Alpine Azalea

 Alpine Azalea—Loiseleuria procumbens is a diffusely branched, dwarf mat-forming evergreen shrub that trails on the ground without rooting. They prefer alpine slopes, grow in cold and dry areas at high elevations, and are often found with lichen. They are identifiable from July to August, and found in most of Alaska and Canada, Washington, New York, New Hampshire, Maine, and Eurasia. Their small leaves are bright green and oval, opposite on stems, and leathery. They are hairless above and have short hairs below. The flowers bloom in early June. Their tiny flowers (4 to 5 mm long) are bell-shaped, light to deep pink, and have 5 petals. They are only species of Loiseleuria in North America. Without flowers, it can be confused with Lapland Diapensia which has the same habitat and white flowers. Azalea means “of-dry-habitats” in Latin, and procumbens refers to the low, creeping growth form of the plant.

Reference:
http://www1.dnr.wa.gov/nhp/refdesk/fguide/pdf/loipro.pdf

Thompson Pass

Date: July 19, 2012
Time: 1:30-5:00 p.m.
Weather: Sunny with clear sky and blinding sunlight

Arctic Willow—Salix arctica

Pussy Toes—Antennaria

Alpine Bearberry—Arctostaphylos alpine

Arctic Daisy—Erigeron humilis

Yellow Spotted Saxifrage—Saxifrage bronchialis

One-Flowered Cinquefoil—Potentilla uniflora

Low-Bush Cranberry, Lingonberry, Mountain Cranberry—Vaccinium vitis idaea

Labrador Tea—Ledum palustris groenlandicum

Dwarf Blueberry—Vaccinium caespitosum

Capitate Lousewort—Pedicularis capitata

Mountain Avens, Eight-Petaled Avens—Dryas octopetala

Pixie Eye Primrose—Primula cuneifolia

Alp Lily—Lloydia serotina

Alpine Azalea—Loiseleuria procumbens

Alpine Arnica—Arnica alpine angustifolia

Moss Campion—Silene acaulis

Mountain Harebell—Campanula lasiocarpa

Coastal Paintbrush, Yellow Paintbrush—Castilleja unalaschensis

Moss Heather—Cassiope stelleriana

Roseroot, Rosewort, King’s Crown—Sedum rosea

Bell Heather—Cassiope tetragona

 It was a beautiful day; a wide view from the pass was spectacular! We walked around the caldera to observe tiny short plants and flowers there. The ground was covered different kinds of lichens and berries, so the feeling of walking on them was somewhat soft and cushiony. The field looked a plain filed without any flowers or plants at a first glance, but when we looked down very carefully, lots of species lived together, and flowers were unobtrusively blooming. They were so pretty and delicate looking.

Arctic Daisy

ARCTIC DAISY: Erigeron humilis

This is one of the many flowers that I identified today at the Thompson Pass Trail. I am going to talk more about this flower and go more in to depth with its information.

General: Perennial herb, with a short taproot or short brittle stem base and often some fibrous roots. the stems are single, 3-20 cm tall and they are hairy with greyish or dark hairs.

Leaves: Basal leaves that are broadly lance to spoon-shaped and are commonly hairless or nearly so by flowering time. The stems leaves linear to lance-shaped, reduced, stalkless, leaves with entire margins.

Flowers: Ray flowers that are white to purplish, numerous about 50-150 . Disk flowers yellow, involucres 6-9 mm hihg, the bracts lance oblong, purplish-black or greenish with long multicellular hairs with purplish balck crosswalls, and the heads are solitary.

Fruits: Hairy achenes, pappus hairs white to tan.

Ecology: Tundra, snowbeds, seepage sites, rocky ledges and scree, in moist to wet alpine sites, also sometimes in bogs at lower elevations. Commin in northern southeast Alaska, usually at high elevations, rare on the Queen Charlotte Islands, scattered in the Coast Mountains to southwestern B.C.

Notes: At least 20 species of Erigeron occur within our region.

Thompson Pass Trail

Thompson Pass Trail is the trail we identified today.
The weather was absolutely gorgeous today, very good day for a lab outside

The list of things we identified today:

Crow berry: Empetrum nigrum
Alpine Bearberry: Arctostaphylos alpina
Pussy Toes: Antennaria sp.
Arctic Daisy: Erigeron humilis
Yellow spotted saxifrage: Saxifraga bronchialis
Labrador tea: Ledum palustris ssp groenlandicum
Dwarf Blueberry: Vaccinium uliginosum
Capitate Lousewort: Pedicularis capitata
Mountain Avens: Dryas octopetala
Pixie Eye Primrose: Primula cuneifolia
Alp Lily: Lloydia serotina
Lapland Diapensia: Diapensia lapponicum ssp. obovata
Bell Heather: Cassiope stelleriana
Alpine Azalea: Loiseleuria procumbens
One-flowered Conquefoil: Potentilla uniflora
Alpine Arnica: Arnica alpina, ssp. angustifolia
Moss Campion: Silene acaulis
Mountain Harebell: Campanula lasiocarpa
Dwarf Fireweed: Epilobium latifolium
Moss Heather: Cassiope stelleriana
Coastal Paintbrush: Castilleja unalaschensis
Roseroot: Sedum rosea




~OVERALL IT WAS A GREAT TRIP AND IDENTIFIED A LOT OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FLOWERS THAT LIVE ON A HIGH ELEVATION IN THOMPSON PASS. :)

Lapland Rosebay

This is the third flower from our third day of the trip that I want to go more in depth about. This is a beautiful purple flower which we identified on the West Kennicott Glacier Trail.

Lapland Rosebay- Rhododendron lapponicum

Family: Heath/Ericaceae
Blooming Time: Late May to mid-June
Habitat: Woods, moist depressions, and alpine slopes in Interior Alaska
Description: An evergreen shrub, 6-18" tall with small oval, hard, dark green leaves with rusty undersides, similar to Labrador Tea but leaves appear to be arranged in whorls at the ends of the stems. The 5-petaled, 5/8" open funnel-shaped, magenta flowers bloom in dense clusters at the end of the branches.

Bluebells

This is the second flower I want to go more in depth with because they were all over every trail we were on in McCarthy and Kennicott.

Bluebells AKA Lungwort, Languid Lady, Chiming Bells.- Mertensia paniculata 

Family: Borage/Boraginaceae
Habitat: Woods and meadows throughout most of Alaska except Southeastern and north of the Brooks Range
Blooming Time: June and July
Description: A plant with many stems, 18 to 30" tall, with hairy, dark green leaves that are broad at the base and tapering to a long point. The flowers are tubular (funnel-shaped), pink in bud, later turning blue, and occasionally the flowers could be all pink.
Comments: This is an edible plant though somewhat fishy tasting. A related species, Oyster Leaf- Mertensia maritima, is a coastal plant found growing on beaches. It has very small blue, or sometimes white flowers and thick succulent fairly broad leaves that are frequently a light bluish-green color.
This is a very beautiful flower.

Yellow Dyras

Yellow Dryas is the first flower I identified on our trip

Yellow Dryas- Dryas Drummondii

Family: Rose/Rosaceae
Habitat: Dry gravel areas and river bars throughout interior, southcentral and eastern Alaska.
Blooming Time: June to early July
Description: A sprawling sub-shrub with oval basal leaves that sometimes have rolled edges. The leaf veins are very prominent and the edges wavy, being greenish-brown above to whitish from hairs underneath. The 2-3" high flower stem has no leaves. The calyx has blackish-brown hairs and the flowers are nodding and only partially open. The seed head is in a spiral, opening fully to a tannish fluffy head. It may be seen along the Glenn Highway near the village of Eklutna and is common in gravelly areas near glacial streams.
And that was were I first identified this flower, right along a glacial stream and lake.

McCarthy and Kennicott field trip

Katrina Moran
McCarthy Trail
First day arriving in McCarthy
7/10/12
Today was over cast and the weather was bad. It was raining all day long and cloudy. It took us 6.5 hours to drive from Valdez because the road conditions were so bad. We finally arrived in McCarthy at 3:45 pm.

The first place we walked and started identifying was the trail right outside of McCarthy, off the side of the road. There was many different flowers and plants we identified this trip.

List identified on first day:

Yellow Dryas- Dryas Drummondii
Soap Berry-Shepherdia canadensis
Yellow Oxytrope- Astragalus umbellatus
Trembling Aspen-Populus tremuloides
Pink Pyrola- Pyrola asarifolia
Northern Yarrow- Archillea borealis
Coastal Paintbrush- Casttilleja unalaschensis
There was a skunk shelf fungus mushroom that was growing on the side of a willow. It was not in our mushroom book we brought with us.
Orange cup fungi
Common Scouring-Rush- Equisetum hyemale
Alpine Bearberry-Arctostaphylos alpina




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List identified on second day in Kennicott, Alaska!!
This was our second day on our field trip and the day was completely different than the first day. It was gorgeous out! The sun was shining and blue skies everywhere. It was the best day to have the field trip to identify plants and flowers.

Blue Bells- Mertensia paniculata
Wild Sweet Pea- Hedysarum Mackenzii
Large-Flowered Wintergreen- Pyrola grandiflora
Northern Goldenrod- Solidago lepida
Twin Flower- Linnaea borealis
Labrador Tea- Ledum palustris ssp groenlandicum
Crowberry- Empetrum nigrum
Common Blueberry- Vaccinium myrtilloides
Monkshood- Aconitum delphinifolium, ssp. delphinifolium
Common Juniper- Juniperus communis
Paper Birch- Betula papyrifera var. papyrifera
Wild Red Currant- Ribes triste





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The third and last day in McCarthy. We ate breakfast and packed our bags to get ready to hit the road. Before we started back home we stopped into another trail along side of the McCarthy road, called West Kennicott Glacier Trail. Here we identified more. The day was gloomy out and sprinkling some what, and the bugs were horrible. I thought that was one of the major differences between the Kennicot trail the day before and the forest in the West Kennicott Glacier Trail. The forests were different also because of the height difference too, the forest in Kennicot was alot more open and on the side of the mountains while the forest in the WKGT that we identified on the last day was more closer to the ground and water, it was also more compacted with trees and plants, it almost seemed like we were walking in more of a rainforest.

Dwarf Dogwood- Cornus canadensis
Prickly Rose-Rosa acicularis
Stiff Club Moss- Lycopodium annotinum
Bluebells- Mertensia paniculata
Paper Birch- Betula papyrifera var. papyrifera
Western Columbine- Aquilegia formosa
Wild Red Currant- Ribes triste
Lapland Rosebay- Rhododendron lapponicum
Northern Red Currant- Ribes triste
Monks hood- Aconitum delphinifolium, ssp. delphinifolium
Beautiful Jacobs Ladder- Polemonium pulcherrimum


That was the list of all three places where our class identified plants for our Natural History class. It was a great trip to McCarthy and Kennicott, we identified a more variety of plants and flowers in the Western Boreal Forest in the National Park. Along with doing that we got to learn of the history behind McCarthy and Kennicott, which I found to be pretty amazing information. This trip was great and I am very glad I went.