonberry, twisted stalk, mayflower, lingonberry, devil’s club, and crabapple are eaten by birds and bears, which digest the fruit and excrete or regurgitate the seeds.

–By animals that pick up seeds on fur or feathers (or socks): the prickly seed-heads of avens, the spiky seeds of some grasses, the micro-hooks on capsules (and stems and leaves) of bedstraw and the seeds of sweet-cicely.

–By explosive opening, ballistically shooting out the seeds forcefully: Lupine pods snap open; touch-me-not capsules fly open at a touch, expelling the seeds; mistletoe seeds are expelled with force (and may also sometimes get stuck on passing animals). Wild geranium holds its seeds in five small cups at the base of a long ‘crane’s bill’ with a hinge at the tip; when the mature seed container is dry, the hinge pops opens suddenly and flings seeds vigorously (with a backhand toss). Long ago, I measured the distance achieved in this way, for the eastern species of geranium, and found that seeds could travel at least thirty feet from a plant no more than twenty inches tall. Not bad.

–By shaking: Fern-leaf goldthread bears a whirligig of capsules, each with an opening near the end. If the stem or the capsules are jostled at just the right time and in the right way, a seed flies out. Foamflower puts its seeds in capsules that look like old-fashioned sugar-scoops, with the bottom part longer than the top part. Again, the right kind of jostling releases a seed, which gets an extra impetus from the lever-like action of the lower part of the scoop. Seeds of chocolate lily are stacked tightly in their capsules; the capsules split open and the seeds can be shaken out (they also have small wings that might give them a little glide).

–By unknown means: Some plants produce seeds with no evident means of dispersal, either on the seed itself or on the mother plant—no edible fruit, no hooks, no wings, no ballistics…These species generally have shorter dispersal distances than those with specific dispersal adaptations, so their seeds are likely to be more clustered than those of the other plants; but what are the ecological consequences of their more clustered distribution? Seed shakers probably do a little better. Ballistically dispersed seeds achieve a somewhat wider distribution, and both wind- and animal-dispersed seeds can travel far.

There are other ways for seeds to get around. As Darwin pointed out, they may ride in the mud on the feet of ducks. They may travel in the guts of herbivores that eat the greenery but don’t digest the seeds. Floods may wash them way downstream. These, however, are largely serendipitous events, not specific adaptations resulting from evolution; they may nevertheless be quite effective in moving seeds around.

The pattern of seed distribution around a parent plant is called a ‘seed shadow’. Most seed shadows exhibit a concentration of seeds relatively close to the parent with a long ‘tail’ of fewer seeds, extending to greater distances. Most studies of seed shadows have focused on distances that include the majority of the dispersed seeds. But the tail of the distribution cannot be ignored. It is much more difficult to measure, because there are fewer seeds at greater distances from the parent, and some of the distances can be very long indeed (miles!). But it is those far-travelling seeds that make it possible for plants to colonize new areas.

Here is a little natural history game to play, if you are inclined, as you walk the trails. Try to find as many seed dispersal mechanisms as you can; there are differences among habitats. Can you find plants that have other dispersal mechanisms, and how do they work? Think about other factors that influence the distance that seeds travel (such as the height from which the seed is released). And special kudos to anyone who can send me a good local photo of the seed container of northern geranium after it has flung out the seeds.

Solstice at Cowee Meadows

Around the time of the summer solstice, I spent a couple of nights in the Cowee Meadow cabin, along with some friends and my visiting niece. We like the flower show in the meadows. This year, everything was a bit early (after the sunny, hot month of May) and flowering was somewhat past its best, but nevertheless we noted as many species of plants in flower or just past flowering as we found last year (over 75 species, barring grasses and sedges).

The cabin needed some attention, so we swept it out and washed the windows with plain water, having neglected to bring window cleaner. We brought in window screening and duct tape, so we were able to cobble together screens to exclude the flying bugs and thus keep the windows open. As it happened, however, there were astonishingly few mosquitoes and such (what a difference from last year!). Sitting outside for breakfast, lunch, and dinner was very pleasant.

Every day we cruised around the trails, seeing what we could see. A major highlight was the discovery of a sizable patch of RIPE strawberries—just one big patch; the plants all around this site held only green, unripe berries. This discovery caused a significant delay in our progress but there were big smiles all ‘round!

Photo by Katherine Hocker

These coastal strawberries have a very interesting distribution: they occur naturally along our coasts but different subspecies or varieties also occur on the coasts of Chile and Argentina and, reportedly, in the mountains of Hawaii. The species is thought to have originated in North America, but it was probably carried to South America by migrating birds. There is good evidence that migratory shorebirds can carry seeds and spores of a variety of plants on their long-distance seasonal journeys. Some seeds may stick to feathers and escape being preened off. Strawberries (and other fleshy fruits) are adapted to be eaten by vertebrates, which snack on the fruits and pass the seeds through their guts. Most small birds pass seeds rather quickly, in just a few hours, so viable strawberry seeds travelling all the way from the northern hemisphere across the equator to the southern would require a really quick flight or a long residence time in the gut. I observe, with interest, that the coastal strawberry, Fragaria chiloensis, bears the name of the Chilean island where I spent many happy austral field seasons. Historically, this strawberry was widely used and cultivated in Chile and reportedly was hybridized with another species to create the domestic strawberry.

A small botanical mystery confounded us. We noted that the oysterplants (a.k. oysterleaf) on the upper beach fringe made smaller leaves on the parts of the stems that bore flowers. But on saltbush (a.k.a. orache) plants, flowers were borne on stems with both small and large leaves. Why the difference?

We had a report from later hikers of a sickly bear cub beside the main trail and eventually learned that ADF&G had picked it up. Their investigations failed to reveal any obvious cause of the distress, but clearly the little cub was malnourished and in a very bad way. Nothing could be done to save it, and it was a public safety concern to leave the cub where it was as long as the mother was nearby, so it was euthanized. Some observers later saw a female with one cub and thought that the family of the dying cub had moved on.

Along Cowee Creek a doe with two fawns come out of the woods to the sand bars. The doe was limping from a wound on a hind leg, but she was able to lead her fawns back into the thickets when she detected us a hundred yards upstream.

The meadows were popping with savanna sparrows, including lots of recent fledglings. Lincoln sparrows burbled their complex song along the shrubby edges, maybe contemplating a second brood. As we sat on the beach for a while, a male belted kingfisher came over our heads and landed on a big rock partly exposed by a low tide. Presently, he dove and came up with a long, thin fish. Then he headed overland toward an upstream part of the creek. The next day, we were walking up along the creek and heard a group of kingfishers raising a ruckus. We surmised that the chicks had fledged and were begging, but they all went around a bend of the creek and out of sight before we could be sure.

We watched dragonflies laying eggs: the females repeatedly dipped down to touch the end of the abdomen to the chosen substrate. One species dropped her eggs into open water, while another, larger one (a blue darner, I think) chose to put her eggs in decaying wood.

The wonderfully long days of solstice time gave us lots of time to wander about, including a stroll out to the beach in the evening to watch the sun setting—and anything else that came our way.

Solstice in the sun

It had rained, just a little, during the night, so the wet grass soaked our britches as we waded through it. But for once, these Juneau-ites didn’t whine about the wet—it felt really good! The outdoor temperatures the day before had reached into the seventies and the little cabin in Cowee Meadows was a heat collector. There was no cross-ventilation in the cabin unless we admitted hordes of hungry mosquitoes through the unscreened windows—a choice we were unwilling to accept. For real Juneau folks, this was a heat wave! The Down-Southers may laugh, but it was enough to make us a bit wilted.

So we waded happily through the wet grass, in search of nothing in particular and anything in general, and we found lots of things of interest. We brought to bear a diversity of eyes and mind’s eyes, which made our explorations very productive and more fun; one person could never have seen quite so many things. Here is a sampling:

We stood surrounded by acres of purple and blue iris and lupine, with patches of yellow buttercups. A few tall white cow parsnips and tufts of lady fern added contrast and texture. But if we looked more closely, there were dozens of other flowering species in bloom: roses on the raised berms, shooting stars fading, yellow pond lilies, silverweed, and on and on; the list grew very long. Out along the beach were arrowgrass, beach greens, milkwort, and goosetongue. In fact, when we tallied up all the kinds of flowers we saw (excluding grasses and sedges) from the trailhead out to the rocky beach, we had found a grand total of seventy five species of flowers. That’s pretty remarkable, and it indicates just how very rich this area is.

Wild iris. Photo by Katherine Hocker

Irises came in many shades, ranging from pale blue through royal purple to a gorgeous reddish purple. Beach peas also varied, some with more white, or a deeper pink, or more purple. A big surprise was chocolate lilies that weren’t the usual brownish color (or brown with a few yellow speckles) but rather were entirely yellow (or yellow with a few brown spots). I have to wonder if the color variations affect the behavior of the pollinating insects.

Some species were going to seed, and their ripe fruits or seed pods were diverse in structure and function. Shooting star capsules looked like little red and green easter eggs, sitting in cups. When the capsule dries and splits open, the tiny seeds will be dispersed by the wind. Lupines had been quite well pollinated, but their seed pods were not yet ready to pop open explosively, sending seeds in all directions. Marsh marigold seed heads were like crowns of attractive spikes, each with a little hook, as is common in the buttercup family. Apparently the hook does not contribute to seed dispersal; the seed drops out of the enclosing tissue and floats on the water. We decided that a field guide to fruits and seeds and means of seed dispersal for local plants would be both useful and fun.

Sweetgale shrubs are usually either male or female, although occasionally they are both. Next year’s ‘cones’ were already formed and very small. We noticed that twiglets bearing last year’s female cones were invariably dead, so there seems to be a cost to producing seeds.

The hot weather meant that the insect pollinators were busily visiting flowers. Bumblebees foraged on iris and lupine and beach pea, and their behavior would be worth some detailed attention. The broad, white inflorescences of cow parsnip were covered with foraging flies. Many insects scrobbled over the pollen-rich rose flowers.

It’s the flowers that make these meadows so rich and spectacular, but vertebrate life is also abundant. It was so hot (and rather late into the season for some species) that bird song was at a low level, but I heard a northern yellowthroat singing in the big marsh and warbling vireos in the forest edge. Three kinds of sparrow sang, each in its own habitat.

We visited the colony of beach marmots, who were all down in the cool earth for the day. From the beach berm, we watched a sea otter diving and feeding. A mama seal was accompanied by a small, dark, young one. Whales spouted in the distance, out in Lynn Canal.

Of bears, we saw none. But there was plenty of sign of their presence. Bear-sized trails ran through the thick meadow vegetation. Bear scat decorated the human trails. And one morning we found numerous fresh digs along the upper beach: turned-up moss and soil that hadn’t been there the previous afternoon. Most of the digs were at the bases of rocks, and all seemed to be focused on the roots of species in the carrot family (possibly sea coast angelica and hemlock parsley).

Flowery fun in Gustavus

Lady’s slipper orchids are sometimes called moccasin flowers, referring to the shoe-like shape of the flower. One of the petals is modified to form an oval pouch with an opening on top. The edges of the pouch are rolled inward. A small shield-like structure hangs down into the back of the pouch and behind the shield are the sex organs. The flower offers no nectar to visitors, but at least some species have an attractive aroma.

Bees that visit these flowers enter the pouch, but the rolled-in edges keep them from crawling out. So, once in the pouch, the bees are obliged to crawl up behind the shield, in order to get out again. In doing so, they pass very close to the pollen-receiving stigma, leaving pollen from previously visited flowers, and the pollen-bearing stamens, picking up pollen on their bodies to carry to another flower. A very elaborate system for creating the next generation of lady’s slippers.

After pollination, thousands of dust-like seeds are produced. They are so small that they contain no nutrition for a developing embryo (this is true of orchids in general). Lacking a source of nutrition, the seeds have to rely on forming an association with certain fungi (mycorrhizae), in order to germinate and grow. Lady’s slippers are slow growing and take several years to reach the flowering stage.

There are dozens of species of lady’s slippers in North American and Eurasia. They belong to the genus Cypripedium. This name is derived from some ancient Greek words. Cypris is an old name for Aphrodite (a.k.a. Venus in Latin), the goddess of love and beauty. The ‘ped’ part of the name refers to foot or footwear, sometimes rendered as ‘sandal’. So Cypris/Aphrodite/Venus has a rather large collection of sandals in her wardrobe!

Lady’s slippers were familiar to me, from years spent in the Midwest, but I have never seen them in Juneau. So one of my hopes for a recent Gustavus trip was seeing these in bloom. We’d seen their leaves occasionally in the past, but the plants were not then in flower. On this June trip, with the help of a knowledgeable naturalist there, we located clusters of three species of Cypripedium. There was a large-flowered white one (C. montanum, or mountain lady’s slipper). A small-flowered, round white one with some brownish spots is called C. passerinum (sparrrow’s egg or northern lady’s slipper). A yellow-flowered species has often been classified as a subspecies of C. calceolus, but more recently botanists seem to consider it to be a separate species, C. parviflorum, the small yellow lady’s slipper.

Cypripedium passerinum, sparrow’s egg lady’s slipper. Photo by Kerry Howard

Lady’s slippers and many other showy orchids are often collected from the wild by willful gardeners. But this practice has led to the near-extinction of some species. The slow-growing habit, low levels of pollination and seed set, and the need for mycorrhizal fungi make recovery of exploited populations slow and difficult. So these plants should never be harvested from their native habitats.

Cypripedium parviflorum, small yellow lady’s slipper. Photo by Kerry Howard

We found other orchids too. Tiny twayblades are much more common in Gustavus than in Juneau. They are pollinated by minute flies and wasps, as Darwin documented long ago. Coralroots and so-called rattlesnake plantain are common in Juneau as well as Gustavus.

Orchids were not the only flower show in town, however. Lupines created hills of blue on the beach dunes. Cow parsnips and buttercups brightened beachside meadows. Roses and irises added splashes of color. One meadow was thoroughly decorated with the small white inflorescences of Tofieldia, which is easier to say than the ponderous common name of sticky false asphodel. Sticky it is—the stem sometimes captures tiny insects. Apparently, some botanists thought the inflorescence resembled the European asphodel, which in Greek mythology grew in the meadows where the souls of the dead walked. Great stretches of forest understory were carpeted by the leaves of deerheart, which sent up its small white spires of flowers, and the nearly-luminous, wide, white flowers of bunchberry (one of my companions is alleged to have said that they lighted the way to the outhouse in the darker hours!).

Indian paintbrush provided the most stunning floral array. Here in Juneau we see some yellow-flowered ones and (especially at higher elevations, I think) a few red-flowered ones. But in Bartlett Cove we found a beach meadow simply covered with paintbrush flowers: yellow, red, orange, particolored, and every combination in between. Quite splendid.