Berry Comes to Foothills

Issue 4 of the new plant carnival, Berry-Go-Round, will appear here at Foothills Fancies on April 28th. You may submit your plant-oriented post by emailing subversivescience AT gmail DOT com, or via the automated submission form at Blog Carnival. Deadline for submissions is April 25.

Despite a dusting or two of snow here the last couple days, I plan to go hunting for signs of spring, both out in the wilds and around the blogosphere. By late April, I'm sure we'll all be seeing lots of spring wildflowers. So please send me your own seasonal discoveries for this next edition of Berry-Go-Round. Folks in the southern hemisphere will, of course, be enjoying the fruits of other seasons. However, all posts about plants are welcome. Berry-Go-Round generously allows us to continue to include fungi, so mushrooms and friends can also be included.

Edition 3 of Berry-Go-Round is currently up at Greg Laden's blog, with great reading and new revelations. Check it out!

Hairy Legs Alert

Yes, another arachnid is just around the corner. Bee Lady sent this great photo, taken by her husband Dave in their backyard yesterday.

This little gal/guy was out soaking up some rays in the lovely sunny days we're having of late. Spider lovers, any chance of an ID on this jumping spider? And what was that about big (I want to say pedipalps, is that it?) signifying the males?

How 'bout it Texas Travelers, can you help us out here? Of course, you should click to enlarge this cutie! (Love that brush cut, kinda like my boyfriend back in high school!)

Bee Lady also reports they found pasque flowers up, though not yet blooming, at a foothills park a few miles up the canyon. Two weeks ago we saw buds on the Easter daisies down the trail, and a friend found them blooming on nearby Green Mountain. AND the Squaw Currants (Ribes cereum) and Golden Currants (Ribes aureum) in the backyard are budding to green as we speak. See Shrubs for All Seasons for more on native shrubs.

Even the exotics are putting in an appearance. The oriental elms are in full bloom, witnessed by all who suffer from pollen. Lilac buds are opening, daffodil leaves push up through dead leaves, and all remnants of those late-lying snowbanks have disappeared. All proof that Spring is indeed coming... is here, whatever snows are ahead.

Rites of Spring

Arising early, I was surprised to see lights, many lights, out the "usual view" this morning, having somehow momentarily forgotten the sunrise service that would be taking place at the Amphitheatre. The parking lots were well lit, and strings of cars raveled toward them through the dark. As the sky began to lighten enough for this picture, a few Christians, just a bit late, were still making the pilgrimage.

There's no doubt this spot is sacred; this annual modern ritual confirms an ancestral recognition of its power. Latter-day pagans also gather here, I'm told, on the solstices and equinoxes, drumming and celebrating their own sunrises in other ways. This park, known more than a century ago as "The Garden of the Angels," missed being named "Garden of the Gods" by just a few years as a similar spot 100 miles south captured that priority. Perhaps people gathered there to celebrate this dawn as well.

Dave at Via Negativa is honoring the ancestors today, in another way.

The Urban Disconnect

Lovelock again: "At least 90 percent of us in the first world now live in cities or in suburban areas around them. ... Because our lives are so wholly urban, democracy ensures the election of governments almost entirely out of touch with the natural world."

Now there's a new criterion for judging candidates, unfortunately it would most likely eliminate all of them.

Here's what we've done locally with our little corner of one of the grandest views in North America: the contact between two continental scale physiographic regions, the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains. That's a car dealership in the middle foreground, and our county seat of government behind it, fondly known locally as "The Taj." A testimony to the sensitivity of governments to native ecology. As are the communications towers on the mountain behind.

Which of our candidates (at any level election) ever spent time in the woods as a child? Which of them remembers it?

(Dare I even mention that most of the trees in the foreground are Chinese elms?)

Caught in the Act!

Ummm, what's this? Tasty?

Yikes! Something's watching me! I wasn't doing anything, honest!

Mom, mom!

Yes, dear? What seems to be the trouble?

Oh that, don't worry about her!

I feel safer hiding here with you, mom...

There, there, dear, it's just a camera!

This little drama transpired right outside the door yesterday morning. Baby was so cute and fluffy I couldn't resist a few photos. A yearling (I'm thinking "she") from 2007, apparently, barely tall enough to see over mom's back. She probably doesn't realize that she'll be getting a new little sibling one day soon.

It's tough to keep the juncos fed on a snowy day without encouraging these guys, but short of turning the dogs out... options are limited.

A double demonstration of why they're called "Mule" Deer...

Intersections of Interest

The Husband and I are reading, each in our own separate book. We are so intrigued by these two books that we even read passages out loud to each other, a virtually unprecedented move. This morning I was struck by a sudden intersection between the diverse ideas that landed us squarely in the realm of human (and especially American) psychology.

He's reading Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food. Pollan illuminates the fat phobia that has driven a massive experiment on the American diet in the last thirty years. In fact, we have changed our diets, and (he explains) not for the better: after adopting the claims of nutritionists, we are no more healthy today than we ever were. Across the pond, James Lovelock argues that we have a similar phobia centered on nuclear power, a phobia he considers unfounded and harmful. In The Revenge of Gaia, he demolishes the claims of "renewable" energy sources and postulates that only by adopting nuclear power can we avert imminent climate catastrophe.

So, it would seem, here we are: our environments, internal and external, are now threatened by habits and beliefs we have been persuaded to adopt only in the last three to five decades. Yes, indeed, most interesting, especially perhaps to a generation that grew up protesting having someone else's ideas shoved down its throat.

Food is our most personal and intimate interaction with our external environments, and no one would question that our food decisions can wreak havoc on the planet. But I particularly appreciated Lovelock's perspective on our fears of nuclear waste:

Wild plants and animals do not perceive radiation as dangerous, and any slight reduction it may cause in their lifespans is far less a hazard than is the presence of people and their pets. It is easy to forget that now we are so numerous, almost anything extra we do in the way of farming, forestry and home building is harmful to wildlife and to Gaia. The preference of wildlife for nuclear waste sites suggests that the best sites for its disposal are the tropical forests and other habitats in need of a reliable guardian against their destruction by hungry farmers and developers.

Now that, friends, is delightfully perverse. That is, it seems to contradict our intuitive understanding—until we somehow learn that Lovelock is right. Fear, even irrational fear, provides great protection for natural areas.

I wasn't involved in 1992 when the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, a Superfund site, became a wildlife refuge here in Colorado, so my enlightenment came later, in the struggle to prevent the commercial development of Rocky Flats. The Cold War was over, and the market for plutonium triggers was crashing. The Rocky Flats weapons plant was situated between Denver and Boulder, high on a rocky plateau. Post-war (II) wisdom suggested it be surrounded by a large "buffer zone" to protect neighboring communities, thus the plant site itself occupied less than 10% of the 6,240-acre (2,525 ha) site. Almost ten square miles of mostly undeveloped land was, and is, a rarity in this part of the Front Range. Developers were eager, to say the least.

In the 1990s, the buffer zone and adjoining properties also became the focus of local efforts to preserve a pretty significant ecosystem, the tallgrass prairie. Encroaching development on the east and mountain uplift to the west pinched this plant community into a narrow zone along the foothills, in front of what we call the "mountain backdrop." Thanks to the rocks, the area had never been plowed (it remains, however, too vulnerable to gravel mining). Chronic, sometimes vicious, winds kept it from being overly attractive to settlement or development. This land surface, the Rocky Flats Alluvium, is the oldest undisturbed surface in Colorado.

We made many field trips, most to a spot outside the official buffer zone, but sometimes we signed documents, gave up our cameras, donned dosimeter badges, and toured the inside as well. What made it a special treat was long views across the expanse of prairie, the opportunity to find new and unusual plants, and, above all, the absence of people and cows. This was grass that hadn't been grazed by domestic stock for more than 30 years! The sense of solitude, and tall waving grasses around us, gave us the illusion of traveling back in time. The guards in the towers with rifles didn't make much difference: they watched us just as closely when we were outside the fence.

By June 2004, access had become easier, and teams of scientists and volunteers conducted a 24-hour Bioblitz in the Rocky Flats area, recording almost 1,400 species of living beings in this 10-sq-mile sample of mixed grassland. Click on "All the Species" at the above-linked page for a list of the results. Don't you wonder what we'd find if we looked at other places this closely!

Soon it became clear that hundreds of acres of native tallgrass prairie, unusual plants, and healthy wildlife populations would not be enough to save this area from development—but public fears of radioactivity could help. In 2005, despite protests, the area was designated Colorado's newest National Wildlife Refuge, with the Dept of Energy retaining management of a central core to mitigate safety concerns. Although people can visit to hike and view wildlife, many of those who commented on the refuge proposal during the years of negotiation will continue to avoid the area because of health concerns. And that's just fine with 1,396 species of plants, lichens, fungi, insects, spiders, other arthropods, birds, mammals, and one fish!

Weather Goes Poikilothermic

What a fun word, that. When we learned it in college biology (or could it have been high school?), we found a mnemonic—it was dubbed "poky," for those abrupt ups and downs you'd see if you graphed it.

Two days in, March is already poikilothermic; probably Colorado weather always is. Yesterday noon it was 72 degrees F here (22C); today it will be about 30 (-1C) at noon, as it is now. Friday it was in the upper 60s F; about 20C. Maybe I should start a graph.

The homeotherms out there (and only homeotherms are out on a day like this) are enjoying the suet and sunflower seeds, not having much of a problem adjusting at all. They were scarce yesterday though, other options for foraging perhaps prevailing. In the "something new" department, nine robins are hanging out in the ash tree, all either fat or fluffed up to stay warm in these mild but blizzard-like conditions. March generally is our snowiest month.

Coming home from errands yesterday, we made a quick stop at the trailhead to check the progress of spring. Dark buds of the Easter daisies, one of spring's first flowers, are tucked tight in the hearts of their tiny rosettes of leaves. They hold a promise, out there under the snow, whispering "soon, soon."

As for colors, there was no "gray light of dawn" this a.m., nor blue either. It went straight to white. I have a picture, but the computer is not cooperating, so I'll add it another time. Doesn't really matter; we can't see anything anyway.

Expecting the Unexpected

To some extent, a foothills canyon is a familiar, known entity. Delightful to explore, but rarely yielding surprises. Or maybe I’ve just been spending too much time in the lower elevations. But last summer’s visits to a hidden gulch just 2,000 ft (610 m) higher than my usual whereabouts brought new discoveries for me, and seemed a rare treat even to the more experienced botanists I took along on future visits. Everyone got excited about this place!

First, that fern. It was everywhere here in the gulch, but I had never encountered it elsewhere. Patience for keying is never my strong suit, but this little guy fell out indisputably at the 4th fern couplet, without a hand lens. That's my kind of fern! My real botanist friends later confirmed the identification. Among Colorado’s modest fern flora it is exceptionally recognizable. The Northern Oak Fern (Gymnocarpium dryopteris) is reasonably rare in Colorado. It had been reported from one locale in my county, but never from this nearby county.

Here's a close-up, courtesy of Priscilla, of those beautiful sori that cinched the ID, if we could have been mistaken before. The fact that they are naked, lacking indusia, and not marginal, separates this from, guess what?, Bracken Fern (Pteridium aquilinum), just in case its delicacy and grace were not enough to distinguish the two.

With a substantial surprise like that right at the start, we began to expect the unusual. Sure enough, more surprises awaited around every twist in the gulch. One after another, plants that were doing quite well here, thank you. I guessed many of these moisture lovers, including my little fern, would be more familiar to readers of eastern North America than they are to me. I may have been wrong.

Let’s start with the wintergreens, all low ground covers with attractive flowers.

Single Delight (Moneses uniflora, Pyrolaceae)
Tiny and shy, this little wintergreen is pretty well established in appropriate parts of Colorado, that is, moist subalpine forests from 8,000 to 11,800 feet (2440-3600 m). It is, however, threatened or endangered in Connecticut, Ohio, and Rhode Island, although it does better in New England and is secure in Canada. You have to make a real effort to see its flower-face, always cast downward and held barely an inch above the ground.

One-sided Pyrola (Pyrola secunda, Orthilia secunda, Pyrolaceae)
Just slightly taller than Moneses is this related species, but its flowers are clustered at the top of their stalk. Widely distributed in mountainous western Colorado from 8200 to 13,000 feet (2500-4000 m), it has been found as low as 7000 ft (2130 m) in exceptional situations. But it seems to be losing ground in the east: strong across southern Canada, as well as in New England and New York, it is threatened or endangered south of about Pennsylvania. It was historically reported as far south as Virginia.

Pink Wintergreen (Pyrola asarifolia, Pyrola rotundifolia var. asarifolia, Pyrolaceae)
Similar story here: threatened or endangered, according to some sources,* in Indiana, Iowa, New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, secure and broadly distributed in southern Canada.

Many more of our discoveries await description: the orchids I failed to capture in photos and those that we were too late to see at all but suspect are there. All the "berries": bunchberry, baneberry, cranberry (sort of)... And of course the special lichens and mosses and liverworts. An entire post will have to be devoted to the fungi. This gulch will feed my foothills fancies for a long time.

All of these plants have a circumboreal distribution. Not in the far north (boreal or arctic), but as close to it as they can comfortably get. In effect, our hidden gulch was in a small peninsula of the Canadian forest, extending down the Rocky Mountains into and through Colorado. When we find these special plants, we recognize them as fringe species, far from home at the edge of their range, hanging on in small patches of cool, mesic habitat wherever possible. They occupy a narrow coastline in a habitat no longer characteristic of Colorado.

There’s a small picture here: this one tiny gulch, about a half-mile (1 km) long and a few hundred yards or meters wide. On this scale, our gulch seems to be a little piece of Subalpine Forest transported downslope, thanks to the cool north-facing slope and the narrowness of the shadowed defile. There was some Englemann Spruce (Picea englemannii), but the co-dominant Subalpine Fir (Abies lasiocarpa seemed to be missing. (This year, I'll search the overstory more carefully.)

But there’s also a larger picture: an image of glaciers flowing across a continent and down from mountain peaks, figuratively pushing a host of plants and animals ahead of the ice and cold. The glaciers have retreated, and the plants follow their favored habitat. The unsettled or alarmed status these plants are given in many states reflects a readjustment on a continental scale, telling us we’re no longer in the Pleistocene. A process underway for the last 10,000 years, this geographic adjustment will be only more visible, more accelerated, in the decades ahead. How much longer will we be able to find these unexpected treasures?

What one finds... will be what one takes the trouble to look for.
—Joseph Wood Krutch

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This and the preceding post are submissions for the plant carnival Berry-Go-Round; edition #2 to be hosted soon at Further Thoughts.

*Explore plant distributions by typing in species names at the USDA Plants Database or at NatureServe. Note that the status categories don't always match, or exactly reflect state records, and they can also vary by subspecies.

Pocket Paradise

Most folks know that much of Colorado is dry-dry-dry… bound to get more so in coming decades, as global warming has its way with us. In fact, early explorers a couple centuries ago suggested it was unlikely any of these western lands (once dubbed the Great American Desert) were appropriate for settlement by Europeans, who are, after all, not well adapted to aridity. (Settlement happened anyway, alas, but that’s another story.)

That’s why it’s so exciting to trip across an exception, as I did last summer. Exploring a small ravine or glen in the foothills (we call them gulches here), I found myself transported into a long-forgotten environment. We’d barely left the car when I realized this spot was unusual. First, there was water running in the bottom of the gulch. Except for major streams, that itself is rare in July at the lower elevations where I live. This spot was somewhat higher, in the upper montane zone at 8,500 ft (almost 2,600 m).

As we scrambled up the gulch, over boulders and downed trees, there was more to be discovered: mosses dripped from available surfaces and leafy liverworts hugged the edges of the tiny stream; trees, big ones, leaned toward each other across the gap. A slug crept across a patch of Marchantia, liverworts studded with gemmae cups or tiny umbrellas representing fecundity. Orchids appeared around every bend.


This was, in short, the forest primeval—or as primeval as we are likely to find on the east slope of the Front Range directly west of Denver. Tucked away in a narrow cut, it had escaped attention for many decades, except for trash tossed in by mountain residents from time to time. People, like nature, seem to “abhor a vacuum.” It had, perhaps, not been changed as severely as the surrounding uplands, which are more vulnerable to logging and fire.

Our attention was captivated by the low plants and shrubs of the ground layer and understory; we scarcely noticed or examined the trees, mostly Douglas-fir or spruce, that created the overstory character and lent a “deep woods” shade to the area. Carpets of ferns were strewn at our feet. We have ferns in Colorado, of course, but few that display the full glory of their eastern kin. I knew I’d never seen these before, and that too was exciting.

That sets the stage. Why here? What secrets does this place hide? The cast of characters will be introduced tomorrow, for the most part. Lest you consider such delay unfair, here are two that, in some sense, most belong here.

The plant is Jamesia americana, waxflower, discovered by Edwin James during the Long Expedition of 1820 and named for him by Gray & Torrey 20 years later. A member of the Hydrangea Family, and a most welcome local endemic in our forests, it has flourished here for 25 million years or more, earning the title "living fossil." Enjoying its flowers is our own Admiral, the Weidemeyer's Admiral (Basilarchia weidemeyerii). This striking butterfly is found in the Rocky Mountains, but neither to the east nor the west.

The fascination of this hidden "fern gulch," its subtlety shown here from a distance, brought us back several more times through the summer. It's the first place I'll go this year, once the snows are off and there are botanical discoveries to be made.

——
This and the following post are submissions for the plant carnival Berry-Go-Round; edition #2 to be hosted soon at Further Thoughts.

The Gray Light of Dawn

Thursday morning, Valentine's Day, we woke to snow. "Here comes the gray light," the Husband said. As every morning, we sipped tea or coffee and watched the light steal across our world. Ever so slowly, the ridge of the hogback took shape out of the gray light, but it was a tentative presence, never becoming solid. Can you see it, looming in the right distance? Its upper edge, outlined by dark junipers, eventually became a blackish line, but the lower snow-covered slopes still blended with the pale sky and air.

The softer slopes of Green Mountain behind remained hidden, visible only to a mind's eye long familiar with this view. Many mornings I've watched the light coming, in various guises but always the same process, not feeling equal to a description. Today, here goes.

But that was Valentine's Day. Those grey mornings are not so typical as a Colorado sunny day. Today, as black and grey gave way to colors beyond description, we knew this day would be bright and clear. The faintest of blues mingled with the palest of yellow from the east to create a "no-color" we've often seen before. On the northern edge of the hogback, further west, a touch of pink was added, but the camera couldn't see it. By now, the entire east face of the hogback is basking in angled sunlight, but our side remains dark. The narrow wedge of light that first touches the rocks and tree tops strikes through the gap in the hogback created by Bear Creek. When we turn, we can barely see it hitting the tops of the foothills to the west, creating a pink or orange glow there.

As the light rises and spreads through the gap, it projects an outline of the hogback onto the red rocks, leaving only their tallest tips highlighted. As the day wears on, this shadow shrinks back to outline the base of the hogback. We don't get many sunsets here; early morning is our time for the colors folks usually associate with the end of day.

I love watching the play of light, but I'm no poet. Thankfully, Eric Andersen is:

Come watch the no colors fade blazing
Into petaled sprays of violets of dawn.

Now that I get what he means, my only question is: which are the "no colors"? Those gray dawns or these indescribable tints of brighter days?

A Kid in the Woods

Kids know the world because they still live in it. They don't see the world as scenery because only real places—landscapes—have meaning to them. They know where the wet places with frogs will be found; where the slippery clay banks are. I thought my idea of a normal childhood was what everyone experienced: now I appreciate how unusual it was. But at that time and in that place, spending childhood in "the woods" and in "the crick" was the way we all did it. Our backyards and neighborhoods weren't wild, really. The land had been tamed long ago. But it seemed wild to us, and that sufficed. We had no developed parks nearby. The closest thing to a park was the school playground, and we ignored that except when school was in session. We spent all our free time outdoors—exploring, imagining, and learning about our world.

What we remember about childhood, another kid in the woods tells me, is not the fun we had but the discoveries we made. We were alone, with no adults to tell us what to think about what we saw and did. We made up our own interpretations. The woods behind our house was just an old abandoned railroad right-of-way, but huge to me. We believed we could make paper or canoes from the chokecherry bark that peeled loose from the trees. A friend and I pretended we were hermits, living in the woods and rarely visiting the townsfolk. We knew where and when to find violets to pick for our moms; knew where there were bluebells in the woods at the other end of the street and knew not to pick them. They were special and rare.

Mostly I remember the creek. In those days I never knew its name and never even thought to ask whether it had one. It was "the crick." It was where the minnows were, where we'd find jewelweed pods to pop, where we'd hunt for fossils and other treasures. We'd build little temporary ponds to house the shiners and darters we caught by hand. They'd soon escape. Out behind Linda's house, a different creek was still "the crick." There we once waded knee deep trying to build a dam to stop the spring runoff—a major flood to us. Linda's creek was different, shady and mysterious and wild, not open and tamed and barren like my own at home.

The days were long; all the days I remember were summer, I guess. Each day's activity had such intense focus it left an imprint when I'd close my eyes to sleep. There they were, the biggest fattest wild strawberries peeking temptingly from under shiny green leaves. If I'd spent the day at the creek, darters and shiners and pinheads would flash by my closed eyes, luring me to catch them barehanded. That skill I managed to keep into college, much to the surprise of a classmate who challenged me. Once, memorably, I even caught a six-inch mullet with the help of a couple tin cans. I think that surprised both of us. No wonder we always came home soaking wet.

The old apple orchard we found: a wonderland in spring. Even today, the scent of apple blossoms transports me there. Near it was a secret place, an open bowl in the meadow that no sound could enter. We'd lie there wondering at silence, maybe the only place we ever knew true quiet. Planes flew overhead without a sound, even nearby birds were inaudible. On down that path was a high cutbank, a few trees clinging to its eroding edge. We'd dig plants to carry to it for stabilization, trying to fix it. Erosion was a known enemy and there were no ozone holes in those days. As far as we knew then, tropical rainforests were intact, but how we worried about that streambank!

In those days there were few organized distractions from this discovery business of childhood. There was no soccer. The boys had Little League, the girls had the opportunity to hang around watching them. The main organized activity for girls was selling cookies; I learned early in life that sales was not to be my calling. For the most part, no one scheduled our time; except for school we had few routine commitments other than bedtime. We had time but no concept of time. Summer, especially, was an endless stretch of exploration and adventure.

At 14, I was still scrambling the shale cliffs, preferably with a boyfriend, but hormones had begun to alter the picture. I was no longer as willing to feel pond mud between my toes. Being in the water all summer long began to lose its appeal. Childhood was soon over, replaced by a chronic longing, and occasional attempts, to recapture it. Now, at last, I'm old enough to.

——
This was originally written March 18, 1993, now rediscovered. I've posted it in connection with the ongoing discussion over at Romantic Naturalist. Tell us your own story of childhood!

Winter Escapes

The sun is bright and it’s warming through the 40s F (single digits C) already, but the north yard is locked in snow and it’s clearly still winter. My neighbors are off to the sunny beaches of Cabo San Lucas today, and that puts me in mind of our local beaches.

Even I’d agree that there’s nothing like stretching out in the warm sand on a winter or just-barely-spring day. You might think beaches are rare in Colorado, but that’s only the case if you take the modern view. For those of us who live in the past—the really distant past—sandy beaches abound.

To find them, you just have to ask a geologist instead of a surfer. Far more of the former than the latter in Colorado anyway, I suspect.

The sand of these Dakota beaches does not welcome or warm the toes, and probably isn't quite as comfortable to lie on. No sand castles will be built here: this beach was loose sand about 100 million years ago. Not only is this beach too far from the sea now, and some 6,000 ft vertical (more than 1,800 m), but it hasn't been horizontal for more than 65 million years.

Let's take a few steps back, get the trees vertical, and look at it again. The Dakota Sandstone may have provided beaches where Cretaceous dinosaurs chased each other, as evidenced locally by fossilized footprints, but it'd be a challenge to run along it these days.

More pictures of the Dakota hogback at the January 23 post. Dinosaur footprint picture at Dinosaur Ridge.

——
This spring hike was previously reported at Eldorado Gold.

Difference in View

What a difference a few hours can make! Sunshine brings hope of warmth... 3 hours later, 34 degrees F (1 C).

Nature Casts Her Vote

...and the verdict is: Winter! 8 inches, 20 degrees F... a gentle reminder that it's not over yet.

I didn't quite register that this was coming, though the appearance of at least three Steller's Jays yesterday should have tipped me off. Now the flocks are caucusing on the feeders and the seed tossed on the ground. I can't find any more suet, so even the Flicker is on the ground with the Juncos, Red-wings, and Scrub Jays. It's a terrible thing to be without suet on a snow day, but I can't make out any complaints. For the most part they seem to be getting by on sunflower seeds and scratch.

Adventures in Toadland, Part One

Someone reported a new location for the endangered Boreal Toad (Bufo boreas boreas), and Herp Lady and I went off to check it out. True scientist that she is, this outing was to be a bona fide scientific expedition, with a side serving of naturalist adventure. To seek out the elusive Boreal Toad? Naturally I obliged. A short hike, she assured me, not too steep… field trips are always an adventure, we just never know how much adventure!

A nice fall hike through the forest, a scramble up (and then down) a rocky ridge, a bit of bushwhacking: we followed her GPS unit for an hour before arriving at the wetland in question, a beaver pond surrounded by subalpine forest at about 10,500 feet in elevation (3200 m). We hit the creek a bit upstream and made our way back down toward the site.

We soon walked through a lush landscape, compared to the sparse understory of the drier forest we’d been passing through all morning. In this transition area, the presence of trees makes you think you’re still on solid ground. But where the rising waters of the pond meet the lower slopes of the forest, tall wetland growth obscures an uneven surface.

Fallen logs are soon covered with mosses, wildflowers, and sedge, hiding dark pockets that were delightful places for small critters, no doubt, but could trap an unwary human foot.

As we drew closer to the pond, the trees gave way to open meadow; a network of sedge hummocks laced across open mudflats and shallow pools, equally treacherous afoot. Willows were lodged in the hummocks, aerial obstacles to complicate the trek, as we criss-crossed the area with an eye and ear out for the sudden movement or splash of a toad.

I hoped my observation skills were equal to the task, but it was Herp Pal who first called “Toad!” While Herp Pal expertly caught her subject, I hastened, but gingerly, over the hummocks to watch the proceedings.

Oh the indignity of it all!, you could almost hear friend Toad complaining. Snatched up, weighed, measured—a supreme violation of his person and privacy.

But ‘twas all for the cause of science and conservation; proof positive that he (and presumably some of his fellow toads) occupy this little paradise in a remote mountain drainage. The glove, by the way, is to prevent the spread of the chytrid fungus believed to be responsible for the decline in populations of Boreal Toads.

Minutes later, our subject was released unharmed, kicking as he swam away without a backward glance, only too happy to be rid of us.

Mission accomplished, we too headed for home and an overdue lunch!

(More photos follow after this brief pause for information. Download the 97-page Boreal Toad recovery plan: or find more info at the US Fish & Wildlife Service’s Boreal Toad page.)

Photos, (click to enlarge): A sapsucker excavated a distinctive pattern in the bark of one small tree. A star gentian nestled in the sedges in the wet forest above the meadow.



The close of another successful adventure left me with a touch of envy for Herp Pal's scenic subalpine "office"—we should all be so lucky! While she searched for toads with great dedication, I was distracted by the excellent beaver dam. So what else did we see that August day in 2006? Ah, that must await another post! Stay tuned.

Arachnophilia at Home

Kitchen kritters have been dropping in regularly lately, most of them spiders. Last week, a small arachnid rappelled from the ceiling on a long thread right in front of me. A fast grab at the line enabled me to redirect that one to the nearest potted plant. Then a few days ago, something small and dark, also tethered, landed on the edge of a cast iron skillet I was heating on the stove. Quick action managed, to my surprise, to save even that one.

This is, perhaps, what you get when you operate a permeable, and somewhat flexible, household. I'm more than willing, most of the time, to live and let live. If you're squeamish about things with lots of legs, you might want to move on to another post. A picture is coming around the corner.

Saturday I pulled a can of corn from the pantry, only to find a bug on it. "Harlequin" popped into my mind, but most I find online are shaped the same but colored somewhat differently. It looked most like this one, so perhaps I'm on the right track. It too went to a nearby house plant; one not in the cabbage family (just in case).

Most of my household spiders are nondescript little guys, and I rarely have time for identification while in the process of "rescue." Next up, however, is one I did recognize.

This one came in from the cold on her own, almost. That is, it's hard for me to ignore a critter that is virtually knocking on my back door. Cold weather and certain death ahead, I, um, brought her inside for the winter. Isn't she cute? I figure a couple crickets from the pet store will keep her happy til spring.

What would you have done?

The Black Widow, unfortunately, is the most visible of Colorado's two venomous spiders and is often killed on sight. Patent-leather black, with her distinctive hourglass, she could hardly be a more elegant house guest, if a bit sinister in her jerky movements. (Any fuzziness is the photo, not her.) Having set up housekeeping in a mason jar, she dangled conveniently upside down on her web when I checked in this a.m. Black widow webs lack the symmetrical beauty we appreciate from the orb weavers; they are instead a tangled mishmash of very strong threads. Their venom is strong, about 15 times that of a prairie rattlesnake, but they inject only a tiny amount, so they are less deadly overall. I hope not to bring you a personal report on that experience.

When I lived in Arizona, a fellow grad student once kept a widow, along with her egg sac, in a similar mason jar. A few small airholes in the lid are, of course, important. Unfortunately, though she stayed safely in the jar, her tiny hatchlings had no qualms about using the escape routes!

Right after I took this picture, I was watering houseplants. Pulled a little variegated Hoya down and discovered a sizable web on it. By the time I got it watered, I'd dislodged a medium-sized spider and managed to drop the plant (with its extra water) on the floor. First priority, though, was to catch the spider. (Don't worry, she's fine; safely back in her home, though it now needs some renovation.)

This winter's not the first time we've had spiders in the house. For more on making critters welcome, see Not So Good Housekeeping, over on Small Wonders.

Let's face it: we rarely get to see timber wolves or grizzly bears. Instead, charismatic microfauna such as these are the small wonders with which we live most intimately. These are nature's representatives we are most likely to see most often. If we can't appreciate—and tolerate—them, can we truly call ourselves nature lovers?

An Earthbound Perspective

As you know, my attention is usually "down to Earth," on this mundane plane where there is more than enough to inspire and excite me. But we needed new binocs, and The Husband brought some home over the holidays, along with an inspiring book on the stars.

I've always enjoyed my few familiar constellations and watching the Moon go through its paces. I've learned to clock the seasons, making sure I check out Orion every winter and Scorpius in summer. Last year, I was surprised to observe a new, very bright, star hovering just above red Antares. It could be a stationary satellite, I thought, "polluting" my night skies, but I'm still not sure even of that.

[I must have skipped over the "planets" chapter. Now we know that we were watching Jupiter all summer, not some satellite. I'll be more enlightened about planetary positions this year!]

But my star-gazing had limits, so it was with surprise that I found myself reading the book (How to Identify: Night Sky), cover to cover. It may be because I do like learning the names of things in nature, and the night sky holds many names. Some were old friends, familiar from a childhood spent reading science fiction, but many were new. My indoor study, however thorough, evaporated in the face of outdoor reality. It will be a long time before very many of the new names sink into my bank of longer term knowledge.

The new binocs are fine for birds, but without a tripod, the stars were only jiggly swirls of colored light. Shivering didn't help. I will probably never be able to post night sky pictures here, so let me introduce you to someone who is better at it:

Spotlight: Visit Matt, at Sitkanature.org, as "an aspiring naturalist learns his place." He is managing to combine an earthbound perspective with one more ethereal in his photos Sunday and today, both not to be missed. Beyond his incredible blog from Alaska, he's also undertaken a huge effort to catalog 1,000 species from his chosen habitat.

Front Range Today; Web of Nature

In the interests of balance, full disclosure, et al., here's a picture of the status quo today. I noticed, putting together the slide show in the sidebar last week, that I have a tendency to take pictures when it's wintry, or green and foggy or drizzly—all the days that are a little out of the ordinary. Well, here's the ordinary. We do, it's true, have a lot of brown. Guess that's why I'm given to photographing the green and white!

Before you get to feeling too sorry for us, I just came in from the back patio, where I was basking in 70 degree sunshine. The official temperature, absent such a protected location, is 62 F (17 C). I'm not complaining—this is the "other" typical weather for the Front Range this time of year. Sometimes our January days are more pleasant than those in March! But they are mostly brown.

I just discovered that the new edition of the Tangled Bank carnival (#97) is up over at The Inoculated Mind, featuring our post on alpine wildflowers, Life on a Cushion. FF is a little late to the party, but thanks TIM, for including us!

Reading around...

In other happy news, while getting reacquainted with the blogosphere of nature, I've made several delightful discoveries, many of which you'll find in the sidebar. As in the ecosystem, it's all about connections. Some of my regularly read blogs introduced me to

Fragments from Floyd,

who introduced me to Via Negativa,

who introduced me to naturalist-writer Marcia Bonta, and so on.

Fred also alerted me to the Nature Blog Network, on which FF is now listed. Which in turn informed me that there's a new carnival for plant lovers at Berry Go Round, the first edition of which is posted at Seedsaside.

You get the picture. It's one giant web of life and energy out there. Drop in and enjoy!

What IS a Naturalist, Anyway?

Lately reviewing material I wrote back in 1988-1993, when I was walking up Mt Falcon on a regular basis, I've been reminded of the naturalist’s perspective. In 2006, I found myself engaged in an extended attempt to reach consensus among diverse users of a local open space: hikers, bikers, trail runners, geologists, equestrians, and those I can only call naturalists, for lack of anything more definitive. In an effort to explain what the latter were about when they went about, I came up with the following:

First, naturalists are not hikers. They may appear to be hiking, because their feet are their mode of transportation. Hikers, however, are going somewhere. Naturalists, most often, are already there as soon as they set foot on the trail. Here’s an example. I led a Native Plant Society field trip at Mt Falcon one summer. I think we got about 200 yards in the first two hours. Maybe.

Naturalists look at things (that’s why they’re usually so slow). Hikers, bikers, others may look at scenery, I’m willing to admit that, but naturalists LOOK, really look, at things. (And touch them and smell them and whatever else.) They may, depending on their type, be looking at or for birds, butterflies, insects, flowers, trees, ferns, spiders, grasses, shrubs, lichens, geology, rocks, fossils, water, patterns, snakes, salamanders, frogs, fish, fungi, bugs, big critters, little critters, or scat, to name a few --but they are most likely looking AT something. They may be looking at or for a specific KIND of something, like carrion beetles, zeolites, sulfurs, oak galls, rock tripes, or moonworts. They may even be looking at or for all of the above.

Naturalists have expectations. If they observe a certain plant or animal or rock at a location in May, they will expect to see it again in September. If they observe it in 1994, they will know exactly where to look for it when they come to the spot again in 2004.

Worst of all, naturalists are unpredictable (though they expect Nature not to be). They are prone to sudden right-angle changes of direction whenever their eyes or ears or noses catch something. They are likely to stop dead right in front of you or walk to the edge of the path or drop to hands and knees without warning. They are alert, but not to other trail users. They may be lost in another world, and probably don’t even hear people coming because their senses are tuned to different stimuli. They're dangerous.

Lastly, I can believe that naturalists could travel on horseback. I can’t believe you can experience the naturalist’s perspective from a mountain bike, though I accept that bikers enjoy the outdoors, the aspens, the historic discoveries, etc, in their own ways. First there’s the speed, which severely limits bikers' ability to see the minutiae naturalists are so fond of. Second, the constant off/on, mounting/dismounting if you DID see something would take the fun out of the ride. Third, there seem to be social and physiological benefits to biking that naturalists rarely experience, traveling alone or in small units, and rarely if ever getting to aerobic levels. Let’s call it a different kind of fitness.

Thus, naturalists are just different. Not right or wrong, just different. All part of that human diversity we cherish. The thing is, they need open spaces, especially relatively untrammeled open spaces, for their chosen “sport.” Tamed urban spaces just don’t cut it the way remnants of the wild, however modified, still can.

In hopes of engaging a conversation about this idea, and the fate of naturalists in today's world, I set up a separate blog. Meet me there if you'd like to help create a conversation on what we do and why we do it.

Time and Place

Instead of a view from home this morning, we'll take a look at a wider view of the home territory of Foothills Fancies as we know it today. This aerial photo clearly displays the captivating ecotone between the plains (down and right) and the higher mountains to the west—the zone we know as foothills.


"Home," in the immediate personal sense, is just out of the picture on the left edge, enabling an excellent view north up the valley into the dramatic sculptures of red sandstone. What intrigues me today is that I fell in love with this view, this area, long before I ever saw it. Growing up in New York State, I couldn't even imagine such landscapes. The photo below, in a college textbook many years ago, introduced me to the concept of a hogback, the striking feature that dominates this photo and now defines my home range.

Photo by T.S. Lovering, 1932, courtesy USGS.

This geological paradise is hemmed in by the 1.7-billion-year-old rocks of Mt. Morrison on the left and the Dakota Hogback, which defines the eastern edge of the foothills and almost seems to confine the denser forms of human civilization to the plains beyond it. A virtual border we cross regularly, it marks a change in perspective from urban to mountain, from human-dominated landscapes to those where Nature, and especially geology, are factors that can't be entirely forgotten.

These photos, taken more than 50 years apart, also express change. In the earlier image, we see almost nothing artificial. A stretch of the Turkey Creek road on the west (left), a quarry lake on the right, but little else of human creation is visible, despite more than 70 years of "civilized" occupation of this landscape. Another half-century brings a few differences we can see at the scale of these photos. Houses and trees now obscure the road to Turkey Creek. The Dakota Hogback remains, but its base is scarred by a local speedway and a new road traverses it. But the delicate fin of limestone that lay east of it has been obliterated by a superhighway. Still, this landscape is largely protected compared with others in the Front Range. Much of the area of this photo is parkland and open space, preserved for its beauty and for use for recreation.

My very first geology professor taught us that geology is everything. He got our attention; to him even the Civil War was a matter of geology. The Industrial Revolution? Fueled by geology. The unique characters of New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago, San Francisco, New Orleans are shaped by their geology. Civilizations rising or falling, wars won or lost, all were geology, if you looked deeply enough. Geology is, according to ecologist Paul Sears, "the Great Eye-Opener" we need to understand the landscapes we live in and how they shape us. In short, Geology Rocks!

A Winter's Day

It's been a long winter, the Husband remarked this morning. Too true, beginning at Thanksgiving at least, the weather has been unsettled (as is normal) but on the wintery side of its range more days than not. A beautiful day (if you don't have to go anywhere), it's 10 degrees F (-12C) and snow is falling ever so lightly. So slowly and sparsely is this snow coming down that it coats each branch and twig in a decorative layer of white. No breath of wind disturbs this magical creation, brought to us by Nature with, perhaps, a little help from global warming.

At first glance, our view this morning looks a lot like that of April 25, 2006. But never truly the same: this time, it won't be melting as quickly, and the ash tree at the right, of course, has no spring leaves to be killed by this frost. The weather returns and repeats, but with a difference, as do many other events in Nature. (Today at Small Wonders, however, we're looking at Single Visions, moments that only come once.)

The Bird Channel is in full swing out there, with our 100 redwinged blackbirds and the attendant smaller flocks entertaining their loyal viewers.

Apparently I have a remarkable gift for worrying, especially over things completely out of my control. On days like this, I worry about what will happen to all these birds we've taught to depend on us after we're gone. Will the next people to occupy this special spot appreciate the wildlife we've found here and leave them room to live? No doubt there will be some adjustments, positive and negative, in the local economy of Nature. I marvel, too, at departments of wildlife who outlaw the artificial feeding of most of the State's wild critters, but seem to look the other way at bird feeders.

In the meantime, though, it's cold and I need to refill the suet feeder.

Something New

Yesterday I spent my blogging time experimenting with one of Blogger's new features, the "Slideshow." It never did work. This morning I did the exact same thing I did so many times yesterday, and suddenly we have a recap of the "views from home" that have decorated posts since this blog started almost two years ago (see sidebar). Sunrises and sunsets and all four seasons are represented, beginning in January. Please be patient, it takes a while to load the first time.

At the moment, there are 26 views, with a goodly portion being from January. Longtime readers know that snow is a regular feature—active forms of weather always tempt the camera. June, August, and September are not yet represented, but we'll remedy that this year. (In 2006, my first and most active blogging year, I was gone the entire month of June; I can't explain the absence of August and September.) I have taken the liberty of adding a few unposted photos from earlier years just to round out the annual glimpse of life in the foothills, will add more when I run across them. (And now they've gotten a bit out of order, but at least it's working!)

Nice to know you can teach this old dog new tricks.

By the by, today is my second blogiversary, marking the attempt to learn another new trick. My first-ever post is at Local History Explorer, my experimental testing ground. To date, I've written 260 posts on 13 different blogs, but Foothills Fancies remains in the lead.

A Matter of Perspective

The "usual view" this morning looks more golden to the camera than to the eye. I find it much more of a flat gray out there beneath these glorious clouds. The weatherfolk tell us to expect snow later this week.

This is about all of Nature I get to see lately, being housebound with an injury. Having finished reading all seven of the Harry Potter books in recent weeks, this morning I opted for a change of pace and picked up Faith in a Seed, the final—previously unpublished—works of Henry David Thoreau. The book contains his work on The Dispersion of Seeds and several of his last essays. It also expands our perspective on who Thoreau was and what he was doing in the final decade of his life.

Once the naturalist whose travels and early accounts grounded us in a philosophy of place, now he launched an intensive effort to collect data on the activities and adventures of seeds in the woods of Concord, creating a detailed calendar on the flowering and fruiting of more than two dozen species of trees. He became a scientist, though that word was not widely used at the time and is understood differently in our time. Unlike his contemporaries, who believed that plants could arise spontaneously, Thoreau wrote:

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up
where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.
Convince me that you have a seed there,
and I am prepared to expect wonders.

In 1860, just two years before he died, Thoreau was also introduced to the master work of Charles Darwin, which then became "an authoritative context for his observations." * He was among the first Americans to explore and appreciate its implications in the field and on his own work.

Thoreau apparently kept his perspective as a literary naturalist, even as he wrote about the details of his investigations. He shifted from poet to technical writer, naturalist to scientist. I look forward to this opportunity to develop and perhaps shift my own perspective on his work as I explore our shared interest in seed ecology.

------
* From the foreword by Gary Nabhan. Thoreau had previously read The Voyage of the Beagle and was familiar with the developing ideas of natural selection, but this was his first exposure to On the Origin of Species.

Life on a Cushion

Here in the dark of winter, will a few more alpine wildflowers brighten your day? I'd like to share a few of those specially adapted plants that live nowhere else—unless it's in the arctic tundra, where conditions, at least of temperature, are somewhat similar. It's winter down here too, but on the tundra it's winter with a vengeance!

Today on the tundra (or as close as I can get weather info), it's 6 degrees F (-14 C), but a 12 mph wind ( kph) makes it feel more like -9 F (-23 C). Factor in a few thousand extra feet (1,000 m) of elevation, and it's going to be much colder than that! Probably a good bit more windy as well. Not until the end of May will temperatures again reach above freezing, and they will do so only for about 45 days.

Today the plants known as cushion plants are demonstrating what they're built for—hugging the ground, hiding from the wind, or at least exposing as little area as possible. Each cushion may be perhaps 6 inches (15 cm) wide and hundreds of years old. Each has a substantial taproot anchoring it to what soil there is and extending far down among the rocks. But their above-ground parts rarely reach more than an inch or two (2-5 cm) into the air.

This little Alpine Primrose (Primula angustifolia) is not a cushion plant. But note the tiny leaves forming a background for its larger glossy green leaves. Those leaves are part of a very common cushion plant, the Moss Campion or Moss Pink (Silene acaulis). Its leaves are indeed very like those of mosses. It's the 5th of July, and this cushion is already well past flowering. We'd already missed the profusion of tiny pink flowers of the campion, as well as its fellow cushions, white-flowered alpine Phlox pulvinata and the tiny yellowish flowers of Alpine Nailwort, Paronychia pulvinata. Distracted by showier flowers, I failed to distinguish their matted leaves.

There's a story in the photo above, an example of those occasions when a scientific paper shares an insight that can revolutionize the way we look at things. Why is the primrose (and if you enlarge the photo above, several other plants) growing in the middle of the cushion of Moss Campion? Fernlike leaves to the right of our Primula, and grasslike leaves on the left, suggest that cushion plants can be nurseries for the seeds of other tundra species. This phenomenon, documented by Robert Griggs in 1956, is another small example of the opportunism plants, especially seeds, regularly display. What more secure place for a tiny seed than tucked down amid the leaves of an established cushion?

Alas, science proceeds by a series of successive approximations. A later approximation reported that the seeds (and resulting seedlings) are not as safe and cozy as we might think. In fact, mortality of new seedlings in cushions is just slightly higher than it is for those growing out in the open. Perhaps we'll await the next approximation, in hopes Griggs's original story is confirmed one day.

Refs: Griggs, R.F. 1956. Ecology 37:8-20.
      Bonde, E.K. 1968. Ecology 49:1194-95.

Wintery Wildflowers

Alpine plants are a breed apart. I believe they make a special impression on every visitor, and they certainly did on me. Here are a few favorites I got to see again last summer. These are familiar-looking wildflowers, as tall as 6-8 inches (15-20 cm) and perhaps not unusual in the Rocky Mountain flora except that, in the alpine, they are the tallest plants present. Elsewhere they might be overshadowed by more robust cousins; here they shine. (For more on the alpine, see adjacent posts.)

Alpine Avens (Geum rossii, Acomastylis rossii)
Ubiquitous yellow flowers give the tundra at Summit Lake its claim to "meadow" status. Beautiful members of the Rose Family. Photo July 5, 2007.






Chiming Bells (Mertensia viridis, Mertensia lanceolata)
This member of the Borage Family in the alpine is closely related to taller species from the foothills to the subalpine. Photo early July 5, 2007.
















Skypilot (Polemonium viscosum)
Unique to the alpine, this species also has relatives at lower elevations. Phlox Family. Photo August 1, 2007.
















Queen's Crown (Sedum rhodanthemum, Clementsia rhodantha)
Rosy clusters of Queen's Crown, or Rosy Crown, occur in the subalpine and alpine, as does the deeper-colored King's Crown. Stonecrop Family. Photo August 1, 2007.












Snowball Saxifrage (Saxifraga rhomboidea, Micranthes rhomboidea)
This little beauty occurs from the foothills to the tundra. A distinctive basal rosette of diamond-shaped, or rhomboid, leaves provides the species name and makes it recognizable in any season. Saxifrage Family. Photo August 1, 2007.



All of these are normal-looking plants, the giants of the tundra. For miniatures, see Life on a Cushion, next post.





Marsh Marigold (Caltha leptosepala, Psychrophila leptosepala)
Any wet spot on the tundra or other high-elevation meadow is home to the Marsh Marigold. (Easterners have a related and very similar yellow species.) On the tundra, low or protected spots where snow lingers are apt habitats for these delightful flowers. Buttercup or Hellebore Family. Photo July 5, 2007.

Why two scientific names? Revisions to the Colorado Flora in recent years have put some of these into less familiar genera, given second; folks outside Colorado may have better luck looking up the first name.