Two Common Northeastern Trees

As I was out saving the savanna today, I was approached by a kindly woman who knew pretty much everything about flowers, insects, and birds, but was completely stumped as to what was what regarding trees.  I think everyone should be familiar with the trees in their neighborhood, mainly because it tends to help one notice the natural surroundings a bit better by knowing what one is mowing/driving/walking past all the time.  If you think about the names of trees, you might start paying attention to everything else that manages to get along without our intervention, which is a good thing.

There sure are a lot of trees around, though.  Where do we even begin?

Well, it depends on where you live.  Say you are from the upper Midwest, Nearwest, northeastern United States or eastern Canada; you have probably noticed that most of the trees shed their leaves come winter time.  Some don't, and I say those are an excellent place to start, because they tend to stand out a bit more.

Somewhere near Lake Ann, Michigan.

Here we have, in the right center, an Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus).  It is the tree that is taller than any of the other ones around it, and has sweeping, soft branches of foliage that each grow in a unique way and yet still manage to present a form of symmetry and balance.  Even outside of their range in our broadly defined "northeastern" region, they tend to get planted because they can easily grow in a variety of settings and are absolutely beautiful.  This means that if you live anywhere from even as far away as northern Georgia to Manitoba, you have seen at least one in your lifetime.  They used to dominate landscapes throughout the region, growing as tall as over 200 feet up into the sky, dwarfing the rest of the forest.  Fossil records and remnant populations of this tree can be found as far away as central Mexico and parts of Florida!  They were once thought in-exhaustible because there were so many around, and they thus became the first sacrificial lamb of the North American lumber onslaught.  They formed the backbone of the Canadian economy as it transitioned away from a partnership with Britain in lieu of closer ties with the United States, which was hungry for more lumber in the post-Civil War period.  They have rebounded somewhat, but nowhere near to the extent they once existed in.  They remain economically important in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, Quebec, and Maine, where they are still harvested under new timber management plans to better sustain the forests.  They are the arboreal symbol of Michigan, Maine, and Ontario.

Off to the left in the open, and hidden in trees both to the right of the White Pine and further into the background, we have the Red Pine (Pinus Resinosa).  They do not grow as tall as the White Pines, topping out at about 120 feet under perfect growing conditions. They can be identified by more open clusters of foliage that form globe-like shapes on more tightly packed branches.  This one can be a bit more confusing, as they tend to look like other pines when small, and even when tall, can look like mature pines from other regions, especially in the southeast.  Fortunately, they only grow in the northeast, and are not cultivated as far outside their range as the White Pine is.  They can handle a ton of exposure though, and are often seen growing out of rocks, on dunes, and thus are commonly used in shelter belts and windbreaks.  They were also valuable timber trees, but owing to their sap being a bit more frustrating to deal with, had and continue to be harvested slightly less than their more graceful cousins.  They are the celebrated state tree of Minnesota, where they attain sizes only surpassed in grandeur by the populations in Ontario.

If you start to see them growing in the midst of forests, you can be pretty sure that you have traveled far enough north or to a high enough altitude to be getting into the beginnings of the boreal forest.  

Next up: Two Common Western Trees.

An Emerging Bog

Bogs are wetlands that are in the process of becoming land, albeit spongy, very moist land.  They are one of the features we share with Eurasia, albeit with different plant communities.  They cover vast stretches of Canada and a little bit of the lower 48 states, and are very much emblematic of the "North".  Even where the trees give in to cold winter temperatures, bogs persist, without which the tundra would pretty much be a cold desert.  As much as they are a largely northern affair, most likely owing to the vast amounts of wet ground left over by both the last glaciation and lower temperatures conspiring with low solar radiation to reduce evaporation to a minimum, they do extend south into temperate lands, most notably in Ohio and parts of the Appalachians.  One notable example exists in southern central Michigan, Black Spruce Bog National Natural Landmark, which is surrounded by far more typical temperate deciduous forests.

Likewise, they can be found extending into the Rockies as far south as northern New Mexico, albeit as very unique and contained habitats in lands that otherwise tend to be more known for their aridity and sunny weather, even at higher altitudes.  The bogs there also have plant life more typical of their mountain landscapes, with, for instance, Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) forming the familiar spires at the edge of the bogs rather than the Black Spruce (Picea Mariana) which dominate the scenery in the boreal bogs.

So what's in a bog?  Biomass that replaces open water, essentially.

A mixed-spruce bog that has been slowly overtaking an enclosed bay of Cedar Lake, in Algonquin Provincial Park.  Records indicate that this part of the lake was already slowly turning into a marsh and bog, even though the section of water has been blocked off by the bed of the former Trans-Canadian Canadian National rail line since 1917.  

Here we see a lovely example of a spruce bog,  with some marshy open water gradually being replaced by peat moss, or sphagnum.  Further away from the water's edge, we see a truly remarkable shrub rising from the acidic, nitrogen deficient peat, the Speckled Alder (Alnus Incana).  This alder actually helps introduce nitrogen into the peat and emerging soils by means of special nitrogen fixing nodules down with its root system.  Slightly further in, we start getting trees, with a very hardly noticeable tamaracks (Larix Laricina) blending into the background of spruces, of which we can see both the loosely branched Black Spruce and the more sturdy White Spruce (Picea Glauca).  Black Spruce are normally far more tolerant of the soggy, acidic conditions a bog presents, but all plants that can make it here are adaptable and survivors, so here we see the White Spruces managing just fine outside of their normal habitat in well-drained, but moist, soils.  Obscured by cloud shade in the background is slightly higher ground where can be found many more White Spruces, but also Eastern White Pine (Pinus Strobus), which, again, can be found slightly off to the right and left of this picture, most likely taking advantage of the full sun conditions found at the edge of a bog.  These pines are common bonus features in bogs in the lower eastern part of their boreal expanse.

Now, this is all well and good you say, but what's in it for me?  Quite a few settlers shared this question, because, well, a bog is hard to build on, and does not necessarily drain even as well as a normal swamp.  Like a normal swamp, however, they can absorb floods and even filter the local ground water nicely, despite the tea-colour their surface water presents.  In addition to the human-related benefits, bogs are vital ecological areas for quite a bit of biomass, which is something of a minor miracle considering as how they are formed in and continue to acidify waters that sometimes cannot support a single fish.

Sunday Afternoon Post: The Yucca Forests of Southern New Mexico

Along I-10 in New Mexico, between Deming and Lordsburg, one drives through a literal forest of yuccas.  Pictures do not do the scenery justice, but they can afford a taste of the experience.

I-10 westbound looking north.  There were way more of them there than the picture suggests, probably because we were moving at a decent clip.

I was expecting creosote flats typical of the basins of the hot deserts, but instead found a lush, if sharp, forest.  Our deserts are as dry as the rest of them, and far more hot than so many around the world, but somehow have a lot more life to them.

The Wonderfully Lonely Land of High Plains Wyoming

There are many seemingly desolate stretches of land in western North America, but a few forlorn locations actually make these seem to be lush and abuzz with activity.  So it is for southeastern Wyoming, an area that boasts an urban corridor not far to the south (Denver-Fort Collins) and a city of its own, Cheyenne, and yet remains as open and unbroken as in the days when it was resided in by the Lakota and Cheyenne peoples.  Little remains of their world outside of the reservations, and truck stops and hydro towers have since reminded travelers that even here in the open, the modern world is not far away.  Then again, sometimes that old world does make an appearance.

I-25 northbound looking east, barely into the state of Wyoming.  An interstate, fences, and transmission lines working together could not diminish the glory of this moment and landscape.

Now understand something: I have been across the continent many, many times.  Not once until and since this time have I seen a buffalo (Bison Bison).  There it was, though, grazing on the High Plains, surrounded by signs of modernity, and yet it still managed to make the location look wild and free.  In a few miles, I-25 would head through all four and a half miles of Cheyenne, but then almost immediately, the plains would open back up and a herd would come to watch the few passing cars.

I-25 northbound looking east, about 20 miles north of Cheyenne.  

The proghorn (Antilocapra Americana) fared far better than the buffalo did, and these days there are many herds of them in Wyoming.  They congregate here perhaps because the land is a bit less fenced in.  While I did notice a little bit of barbed wire here and there, the land generally still felt wild and free.  I suppose that if anyone wants to get a feel for what the High Plains were once like, they would do well to visit eastern Wyoming.  Such a trip would be good not only to experience the essence of the shortgrass prairies, but also helpful in debunking any myths about the land being a flat barren country.  

I-25 northbound, 25 miles north of Cheyenne, looking towards Laramie Peak, which rises 5,000 feet over the surrounding shortgrass prairie, topping off at an altitude of 10,200 feet.  The peak is 40 miles distant from this point.

The land is anything but either.  It is dotted in bluffs, buttes, cliffs, rolling hills, and covered in lush grasses, cacti, yuccas, and the odd pine and juniper that descends and survives from higher ground. 

I-25 northbound looking east, somewhere between Glendo and Douglas, Wyoming.

Still, the sky is bigger than the earth, the vistas seem to go on forever, and the land is an excellent place to forget about a lot of things and clear out the head.   Like northeastern New Mexico, it is a meeting place of grasslands, mountains, and high deserts, but the atmosphere here is different.  There are no large cholla cacti or Pueblo ruins, and there are no remains of a Spanish culture in this land that was far enough away to escape the dreams of empire.  The Canadiens did make their way through here, but as was the case elsewhere, they left little to memorialize their passing.  The snow stays on the ground here until well until May in some years.  Like eastern Colorado, the land here is where the east and west part their separate ways botanically, but this part of Wyoming lacks the dramatic rise of the Front Range of the Rockies, the great mountains instead having risen into relatively isolated peaks.  Whereas neighboring Colorado is dominated by the mountains which rise on the horizon even over 100 miles away, this is a land where grasslands and Rockies blend more subtly and smoothly, as if both were tranquilized by the serenity of the vast horizons.  

Green Is My Platte Valley

A week ago we traveled to the Platte River and saw this exotic waterway give life and passage among some otherwise open and dry prairies.  We had a nice image of the sandy river banks being well-vegetated, but what is the view like for travelers "sticking to the trail" on modern I-80?

Sorry for the blur.  Blame the windows on the Archway.

Green and deceptive.  This view takes in a western horizon of the straight and level I-80 from atop the Archway Monument at Kearney, Nebraska, which is a bridge that crosses the interstate and has a museum dedicated to the western trails and development of the highways that would run through the valley.  I-80 is the modern version of these routes, and it stays within or at the limits of the upper floodplain of the Platte through most of central and western Nebraska.  Straight on, you can see forests of ashes, willows, cottonwoods, Eastern Redcedars (Juniperus Virginiana) and some oaks.  On the left of the image, you can see the land dip down into the river itself, and the right of the image is vegetated by another stretch of moist soil along a nearby creek.  If one were to look to the north or south of this vantage, however, they would find a lot of open farmland and stretches of prairie beyond the fields.

Still, the half mile on either side of the river is forested these days, and probably was before it was nearly clear cut during the days of the pioneer trails.  The effect is that of one long oasis of woodlands stretching across the Great Plains.

The Range of Lights

John Muir often called the Sierra Nevadas the "Range of Lights" because of how inspired he felt by the place, and by how the sun, at any time of day, would reflect off the granite in such lovely ways.

Looking north from California 41 in Yosemite National Park.  The bare trees on the ridge are left over from a forest fire that happened in the last decade, and the area to the right of this image was completely burned out.

The Sierras do feel different from the rest of California.  I have yet to make it to the southern Cascades around Mt. Shasta, which both Muir and Roosevelt said have no equal in terms of striking beauty, but something about the pines and firs rising from the granite made the mountains feel at once both exotic and familiar.  In any event, the rock sure was glowing.  That haze you see is not humidity, which I think does not exist in California anyway, but rather just an abundance of glow from every which way.

The scene you see above might have looked very different had it not been for the early conservation movement.  The trees would all be gone, the valley flooded, and the land strip-mined beyond recognition.  Thankfully, we instead have this beautiful view, the forest to actually protect water interests despite the absence of a reservoir, and a tourist industry to sustain the local economy well beyond what the meager production of gold would have meant.  The Sierras host many international travelers each year, often in greater number than domestic visitors.  Those who do come here often return home with stories of beauty and inspiration, perhaps not too far off from the tales once told generations ago about an unbroken land that served as the symbol and fitting setting of a growing nation still optimistic about a future by and for the people.

The Great Canadian (North American, Really) Bridge

Mattawa, Ontario.  A small town of barely over 2,000 people that is largely dependent on the tourism and timber industries.  There are no stoplights here, and most people just pass through the place to more (apparently) interesting locations.

Then again, someone stopping at the local museum might actually find out that Mattawa was actually once quite the hub of activity, even if that activity was largely based on river travel and involved people passing through the small confluence of two rivers at the base of the Laurentian Mountains.

To the south, travelers would later favor roads traveled by walkers, horsemen, and eventually automobiles, but for the Canadiens and native peoples, the rivers were the roads.  Voyageurs and missionaries opened up the heart of a mysterious continent long before the steady stream of advancing "civilization" was filtering through the Appalachians.

Early on, however, the Canadiens faced a remarkable double obstacle: the Niagara Escarpment and the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) nations.  An easy route to the upper Great Lakes and the lands to the west in the interior seemed to be a distant dream in the face of a thundering waterfall and towering limestone cliffs, to say nothing of nations that took an almost immediate hostility to a foreign power that had founds friends among their traditional enemies, the Wendat (Hurons) and Algonquins.  Fortunately for Champlain and the newly arrived French, those same enemies had long since known about a fairly level water passage into the upper lakes.  This passage existed far to the north of the Haudenosaunee and the newly forming English and Dutch colonies on the shores of Virginia, New York, and Massachusetts.  This passage, which connected the French and Ottawa River valleys, existed in a rugged northern land that had winters even more severe than in Quebec, and was important to the Wendat, Algonquins, and numerous nations to the north.  The southerners, as a result, would have to contend with multiple fronts if they wanted to keep the French out of the interior.

They could not.  Even after the Haudenosaunee were pacified by a surge of troops from France in the late 17th century, the Mattawa passage had so conveniently opened up a rather large river network to the Canadiens that it never got abandoned in favor of a more climate-friendly southern route through the lower lakes.  The great location of the passage even meant that it took primacy of importance over the Mississippi network which would be opened up following the founding of New Orleans.  Again, an enemy proved that the Mattawa route was far too valuable to abandon, the foe this time being the Spanish who continued to expand northward through Tejas.  So what did this passage connect?

Everything from Quebec clear to the Rockies, including the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Arkansas, Platte, Illinois, Wabash, Des Moines, Red, Saskatchewan, Niobara, Nelson, St. Croix, and many other rivers.  The red route which was denied to the French and their allies for so long eventually became insignificant, as that small yellow dot you see in northern Ontario proved to be the most vital link in the great chain of North American rivers.  The Mattawa passage, in fact, was the Canadian equivalent to the Erie Canal (lime line in New York) which would later be the passage to open up volumes of traffic into the American interior, built in the core Haudenosaunee territory no less.

Even after the time of the canoe had long gone by, the position of Mattawa remained important, and the trans-Canadian railroad commenced construction not far away in a sleepy Franco-Ontarian town of Bonfield.  The line still passes through Mattawa to this very day, alongside the Trans-Canada Highway.  So what does this confluence of rivers look like these days?

The water in the foreground is the Mattawa River, with the water in the background being the larger Ottawa River.  The land in behind the Ottawa is Quebec, while the vantage point and the land to the left of the falling slope in the background is Ontario.

The confluence looks very much like a scene that Champlain and the Jesuits would have encountered in their time, even with a railroad bridge and a town just off the view of the camera vantage point.

The Tulsa Skyline

I have to admit that the first time I made my way across the breadth of Oklahoma I was pleasantly surprised by what I saw.  I did not expect everything to be nothing but miles of flat farmland, but I was amazed at how vertical the relief got even just outside of Oklahoma City, and how densely forested everything is.  You can check out this post from three months ago to see more of what I mean.

The blur is the result of extreme humidity conspiring with heat.  Yes, it actually looked like this.

This, for example, is the western approach to Tucson as one descends into the Arkansas River valley on eastbound I-70.

Tulsa has a very interesting broken skyline, with no clearly defined downtown area until one is almost on top of the commercial center.  The city also features a rolling topography that accentuates the lone skyscrapers even more.  All in all, an usual cityscape.

Poutine, mes amis, poutine!

This felt worthy of a second post today:

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2012207220450

God bless Sylvia Rector for bringing the world this news!

Poutine has made its way into Michigan (finally), and hopefully decent gravy will be seen more often because of it.

For my readers who do not know what this lovely dish is, Poutine is cheese curds, french fries, and gravy.  Now, let me break that down a bit more...

Cheese curds are cheese curds, not a bag of shredded cheeses.  They should ideally be made of cheddar or something as close as possible, and they should be white or something off white, not yellow, not orange.  This may seem to be fighting over minutiae and purely an aesthetic issue, but it is not.  Trust me on this one.  I'm Franco-Ontarian.  Now this might sound nationalistic, but you Americans (outside of Wisconsin) do not know how to make these things.  There are exceptions, sometimes even from chains like Culver's, a Mid/Nearwestern fast food place that serves them deep fried.  I swear, Culver's must have been started by an Englishman... they deep fry things that should never be deep fried, and you know what?  The world is a greater place because of them!

French Fries are french fries, made from scratch, not thawed out of a bag and certainly not anything other than good old fashioned french fries.  Shoestrings, waffles, etc. need not apply.  We are talking chips here, or frites, depending on the particular formula of Canadian you consist of.  Again with the nationalism, you complain!  Well, we are talking about a Canadian dish here.  Anyway, think pub fries.  McDonald's need not apply in this situation, as good as the little salty potato things are the rest of the time.

GRAVY!  The United States of America is nearly incapable of making good gravy!  Americans misidentify it all the time!  You shudder when I mention that it could be good with french fries, and I know not why, because you like it with mashed potatoes (even if the kind you serve with it is tolerable at best).  Gravy, from beef stock, needs to be reasonably thick when you pour it out, akin to the consistency of maple syrup (and don't even get me started on that topic).  People who can do gravy right in the United States mainly live in Michigan's upper peninsula and often consume their version with their wonderful pasties.

Gross, you say?  No more than Chili Fries and Coney Dogs.  Again, trust me here, one bite and you will forget all about how it looks.  Two bites and you might need a defibrillator, but one bite and you will have a nice preview of the heaven you will soon find yourself in.  Yes, yes, it is exceptionally bad for you.

Where did it come from?  As is the case with the origin of most cocktails and comfort foods, everyone claims to be the source of this amazing dish.  What most can agree on with certainty is that Poutine is a French-Canadian thing.  The Quebecois claim, along with most anything culturally French-Canadian, that it is theirs.  I personally think that it developed over time, owing to the unique combination of ingredients that account for slightly different tastes, in the many domestic and restaurant kitchens of the St. Lawrence and Ottawa River valleys.  It probably spread so well because it was served in little road side burger booths that catered to summer cottagers, and before then and during the winter, inns that wanted to present travelers with the comforting taste of home.  It is a very powerful food for Franco-Ontarians, a remnant of a culture that has long been under a process of assimilation into the rest of Ontarian society.  For a Franco-Ontarian living in the United States, it is like manna from heaven.  Comfort food indeed.

Where can you get it?  Tons of places over in Canada, and if my American readers are willing to brave the frontier, they can find it almost right off the bridge at Harvey's (note: Harvey's, not a misspelling of Hardee's).  For a fast food chain, they make the stuff almost as if they invented it.

My favorite place in the world to get it, and a wonderful example of one of those roadside burger stands at that, is at Riverview Burgers in Mattawa, Ontario, at the corner of Valois drive (Highway 17) and Ottawa street, right on the Ottawa River.  As if it were the cultural epicenter of the wonderful world of Poutine (and yes, I will always capitalize the word), you can enjoy it with a peameal bacon burger while you gaze across la fleuve to Quebec under the Canadian, Ontarian, Quebecois, and Franco-Ontarian flags which are lined along the road, and yes, they serve pink cream soda as well.

How about here?  Well, check out the article for some ideas, but with the exception of the Brooklyn Street Local restaurant, most of the varieties on display are, well, varieties, and not the real deal.  I know American cuisine basically transforms most cultural dishes into uniquely American versions, but there are also many of you that enjoy "authentic" tastes!  I'm not saying don't touch the stuff, but at least start with the original.  Sylvia Rector has excellent taste and sure knows food well, so actually, by all means, try the other kinds.  Just... try the original first.

Where can you get the real deal then?  Mikey's Burgers and Fries!  Co-founded by a homesick Canadian, Mikey's offers a mozzarella-based Poutine as a side dish or single entree.  I was told they use mozzarella curds because the regular stuff is hard to find south of the border here, and they want it fresh, not shipped from Wisconsin.  To be honest, as this was the first place I found it in my current land of residence, that small deficiency did not matter, and I dug into it with passionate gusto.  I have to say, between finding this place back two months ago and reading Sylvia's article tonight in the paper, well, I have hopes for the future of a blessed Detroit-Windsor hub of world culture.

Again, thanks to Sylvia Rector and the fine people at the Detroit Free Press.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Sagebrush Flat on the Colorado Plateau at Dusk.

Utah 24 southbound looking west.  The range in the background is part of  Goblin Valley State Park.  The night skies here are among the most spectacular in the world.

You Know You Like Trees When...

...you get really excited upon seeing a view open up like this.

I mean who would not like the scraggy Black Spruce (Picea Mariana), an acid loving tree growing on the limestone rocks here which are clearly supporting this stand of Northern White Cedar (Thuja Occidentalis)?  Such a lovely combination!

Oh, and I suppose the Mackinac Bridge is nice too.  Ha, in all seriousness though, one of the best places to get a view of weird combinations of trees, the Mighty Mac, and the straits which it bridges would be where this was taken, at Father Marquette National Memorial, a under-visited treasure in an area that is normally a bit more famous for its fudge shops.  We can check out more of the memorial in another post, but I strongly recommend that anyone traveling the area stop by.  It's free to enter, has wonderful viewpoints, and makes the first time visitor to the upper peninsula really feel like they have crossed over into something a touch more northern than the other side of the straits.

Then again, I am a bit of a sucker for Le Nord.

A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep

One of the great waterways of the continent is the Platte River, which flows through and drains the area seen below:

Permission is granted to copy this image under the GNU free documentation license.  This map is by Shannon1, a prolific photographer and cataloger of rivers in North American and around the world.

While not among the largest drainage basins out there, the Platte is significant in that it has long served as something of a natural oasis of water and tree cover on the otherwise open prairies of the Great Plains.  Cranes and other waterbirds would take shelter and rest here during their great annual migrations north and south along the Central Flyway, a bird travel route that largely follows the guiding north-south geographical features of the Rockies, the eastern coast of Mexico, and the Plains themselves.  

The term oasis can be a bit of a misnomer, however, as the Platte is not your typically palatable river for human use.  She carries quite a lot of sediment with her, both from the Rockies and the surrounding Plains, especially in parts of Wyoming and Nebraska that are a bit sandier and slightly more arid that the rest of the central Plains.  The Arkansas to the south also carries a similar load of sediment, but owing the a larger drainage basin and the fact that it is probably a bit older than the Platte (which probably really only got underway as the melting, thicker Rockies glaciers of the last ice age helped it out), it tends to have a bit more volume and thus water quality to it.  The title of this post is a tribute, in fact, to the running joke that past Americans have long made about the very shallow and braided river. 

Looking downstream from eastbound I-80 on the Platte near Ashland, Nebraska.  Though braided, the spring rush will actually fill the river enough to make it look a bit deeper.  When it's like this, though, you can walk across it!

 Still, the water is not exactly terrible either.  The birds enjoy it, the cottonwoods, ashes, and willows grow in abundance along its banks, and it once boasted an extremely healthy population of brook trout which thrived in the cool waters in the narrower channels and along the margins shaded by the dense forests.  The river, in this condition, actually served as an inviting passage for migrants seeking to get to the lands of California, Oregon, and Utah.  Given the choice between the vast, somewhat mysterious Plains and the familiar waters and forests that made up the Platte oasis, travelers from the eastern United States tended to follow the river. They fished from it, let their animals drink from it, and used the trees for fuel, so much so that the place became something of an exposed wasteland in a matter of mere years.  

The trout declined, the forests disappeared, and the river further eroded the nearby land and became even more of what the running joke mocked it as.  Native oral traditions and the written records of French traders do not leave us much of history of what the Platte was once like, but the presence of brook trout, which normally like clear or tannin stained waters, tend to convince me that it was once a bit different.  It probably was still braided, especially near its mouth at the Missouri, but it might also have been a bit more stabilized and purified by an abundance of shoreline vegetation.  Some of the crossings of I-80, for example, have spans which cross several channels nearly on top of each other, all of which are now covered in thick vegetation.  Research into former wildfire patterns indicates that this is not necessarily the result of modern prevention of fires, but because the forests did not experience significant burns in comparison to the surrounding grasslands.  The forests might only have seen significant burns a century or so apart, which would have been more than enough time for cottonwoods to keep a good cover over stabilized braid islands, which is what those crossings of I-80 pretty much are.  This could mean that we are seeing some of this river habitat fully restored.  Hopefully I can get a good shot of this sort of thing the next time I am there.

In any event, I-80 follows the Platte in what is one of the more verdant crossings of the Plains.  If all one does is look straight on to the road, in fact, one might not even guess they have entered the great grasslands until well into Nebraska.  Looking out to the sides, however, a traveler can see the great vistas open up in rolling hills at the edge of the Platte valley edges, often many miles distant.  The edges close in more the further west one goes, and the Plains take on the appearance of small mountains, having been well eroded over the centuries.  Grass can hold soil in place, but it is no substitute for trees.

Eventually the ashes and willows start to give way, and even the cottonwoods start getting a bit stunted up on the High Plains in Wyoming.  The river gets a bit more of a "mountain glacier green" to its waters by the time it gets to Ft. Laramie:

Taken in May of 2010 at Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

By this point it has long since divided into two main tributaries, both of which are named Platte, both of which live up to this French name meaning "flat".  Both tributaries emerge from the Front Range of the Rockies and take on a less than flat appearance as they pour out of the Continental Spine.  Here they leave behind the cottonwoods and eastern survivors and meet the forests of the west.  In both nature and history, the Platte has long served as a bridge between two different worlds, sort of like a North American Nile (which connected tropical Africa to the Mediterranean world).

The Clean Pacific

I was going through the California shots looking for more material related to yesterday's post when I found this lovely picture I took of the gentle surf rolling onto a beach out in those parts.

This was taken at Leo Carillo State Beach in Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, one of the most lovely parts of remaining natural southern California.  Though garbage from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch does wash ashore now and then, for the most part the beaches of southern California have absolutely lovely water that feels amazing.  The best places to go, as you would expect me to claim, are the natural beaches found in parks and preserves.  Not only do you usually get a cheaper parking option (this place is actually free if you just park alongside the Pacific Coast Highway, which puts you closer to the beach anyway), you also get to see some amazing plant and animal life and enjoy some really great natural sand.  I maintain that the same is true for most beaches on the continent.  

Wednesday Filler: Looking Out at the Channel Islands

One of the few national parks that is only accessible by boat or a long swim is Channel Islands National Park.  Like most insular parks, the islands are wonders of nature that include just as much of their valuable setting beneath the waves as above.  Likewise, the islands are home to things that are otherwise rare or non-existent in the rest of North America, though some plants and animals can be found in nearby coastline areas of Ventura and Los Angeles counties.  The islands, you see, were pretty much isolated from the mainland since the last ice age, which cut off a lot of migration and ground dispersal of species.  Still, the islands are not too far away:

Taken from a small mainland part of Channel Islands National Park in Ventura, California.  The island with the higher mountains is Santa Cruz, whereas the more faintly visible island on the left low horizon is Anacapa.  The dunes are natural, the breakwater is obviously artificial, serving to protect Ventura Harbor.  

The Chumash people consider the islands to be their ancient homeland, and like some of the island life, they also have lived on the nearby mainland coast areas for centuries.  The Channel Islands were also a place of both sanctuary and downfall for the expedition of Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, the first European to explore the northern direction of the western coast of North America, back in the early 1540's.  The Ventura area has a lovely climate typical of coastal southern California, with little temperature variation during the daytime beyond winter days in the lower sixties to summer days in the lower seventies.  The ocean here is quite cool most of the time, and gets colder even by the mile the further north one progresses.  Apparently there are usually a lot of sea lions around here, crowding every bit of land, wharf, or buoy they can take over, but I did not encounter any.

Breaking my usual rule of only sharing posts about what I have seen, I have to say, the whole affair seems too comical not to pass along anyway:

The Heat is On

100 degrees in places like Michigan, Ontario, and Wisconsin comes around now and then, but when it does, it tends to be an abnormal, rather than frequent, occurrence.  Thus far this summer, we have had a handful of such days, and they have been coupled with a distressing lack of rain.  Lawns are well past the point of surrender, but now creeks are also starting to run a bit dry and even some of the deeper local lakes are becoming more akin to bathwater than something refreshing.  This has come to us on top of a rather mild winter, with some days in January even sitting well into the 60's.  Furthermore, this is part of a trend of a see-saw of extremes that have visited the world in the past two decades.  Rather than enter a harsh debate about climate change, however, I think what is needed most here would be some refreshing pictures of cold things.

With the recently devastated Rockies in mind, let's head to happier times in Colorado, from a better winter a few years ago.  First we can see some snow!

Vail Pass, Colorado, May 2010.

 Lovely stuff at near 10,000 feet, which sadly, did not happen much if at all even at these altitudes this past winter.  The spires you see there are either Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii) or Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa), and it can be hard to tell with such a heavy snowpack holding down the rising branches the spruces would normally carry.  The Rocky Mountain forests are truly lovely, a great example of how massed individual species can really add to the beauty of an expansive landscape.  While variety is the spice of life and biodiversity is a very good thing, there is nothing like seeing a forest of spires like this or in the boreal north, where these trees are replaced by Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea) and Black Spruce (Picea Mariana).  I promised I would not go on about climate change, right?  Well the truth of the matter is that these forests are actually disappearing before our very eyes as things get too warm for them and conditions in which they would otherwise flourish are heading further north or upwards.  While forests might retreat, they also have to deal with an increase in wildfires and insect attacks that their colder environments used to help keep in check.  See that snowpack?  Even for May, it is a bit low.  Our colder years now are what were once average.  The heat is on, indeed.

I-70 Eastbound exiting the Eisenhower Tunnels, just to the east of the Continental Divide.  11,100 feet up high!

Another Savanna Post, or What Did We Have and What Have We Done With It?

And yet again another exciting post from Jim McCormac over at Ohio Birds and Biodiversity.

http://jimmccormac.blogspot.com/2012/07/pearl-king-savanna.html

His post is a look at the Pearl King Savanna, one of last remaining oak savannas in Ohio.  In all honesty though, some of its grass cover is extensive enough to consider it as something of a prairie; a few of his excellent photographs reveal that the horizon is quite distant.  Perhaps this is because of the surrounding farmland.  Though this adjacent agricultural space is very much a landscape of our creation, it is important to remember that it is there because the settlers who poured into the region found such open and "barren" land an attractive place to start plowing and planting.  What could be more pleasant to an immigrant farmer than land that nature has already cleared, and left rich soils to enjoy as well?  The Ohio Valley and Great Lakes were settled relatively fast not only because they had the one thing those living east of the Appalachians craved the most, space, but also because the open landscape only added to the concept.

This had me wondering just how much of the Nearwest and even parts of the interior eastern seaboard used to have savannas and prairies.  Wildfire regimes, both historical and conjectured modern, seem to indicate that they could have been very widespread.  These days, we still have many pine barrens from Long Island southward into southern Florida which have probably survived or renewed themselves because of undesirable soils and/or changing employment patterns.  If the climate and natural processes could support "barrens" in coastal regions, surely they could do they same where they were not entirely different back in the interior valleys of the Appalachians and the lakeplains of Lake Ontario and Erie.  Buffalo, for instance, once thrived in the valleys of Virginia and, you guessed it, the area around Buffalo, NY.  The early colonists and settlers, both French and English, reported the majestic herds in such areas.  They were less thorough in reporting about the landscapes they were found in, except where they found towering forests.

Perhaps this was because nature provided inspiration when the migrants found roadblocks such as mountains and great rivers and lakes.  The scale of the continent's unspoiled lands inspired whole schools of painting that highlighted such expanses, particularly in the work of the Hudson River School.  Such lands also provided inspiration for the birth of the natural romantics like Thoreau and Emerson, and the conservation movement which they spawned.  In contrast, however, little fuss was made about lands that were either convenient, like prairies and savannas, or roadblocks that did not serve to inspire (at least in that era) such as swamps, dry plains, and deserts.  The most striking historical portraits we have of such desires would be in  our conserved lands.  With the exception of swamps set aside for bird refuges, most of the early saved lands were mountains and dramatic valleys.  The Everglades, again in contrast, were viewed as undesirable (despite being one of the most amazing bird habitats in the entire world), and were even being targeted for drainage and destruction by the same people that were promoting conservation elsewhere!

There we have it.  A mountain or large lake could not be moved out of the way, and served as a reminder of the forces that were greater than humanity that could not be tamed.  A grassland?  Well, that would be something more akin to a field that nature had left wild and was just begging to have cultivated for more "useful purposes".  A swamp?  Yuck!  Why would the settlers make a mention out of something they could instead just transform into a monument of expanding civilization, a monument which would leave a much better record and legacy of who they were and why they came there?  Nature was just starting to become appreciated for its own sake back in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and well over a century would go by wherein civilization was still hailed as the primary triumph of man's dominion over creation.

What did we have?  What have we done with it?  Thankfully, we have people like Jim to show us a glimpse of an answer to these questions.  That in mind, let's keep exploring!

Sunday Afternoon Post: Life on the High Plains of New Mexico

New Mexico's High Plains can get cold.  They can see a snowy winter, over 100 days of frost, and chilly nights befitting a land the lies above 5,000 feet for the most part.  These lands are often not considered to be grasslands, probably because even the slightest rise in elevation brings forests, and the wildfire regime is different enough here to let junipers creep out into the grasses, along with the wonderful Tree Cholla (Cylindropuntia Imbricata), a pretty hardy cactus that can take whatever extremes of summer and winter this place can throw at it.  

Lovely scenery from Pecos, New Mexico, truly a land in between everything.

This is northeastern New Mexico, a land not quite in the plains, not quite in the mountains, and not quite in the deserts.

A Majestic View of the San Gabriel Mountains

You know how some people live in New York City and yet have never been to the Statue of Liberty or even to Time's Square?  Well, I imagine there are people who live in Los Angeles and environs who never have been to their nearby mountains, or even give them more than a passing glance on any given day.

8,859 foot Cucamonga Peak, sitting above a low 1,200 foot vantage point in Rancho Cucamonga, California.

Such an amazing backdrop.  Imagine waking up to this in your front windows every morning!

Finding the Wendat (Huron) Civilization

Popular imagination tends to portray Native American existence before European contact as a peaceful, primitive situation replete with tepees and elaborate headdresses, but little in the way of any sort of settled, complex civilization.  Popular imagination, of course, is sorely lacking.  Not including the advanced civilization of the Aztecs (who, yes, had a pretty glaring dark side too) and other cultures in central Mexico and further south, there were a great deal of peoples in lands as diverse as the Rio Grande Valley to the Great Lakes area that raised great cities and engaged in extensive agriculture to feed large populations.  The finest remains of such civilizations can be seen in the American southwest, but impressive mounds and fragments of cities can be found in key locations throughout the eastern part of North America, particularly in Illinois, Ohio, and Ontario.  Disease and European involvement in already viscous warfare between various peoples would finish off these great, yes, urban cultures that had already begun to decline due to climactic shifts in rainfall patterns.

While we are fairly certain of conditions that have existed since the 1500s, however, we still know relatively little about what settled life was like for our true first-families, and exciting discoveries keep popping up on a regular basis.  Such is the case of ongoing discoveries made at the "Mantle Site", a Wendat (Huron) where as many as 2,000 people might have lived in a large settlement of permanent structures laid out in a meaningful urban design.  Some news about this can be found here:

http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/article/1222889--how-did-huron-wendat-get-cursed-european-axe-a-century-before-european-contact

So who were the Wendat (Hurons) and why is this a big deal?  Well, that funny thing called popular imagination labels them as a weak people who lovingly embraced the French and Christianity when it was offered to them.  As such, they became scattered to the winds by the other nations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) attacked them in their weakened state, who had it coming anyway because they sided with the newcomers.  In truth, the Wendat were no weaker than any individual nation of the Haudenosaunee and actually controlled a series of trade routes and contacts because of their strategic position located in the heart of territory that had long been contested by various Algonquin and Haudenosaunee nations.  Settled on the northern shores of Lake Ontario and the eastern and southern shores of Lake Huron (essentially southern Ontario and parts of Michigan), the Wendat saw passage of goods and peoples from the Algonquins, Ojibwa, Potawatamis, Illinois, Ottawas, Chippewas, Senecas, Cayugas, Onandagas, Oneidas, Mohawks, the nations which surrounded them.  Furthermore, as they were such a vital link between so many nations of two major cultural groups, they also had extensive contact with nations further afield such as the Cree, various nations of the Sioux, Shawnees, Delawares, Mahicans, and the various nations who lived further down the Mississippi and Atlantic corridors.  The Wendat were big news, as they were not afraid to facilitate the passage of a lot of economy through their land.

So what else would such a nation do when in such a prestigious and dangerous position of being in contact with so many other nations?  They dug in, made a pretty big city, and instead of fighting everyone else or making peace with them, opened up an exchange of commerce and ideas with them.  The recent find of a Basque axe at the Mantle Site has only furthered proof that the Wendat drew in a lot of distant exchanges of various sorts.  Even before they had seen a Basque or any other European, the Wendat were busy trading some stuff Europeans had traded to nations on the margins of the continent.  Now this might be stretching, but it seems plausible that one of the reasons why the French were so eager to seek out contact, trade, and evangelistic efforts with the Wendat were because other nations, such as the Algonquins, told them that this was a people who were interested in working with others and freely moving around goods both material and intellectual.  While the French found the other Haudenosaunee to be less than friendly towards them, and the Algonquins amicable but also largely ambivalent about helping a people that had set up camp right on their doorstep, they found the Wendat to be very willing to help them trade and explore in a mysterious land of pines, moose, and very cold winters.

In time, this would come to a very beautiful, and very tragic, sharing that would become one of the great marriages of culture that our Canada would be born from.  That, of course, is a passionate story for me to tell you on another day.

The Great Mojave Snowstorm of 2008

With the possible exception of taking an extremely southerly route through Mexico, there is no guaranteed safe passage across North American in the wintertime in the worst of years.  Yes, one can assume that travel along the Gulf will not result in encountering any sudden blasts of winter weather, but even Houston and New Orleans have seen nights in the 20s and a good blast of snow now and then.  Likewise, despite encountering some of the driest lands in the world moving further west, the desert seems to forget it is a desert sometimes, and otherwise bone dry, 110+ degree locations in the summer can turn into frigid deathtraps in which the local driving population is sorely unprepared.  In December 2008 in the Mojave Desert, the land became blanketed with well over two feet of snow.  

Now, yes, those are desert evergreen plants in that picture, and what you see is a normally toasty portion of the Mojave outside of Baker, California.  The snow also persisted for over a week, with temperatures remaining low for the duration.  It was a strange event, all the more so because everything else on the trans-continental trip had not at all prepared me for an actual blizzard.  Yes, there was an absolute terror of a snowstorm in the Rockies, and yes, the higher elevations around a place as close as Cedar City, Utah, were frigid in the single digits, but 30 miles later, a descent into the Mojave raised the temperatures into the 50s and the snow was melted, leaving the red landscape of St. George and environs even more brilliant than normal.  I did not have an unreasonable expectation in assuming that the even lower Las Vegas would feature similar milder conditions.  Instead, a blizzard ripped across I-15 near the end of the strip.

Yes, this is really Las Vegas, Nevada.  Let me tell you, the rates on rooms were amazing that night!

This was a really interesting experience, to say the least.  At the start of the descent into Las Vegas Valley, the external thermometer on the car was reading 46 degrees.  A drop from St. George's high of 50, but not a surprising one considering that there were fewer gaps in the clouds.  Then the numbers kept getting lower every mile until Las Vegas was reporting a chilly 32.  I wondered when the few raindrops falling from the now solid cloud sky would turn to snow, and sure enough, the normally baked landscape played host to a fair impression of a Great Lakes blizzard.  

Now, again, we are a cold continent.  Frost has been reported everywhere throughout our land except the Florida Keys, a thin strip of coastline in extreme southern California, and the tropical parts of Mexico (though even a place as far south as Tampico has seen it).  Jacksonville, Florida has seen snowfalls of several inches that managed to stick around for a while, and the last few years have seen arctic outbreaks which have threatened the citrus crops in the state.  At the same time, while these are not entirely unexpected occurrences, they are also not normal by any stretch of the imagination.  An average December day in the Mojave sits anywhere from the mid-50s to lower 60s, depending on elevation.  Some of the higher rises in the desert might see a dusting now and then, but it is hardly persistent.  The pools in Las Vegas stay open all year, and palm trees are a reality of landscaping throughout the region.  Worst of all, they do not have snow plows at the ready around these parts, and I-15 became a parking lot at the border with California.  This, of course, led to a night in Vegas and a chance to see what happens to palms in the snow.

This would be the famous "Whiskey Pete's" in tourist tr... er Primm, Nevada.  The hotel was packed with stalled travelers.  

Let me tell you, palms and snow do not mix.  Your hardly desert dwellers like the California Fan Palm (Washingtonia Filifera) and such are used to the occasional upset like this, but they still get weighed down and look very, very sad.  In the same fashion, the local drivers know that things are more dangerous when frozen and slushy, but like the palms bent under the weight of the snow, they cannot help but apply their defenses and hardiness with a lack of grace and hit the brakes hard enough to get locked into some truly embarrassing fish-tailing.  Again, this can happen, but it rarely does, but then it also gets remembered.  While it might be convenient to blame climate change for a mess like this (and the frequency of such events does tend to support the theories out there), the fact is that travelers have historically encountered such shocking visits from Father Winter.  Juan Bautista de Anza and his expedition, in fact, encountered one heck of a snowstorm down in the warmer Sonoran Desert not far from Palm Springs, California!  

Southbound I-15 approaching the 4,900 foot pass that in the Mescal range near the California/Nevada border.

 Travel inconveniences aside, the snow tends to melt pretty quickly in the lower elevations and urban areas.  By the next day, downtown Las Vegas had chunks of ice in the shadows of buildings, but not much in the way of snow except a little dusting on the grass and in the trees.  The higher elevations, though, like the mountains pictured above near Ivanpah Dry Lake in southern California, continued to carry a load of the white stuff well into the next week.  The result was stunning, to say the least, and even left dry lakes like Ivanpah with a bit of water in them for a while.

Wednesday Filler: Empire Dunes from the North

The eastern shore of Lake Michigan is nearly one long beach, which is a bit of an understatement in some areas.

Taken from one of the last scenic viewpoints on Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.  

Ancient glacial melt-waters carrying tons of sand, persistent winds, and a giant lake to keep pushing sediments around?  The result is what you see above.

The Future of North American Commerce

The blog took a day off yesterday to celebrate the final day of the first International Cactus Weekend, but worry not, we have plenty of places left to go and many to revisit.

We have a very crucial issue to visit today, that of more unfortunate attempts to block a MUCH NEEDED AND CRUCIAL BRIDGE from being completed.  I wrote about this issue, regarding the new international crossing, in this post.  If you are unaware of the significance that Detroit has a trade corridor between not only Canada and the United States but also between Canada and Mexico, please take a look at that post.

Sadly, it seems that the Moroun family, the very same family that has been stalling completion of their contracted project to better link the Ambassador Bridge to Interstates 96 and 75, has managed to collect enough signatures to mount a petition against the progress made in making the second crossing a reality.  Some people have already claimed that such signatures have been purchased:

http://buildthedricnow.com/2012/07/10/ambassador-bridge-owners-paid-millions-for-signatures-to-put-their-monopoly-protecting-proposal-on-the-ballot/

My opinion?  This is not an unreasonable hypothesis.  More trade passes on Detroit's Ambassador Bridge every year than does between the United States and nations such as Japan.  It should therefore not come as a shock to us that Manuel Moroun would want to keep controlling as much of this trade as possible and try to force the issue.

We need this bridge.  This bridge will enhance the local economy even further than the existing span already does.  This bridge will cost American taxpayers nothing.  This bridge is a joint effort between two very old allies, the United States and Canada, the latter of which, by the way, is not just some "foreign power" akin to Iran.  Do not be fed by his misinformation.

Sunday Afternoon Post: Exotic North American Prickly Pears in Southern California

While not exactly a place where you can grow everything (no true tropicals or cold weather species), southern California is the next best thing to heaven when it comes to gardening potential.  Inland parts of the coastal basins border on desert conditions while still having enough rainfall and lower temperatures to keep everything from looking like the land over the nearby mountains.  One of the hallmarks of the inland regions would be the numerous cacti grown in most yards, most of them exotic introductions that grow far to the north of their usual haunts, but do just fine here because of the mild winters reasonably devoid of frost that such places experience.

In the spirit of Cactus Weekend (who knows, it could become a real thing one day), here are two such beauties that qualify for inclusion on a blog about things of natural North America.

Indian-Fig Prickly Pear (Opuntia Ficus-Indica) taken in a private garden... er... mess in Fontana, California.  

This pear, as you can see, is quite capable of trunking.  Its pads cup a little bit, and you can see one in flower here.  This cactus is native to central Mexico, and gets planted anywhere warm enough not to hurt it with bouts of cold less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.  They seem really fond of them in Virginia Beach, and they can handle moist as well as desert conditions.

Wheel Cactus (Opuntia Robusta) taken in a private garden in Claremont, California.

This cactus also trunks and features striking pale blue pads.  I have never seen one in flower, but apparently they send up bright yellow blooms.  They are native and endemic to the southern Chihuahuan Desert in central Mexico.  In my travels I have only seem them cultivated in southern California, and only in the Los Angeles basin and surrounding basins and valleys.  

Stop by tomorrow for a change into something non-prickly.  

Our Most Widespread and Adaptable Plants

When we think of hardy plant life that can be found almost anywhere, we tend to think of things like grasses, willows, junipers, and even some of our native oaks which can be found everywhere from swamps to bone dry parts of the Arizona mountains.  While these plants do tend to be widespread, they are also quite specific in their needs and do not thrive or even survive in habitats that they are unaccustomed to.  Granted, things like the short grasses of the high plains and the various oaks got the way they are through adaptation, but it was less of an evolution and more of a taking advantage of conditions that other plants could simply not compete with them over.  They are indeed survivors, and without them, North America would have a lot more desert-like wasteland about.  

But what about those deserts, where only the strongest plants, animals, and even people seem to make life happen?  They are hardly as barren as they seem, especially in the higher reaches where just a little bit more rain falls to make the difference between true aridity and a thriving community of nature that takes what it can get from slim pickings in resources of water.  The shrubs and other plants there either look far down into the earth for water (most mesquites have taproots that extend 60 feet or more into the ground) or have widespread roots that suck up as much of the wet stuff as they can when rain does finally come.  Again, though, these are plants that have become accustomed to certain conditions.  One would be hard pressed to find some of these plants in the tropical parts of Mexico or in the frosty boreal forest.  

There is one family of plants that does just this, however.  They are the cacti, and they are pretty ubiquitous plants:

Yes, I forgot to fill in the Caribbean islands, and they grow there too.  Let's keep this to the mainland I suppose.

North America, more than any other continent of the world, is a dry place.  Sure, we have small areas such as the Pacific Northwest that are usually drenched, but even there, drought is never guaranteed to stay away.  Some of our most severe drought to date can be found in the normally humid and rainy Georgia and Alabama.  Despite having a reputation as a gloomy city, Seattle actually gets as much rain as New York City in an average year of precipitation, and some fine days may boast sunsets unencumbered by even a single cloud in the sky.  On top of this, we also tend to get extremes in temperature that, while not considered normal occurrences, do not exactly come as a shock either.  Again, we have plants that can take all sorts of conditions, but are usually only found in some parts of the continent, such as the prairie flowers which are becoming very popular in gardens as water bills continue to rise.  Cacti, on the other hand, can be found in habitats ranging from the boreal forest to the tropical parts of Mexico.  They can be found near the treeline in the Sierra Nevadas, or growing between the rocks at the edge of the salt flats in Death Valley.  All but one species, in fact, are native to the Americas, with the highest diversity being concentrated in northern and central Mexico (which is also the center of diversity for pines).

They are true survivors and have evolved in a remarkably short period of time.  No fossils of cacti have ever been found, but their restricted natural distribution to the New World suggests that they developed from other plants sometime after the Americas became isolated from the rest of the world landmasses, which means they could have developed anytime during the past 130 million years.  In comparison, pines (another very widespread and adaptable type of plant) have been with us possibly as much as 290 million years ago, and trees in general are thought to have developed into recognizable forms (if not species) as early as 100 million years before that.  Cacti started out with leaves, but diverged from other plants by growing spines that would soon replace the leaves, the function of which would be taken over by the very skin of the plant itself. The only remaining survivor of this original form is known today as the Rose Cacti (Pereskia Grandiflora):

The stem of the Rose Cactus, courtesy of R.A. Howard @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

The Rose Cactus is native to northeastern Brazil, which is actually a fairly wet place.  Some drier parts of the region exist, but for the most part the sky dumps about 40-70 inches of rain a year on the ground.  At the same time, the soil is not the best that Brazil has to offer, being a sandy affair that often drains and dries quite quickly.  (I was looking for reasons to go to out of the way parts of Brazil one day, and seeing one of these in habitat for myself might just do the trick.  Brazil also happens to be the world center for genetic diversity in palms!)  What sort of a plant would thrive in conditions where water was available, but not necessarily all of the time?  This sort of plant, with a stem that turned from something that still resembles wood into something that could also store quite a bit of water.  As part of its transition from a woody plant into something a bit more succulent and softer, it grew spines to protect and also shade itself.  It retains its leaves for photosynthesis, as its skin is still largely a woody business, and apparently has dazzling flowers.  What happened to its off-shoots then?  They kept the spines, ditched the leaves in favor of a nice green (but not always) body, and definitely kept the flowers.  

Arizona Barrel Cactus (Ferocactus Wislizeni), taken during a very memorable misty day in Saguaro National Park, Arizona.  

Cacti flowers, in fact, can be among the most brilliant and noticeable blooms of any wildflowers.  My favorite that I have thus encountered (and lost the pictures for, sadly) would have to be the Beavertail Cactus (Opuntia Basilaris).

Brother Alfred Brousseau @ USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database

They add real vitality to a desert scene when most of the spring wildflowers have already started to succumb to the higher temperatures and onset of summer dryness.  Cacti definitely do tend to complete a desert scene, and a popular conception of the American southwest often has a butte framed by a sunset with a Saguaro (like the one in the background of our blog) raising its arms to the sky.  They tend to stand out even more, however, in places where they are least expected, such as in a sandy patch of ground in a forest in Michigan, a beach on Long Island with a backdrop of New York City contrasting with it, or even growing in mossy cracks in the granite of the Canadian Shield in northern Ontario!  I can tell you from personal experience that they look very, very exotic in these settings, but not entirely out of place either, sort of like finding a Royal Palm in the Everglades or a lone towering pine at the edge of its range growing into the prairies.

That's right, we have a kind of plant that you really can find just about anywhere, one that ties our continent together in a botanical celebration of taking advantage of the weird water conditions our great land throws at us.  This tough little fellow is the Fragile Prickly Pear (Opuntia Fragilis), and it keeps getting found in places where most other plants beyond moss or lichens would just plain give up.  

Taken by Daiv Freeman in Minnesota, copyright 2010.  Daiv has a wonderful website on all things cacti, which can be found at cactiguide.com.  

It has been found (and I highly recommend checking out this article) in Michigan's upper peninsula:

http://opuntiads.com/zpdf/opuntia-fragilis-michigan.pdf

Fragiles have also been found in Manitoba and right across the border around Lake of the Woods in Ontario, and appear quite happy to grow in the otherwise botanically restrictive Canadian Shield rock.  Recent finds have occurred in Kaladar, Ontario and surrounding areas.  They like granite.  They like well-drained soils (like sand).  One figures they might be a bit more common than we think.  Apparently they were one of the first plants to chase the melting glaciers at the end of the last ice age!  Cacti are nothing of short of amazing, and a wonderful part of our natural heritage throughout the continent.  On top of this, they taste great, and look amazing in a garden.  Our native people certainly thought so.