Treasures Of The North And Winter: Redtwig Dogwood (Cornus Sericea)

In addition to the birches, willows, and mountain ashes which make up the broadleaved gang of the Boreal north, one can also find a nice collection of dogwood, sometimes nearly to the Arctic treeline.  One in particular ranges even further north and bit further south than our Sorbus friend which we visited on ye olde blog yesterday, the magnificent Redtwig Dogwood (Cornus Sericea).

All but the last two of these pictures are taken from a tamarack swamp/fen (pretty sure it is actually a prairie fen) about two miles from your author's dwelling near South Lyon, Michigan.

While most winter interest deciduous plants try to fall back on great features like berries or persistent fall foliage, the Redtwig adds spice to the landscape with wood alone.

They like the same sort of cold winters that Sorbus seems to like, but because they like to get their feet good and soaked (or at least within root range of some plentiful water; I have seen them higher up on stream and pond banks), they don't range as far south into the Appalachians as the Mountain Ash or spruce and firs do.  There are some amazing cool, wet areas in West Virginia and Maryland where this dogwood and its best tree friend, the Tamarack (Larix Laricina) can be found at the far end of their eastern southerly range.  On the other hand, they extend well south into parts of Mexico where a combination of persistent water and artificial north provided by altitude allow them to thrive.  A subspecies is also found along the Pacific coast as far south as the mountains around Los Angeles, a rare find for a climate which does not have much in the way of eastern North American wetlands beyond its vernal pools (which does in fact have some populations of this remarkable plant).

USGS Geosciences, please never stop giving us awesome maps.  We love you.  Very much.

That said, they are indeed a northern plant, and I would definitely classify them even as a Boreal plant, and thus another gift of the winter lands.  Around here, they are a common feature of the swampier parts of the world, and they often form pretty amazing gatherings, as if nature did have some sort of aesthetic plans in mind and desired mass plantings.

Filling a swampy niche and having evolved within a balance, they never tend to completely form monocultures, even while they do dominate the scenery.  When the sun catches these things they turn an incredible bright ruby, but even in the dull overcast winter days they are far more brilliant than most cameras can even hope to demonstrate.

 

They grow slowly, and the old wood does turn brown even while the newer wood is the same amazing red:

Not the best image, but this old wood versus new wood is demonstrated by the emerging red stem from the central branch here.

In general, though, they tend to form an understory beneath taller wet foot trees like cottonwoods, the lovely Tamarack...

 ...and in a particular lovely combination of color and grace, the Black Willow (Salix Nigra):

Finally, they look amazing against the snow, almost as if to proclaim that not only is this winter and snow not so bad, it is positively enchanting.

Thankfully, Redtwig is pretty popular in the nursery trade, and even if Siberian Dogwood (Cornus Alba) seems to be flavor of the month lately, this is one case where even gardeners in its native land are falling head over heels for our friend.  Heck, there are even golden and green cultivars/selections out there!  Apparently you can plant all three as far south as the lowland Carolinas and parts of Georgia and Alabama, but I would imagine that like any northern plant, they probably do best in wet conditions with colder winters back home; they certainly do not naturally occur much farther south than the Great Lakes, at least at lower elevations. 

I do not know how the early colonists would have seen this plant and have yet to run into early botanical and garden literature regarding it, but the First Born absolutely loved it and used it in everything from smoking mixes to wound treatment.  Redtwig would make an excellent candidate for serious ethnobotanical study, and if this blog did not have a more general focus beyond ethnobotany (I know, I know, sometimes I get carried away with it) I would probably bore you all with a good solid set of posts on findings about good old red bark shrub. 

Oh, and this is just our friend in the winter.  In the spring it bears white flowers, in the summer these turn into white berries,and they all look great on those ribbed leaves.

Again as with our friend Sorbus, this apparently also occurs in northern Illinois, classic eastern Tallgrass Prairie country, a far cry from anything Boreal.  If anyone reading this knows more, by all means, share! 

Note: Cornus Sericea has also been known as Cornus Stolonifera. 

Treasures Of The North And Winter: American Mountain Ash (Sorbus Americana)

Most conversations I have had with people about my northern (i.e. pine tree and really cold winter country) heritage usually include discussions on what exactly grows up in the land of frigid winters and gentle summers.  Many people assume that the farther north one travels, the more one runs into coniferous needle-leaved trees, and that the horizon is nothing but spruce after spruce.  Just as residents of the lower north (southern Great Lakes, Midwest, Northeast) assume that Florida is one giant palm plantation, or that the desert west is nothing but sand dunes devoid of life, residents from said lower north down to the the rest of the continent picture the Boreal north as a land of excellent Christmas trees and the odd moose or bear bursting through the needles.  In truth, spruce are the most northerly occurring trees, right on into the tundra in fact (albeit as a very small form that takes centuries to hit an inch tall).  They are very quickly joined by willows, birch, aspen, and best of all, by something that looks like it should not grow in this land of the anti-leaf, the American Mountain Ash (Sorbus Americana).

Clingmans Dome, Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  North Carolina, with some Tennessee in the background.

 On the upper slopes of Mt. Mitchell, North Carolina.

 As you can see, our friend the grand Mountain Ash looks, like the northern growing sumacs, to be a palm tree that got lost along the way.  Despite growing in an otherwise rugged setting, the tree (others insist it is a tree-like shrub) has delicate looking foliage and a branching structure that looks like it would get absolutely broken apart in heavy snow and ice.  Believe what you want, however, because this fine specimen of a plant really only grows where things get somewhat brutal:

Thanks, USDA!

Most of my pictures of them come from North Carolina, despite the fact that this is indeed a tree I have grown up with for a long time.  The good olf Sorbus is indeed a tree of eastern Boreal Canada, growing right on up to James Bay.  Not until I was specifically plant hunting and noticed it stood out among the Spruce-Fir forests of the higher Appalachians did I really think it was anything unique!  Yes, it has the same good characteristics in both Ontario and North Carolina, and it stands out from the forests in the Laurentians:

Somewhere in the forest north of Brent, Ontario and south of Deux-Rivieres, Ontario.

As well as it does in the Blue Ridge and Smokies:

Off of the summit of Mt. Mitchell in North Carolina.  They really do look weird with the conifers.

Along the main road in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, eastbound side, not exactly sure, but high enough to see the transition between coniferous and deciduous forests.  On the top right there is also a heath bald full of rhododendrons and kalmia!

Yet I always seemed to think of it as part of the scenery, taken for granted.  This is probably because it is not a "northern" looking thing; just as the kid who got excited over pine trees did, so do people who get excited over spruces and rhododendrons which happen to grow best where the Sorbuses do: 

They really do offer a nice foliage effect together.  I am sure by now that any gardeners reading the blog are getting some ideas!  This was taken on the road leading up to the summit of Mt. Mitchell.

Let's face it, you all looked at the flowering Catawba Rhododendron (Rhododendron Catawbiense), and why not?  The Sorbus looks like any old sumac (or worse, a Tree of Heaven [Ailanthus Altissima]) growing in an abandoned city lot might. This holds true until the winter comes, however, and the true glory of Sorbus Americana enters the landscape, it's berries:

Another fine tree from the Ontario Laurentians, probably about 6 or 7 miles from the other one pictured in this post.  Both were set in some fairly dark and lovely spruce-fir forests.

Somewhere in Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, most likely on the path to Munising Falls near Munising, Michigan.

The berries, of course, are preceded by flowers, which truly makes this an all season interest tree:

Flower buds!  This was at Mt. Mitchell and taken mid June.

Clingmans Dome.  I arrived too early at the high elevations, and too late at the lower elevations, to get a full bloom.

I don't have any photos of the plant in full bloom or naked in the dead of winter with those bright red berries really standing out against the landscape, but it does not take too much imagination to realize that this is a tree which proves that noticeable seasonal changes are not a bad thing.  Indeed, this tree might have even given a bit of a boost to early colonists who had to deal with an actual winter or were heading into the dark and mysterious mountain or northern interior.  It was a welcome splash of color in the winter landscape, and would have reminded them of their own Sorbus back across the sea, the Rowan Tree (Sorbus Aucuparia), which people had considered to be good for everything from making jelly to fighting off witches.  That said, it seems that Aucuparia still gets more notice and stock in the nursery trade; in keeping with the current few posts and their theme on the blog, it is important to note that this is probably because the European version can be grown in warmer spots than the North American version.  Again, however, this is not say that our version is weak and tender, as it can grow out of some really difficult soil:

Somewhere along the Blue Ridge Parkway near north of Mt. Mitchell.

Somewhere on Mt. Mitchell.  As you can see, the soil is pretty shallow before bedrock is reached.  This particular Sorbus is joined by a nice blanket of blue alpine flowers, Mountain Bluets (Hedyotis Michauxii).

And of course, our version can also handle the colder end of the spectrum better than even some of the hardiest northern broadleaved trees.  This tree just happens to be hardy in the other direction, the one that no one claims to like!

By the way, if any Illinois people are reading this, I would love to hear/see anything on the wild population in your state, which is far more prairie than Boreal. 

Harriet Tubman And Johanna Dominguez

I'll probably get back to the real posting soon, but just two things for today to pass along to my readers:

1. Harriet Tubman is getting a shout out today on Google's front page.  She is extremely important not only for persons of color in this country (or the world in general) but also for women who long struggled for enfranchisement.  Like many other fine Black people of the 19th century, she also contributed to the development and enrichment of cultural and intellectual life in central New York, namely in Auburn.  She is honored in statues and memorials in many places, and at two National Park sites, one being Women's Rights National Historical Park in nearby Seneca Falls, NY, and the other in the newly created Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument in Church Creek, MD.  In nearby Cambridge, MA is a dedicated museum to Harriet run by the Harriet Tubman Organization.

The two areas offer the visitor a major contrast between the sides of the abolition struggle.  Safe, tranquil central New York is and was largely agrarian, domestically serene and proper, and somewhat removed from the rest of the major stress areas on the Underground Railroad.  It was close to the safety of Upper Canada in either Niagara or Kingston, and by and large the reception given to liberated Black people was much warmer than elsewhere in the North.  The eastern shore of Maryland, however, is and was still relatively wild and swampy, as well as deep enough into the Slave States to make this perhaps one of the most stressful parts of an escape to freedom further north.  I'll let such distinctions speak for themselves, with the mention that swamps are pretty amazing places when one is not running in terror.

2. A friend of mine has recently started diving into a blog project regarding human-induced climate change.  While I often teeter carefully on the political abyss here on American Voyages, I have not been shy to present blatantly obvious evidence, admittedly at face value, that something is going on with our planet.  I present her post and take on what is happening in the Albertan Boreal forest and Boreal-Prairie Interface because it is very scary.  Factually speaking, the Boreal forest is perhaps the last great wilderness remaining on the planet, doing all the wonderful things that forests do in a very vast scale.  In North America, the Boreal world connects the east and the west by means of the all-encompassing north in a series of ecosystems and biomes that bear similarities enough that one cannot otherwise tell the difference in some landscapes if they were standing in Alaska or Labrador.  I roughly consider the Boreal world here to be found wherever the shaggy but noble Black Spruce (Picea Mariana) can be found in the wild:

Yes, even down in the Poconos or in rare remnants in southern Michigan or nearby Southern Ontario.  Where one finds Black Spruce, one finds cool, damp conditions that even the hardiest temperate species can't tolerate.

That said, I do confess to another bias, notably that I am pretty much from this world of spruce, bogs, granite, sand, Ericaceae of extraordinary abundance, the Aurora Borealis, a lot of Cree, Moose, and tons of other amazing things.

Near Deux-Riviers, Ontario.  This is a more southerly example of the Boreal world.

Passions and home spirit aside, the boreal world is notable for not only still being generally unbroken by the hand of humans, but also packs in a ton of carbon and pretty much serves as one of the biggest positive storage spaces in the planetary carbon cycle.  Start digging up fossil fuel from and burning or otherwise destroying any part of the Boreal landscape and there are going to be very consequences for the rest of the world.  Natural consequences aside, the Cree are also fighting an uphill battle over the poisoning of their Albertan homelands.  While this would not be the first time a treaty has been broken or bended between the First and Second Born, uh, come on, we can surely do better by this stage in the game?

Anyway, I could go on for days about this subject, and I probably will as things get worse.  I consider the Tar Sands issue to be something to go to legitimate war over.  In the meantime, I'm passing a long Johanna's article because anything that exposes this travesty for what it is worth is definitely getting shared:

Click here for the blog!

I'm excited to see what she can do actually.  While I tend to try and link to other blogs with North American significance, and Johanna is definitely more of a citizen of the world, this piece is not only covering continental news but news with a global impact and is definitely worth broadening the horizons of our coverage here.

Finding The North In Congaree

Today we take the first few steps onto the boardwalk at Congaree National Park.

One of the first things a northern type such as myself notices about the world between the uplands and the floodplain, as small as it may be, is how familiar the surrounding forest is.  Tall deciduous trees grow rather closely together, many species being the same sort of thing we have up north, if not similar in form to more northerly trees.  A Sweet-gum (Liquidambar Styraciflua) can pass for a maple at first glance, and there are even some Tulip Trees (Liriodendron Tulipifera) around to remind us that even this far south we are still passing through what can still be considered the Eastern mixed-forest.  Still, people expecting something more Southern lowcountry are hoping to see those amazing fluted bases of the cypresses or tupelos.  Instead, before we can even make it a decent portion of the way along the boardwalk, we find... a beech?!

Yes, that would indeed be a rather massive American Beech (Fagus Grandifolia), something one would expect to find at a higher elevation in the Appalachians or most certainly among the namesake Beech-Maple forests of the Great Lakes.  Here the thing is positively thriving, with a girth to it that I have never seen on a deciduous tree short of an oak or a Tulip Tree back northwards.  The upper branches themselves looked like they belonged on a mature tree!

That's what a long growing season and plenty of moisture can do down here, one supposes.  American Beech is not entirely a northern tree, as it can barely make it much into the Boreal forest and ranges slightly south into Florida.  Supposedly down that far it still claims title as a king of the canopy, being a tree that makes it all the way into the final stages of forest succession and is a true feature of the mature old growth deciduous canopy.

With love, USGS, with love.

Still, it is northern enough to have been fondly remembered as a regular feature of the forests of the northern Great Lakes.  Trunk after trunk there is marked by bear claw scratches, and most Black Bears (Ursus Americanus) that I have ever come into contact with were high up in a Beech looking down at me.  While the Beech disappear as the north shore of Lake Superior comes into view, they are certainly a regular feature of the edge of the Boreal world.  To see one of such grandeur in Congaree told me almost instantly that here we have a special place not only for the greater South, but perhaps even for the greater East.  Pretty soon, however, a few more steps along the boardwalk took me into that Southern world I was expecting...

Our Great Ancient Highways: The Ottawa River (Human History)

As I have experienced so painfully in the last few days, eastern North America, especially her northern reaches, is a fickle mistress when it comes to the weather.  Here in sunny southeastern Michigan we have been blessed by unseasonably warm weather with highs in the upper seventies and lower eighties for the last two and a half weeks... except for a brief night in which we were cursed with a sharp drop to 29 degrees!  My native plants handled everything fine, as well they should, but the cultivated plants shriveled in horror.

The first born of the continent knew this sort of weather for centuries before Europeans ever heard of these shores, and for the most part they did not cultivate much.  Game was plentiful, especially among the grassland areas, where it was also very accessible.  Further north, into boreal country, game was usually the only option on the table; crops were unreliable and restricted to a mere few months of growth to be of any lasting value.  Winter tends to be a dominant presence from September to even early June north of Lake Superior.  In the shelter and moderate climate of the Great Lakes area, however, corn, tobacco, tomatoes, and even "wild" rice, as well as berries and squash were cultivated.  From New Jersey southwards along the coast, the growers once again found a water-moderated climate and spent far more time growing than hunting.  Further north, and again back along the lakes, some fished as a way of life.

Still, the conditions of life did not mean that tastes were forced into particular patterns.  The first born traded among themselves for the fruits of the earth and hooves.  The relatively short Ottawa River allowed for trade between much of the continent.  How?

The Ottawa is remarkably well connected.  First and foremost, it provides a wonderful short cut to the Upper Great Lakes, by over 500 miles in fact.  While hardly a smooth river like much of the waterways further south, the Ottawa was a simple matter to traverse and decidedly easier to serve as a paddle and carry river than the Niagara.  The Ottawa also had the benefit of being in land that a powerful, yet politically open people controlled.  The Algonquins and Nippissings were Moose and Caribou hunters, and the supplemented their diet with freshwater fish and berries in the spring and summer.  They were not as much into settlement and land control as the Iroquois/Haudenosaunee were who lived south of them, and perhaps it was their status as gatekeepers of the river that kept other roaming peoples, like the Ojibway and Cree, generally off their turf.  For the most part, a trip up or down the Ottawa was a safe venture.  A trip on the Great Lakes could be met by many encounters with war canoes or, much worse, storms that rival anything encountered on the open ocean.

This sort of thing appealed to the French, who unlike the Spanish and English, were initially more interested in exploring and trading across the land rather than settling it.  Further south, even if they could dislodge the English presence, the Appalachians and a lack of penetrating rivers stood in the way, as well as various tribes who were already satisfied with their existence and did not find foreign trade as exciting as more northern peoples did.  The other option, which the French did take up at the end of their first century on the continent, was to use the Mississippi to make their way into the land.  The problem with that was that the Spanish were too close for comfort, and the distance to get to the center of the continent was much greater from Louisiana than it was from the huge estuary of the St. Lawrence.  The Ottawa also provided an adjacent access to the far north, as its headwaters are mere miles from the Hudsonian drainages.

So what sort of stuff went up and down the river?  For the French, a lot of fur.  For the Algonquins?

-Saltwater species for food and decoration from the Atlantic.
-Exotic furs from the far north, including Polar Bear and Seal pelts and hides.
-Freshwater species for food from the Great Lakes.
-Produce from the agricultural heartland of southern Ontario, Michigan, northern Ohio, and western New York.
-Copper from Michigan.
-Buffalo and Elk from the central grasslands.
-Salmon from as far as the west coast and everywhere else.  Salmon meant a lot back then!
-Pottery and wares from as far away as the Pubeloan peoples of New Mexico, by way of connecting trade through the Mississippi.

In short, a few hundred miles of well-placed, easy water opened an entire continent and served as a grand marketplace.  So how about more of those rivers?  Maybe the Mississippi?

Our Great Ancient Highways: The Ottawa River (Natural History)

The Ottawa River is a no-contest winner for being the most important river in Canadian history.  From its beginnings as a great glacial drain to its current predicament as a border between Quebec and Ontario, this river has served as a conduit for quite a lot of energy, both natural and human.

While are not exactly sure how old the Ottawa River is, we do know that it sits within a 175 million year old rift, the Ottawa-Bonnechere Graben.  The rift lies within much older rock, the Grenville Province of the Canadian Shield.  While some parts of the Shield include the oldest surface rock on the planet, dating back to four billion years ago, the Grenville portion, which includes the Laurentian and Adirondack Mountains, is actually much younger, at a "mere" 1-2 billion years of age.  The edges of the rift are pretty easy to come across, namely on the southern edge, which forms rises of elevation nearly 1,000 feet in height along the middle Petawawa River, one of the largest tributaries of the Ottawa...

The tallest portion of the southern edge of the rift can be found alongside Cedar Lake in Ontario.  The peaks of the range are nearly 1,000 feet above some of the surrounding lower elevations.  At this latitude, what would account for only minor changes further south becomes an interesting collection of transitions within the boreal world.  The ridge also causes a slight rain shadow and alters weather patterns on Cedar Lake, a very turbulent body of water for its size.

As well as the northern edge, which can be seen all along the Ottawa River, particularly in the Gatineau Hills north of Ottawa, and the peaks of the Laurentians across from Mattawa and Deep River, Ontario...

The Ottawa River in a more or less natural state at the confluence of the Ottawa and Mattawa Rivers.  The opposite shore is the north fault wall of the rift.

The Brent road, near  Deux-Rivières, Ontario, looking north.  The ridge in the background is the north edge of the Ottawa Valley.  Seen here are typical pine forests of the lower elevations of the valley.  White (Pinus Strobus), Red (Pinus Resinosa), and Jack (Pinus Banksiana) Pines thrive in the incredible masses of sand which are found here.  The pines formed the backbone of the early Canadian logging industry.

Going forward to about 10,000 years ago, give or take a few thousand years, the Laurentide Ice Sheet was melting.  As she gave up her immense volume of water, she first found outlets in the ancient Mississippi River system, and then in the primordial Great Lakes, where she also left much of her aquatic bounty.  Eventually though, the warmer world defeated her persistence in a conflict that continues to this day between the Gulf of Mexico and Hudson Bay, a conflict which gives eastern and central North America some of the most regularly dramatic weather on the planet.   Her last major drain before emptying back onto herself and into far more northerly realms was the Ottawa River system.  Where once a continental glacier had emptied its meltwaters into the vast drainages further south, it was now forcing itself into a comparatively minor river system.  One can only imagine what that much water, "a thousand Niagaras", would have been like gushing through the Ottawa, Petawawa, Barron, and Bonnechere Rivers.  So much water emptied out here that the Atlantic Ocean briefly stretched inward as far as Pembroke, Ontario in an arm called the Champlain Sea.  We can only imagine...

We do know one consequence though.  The ice sheet left us sand.  A LOT of sand.

The best sand on earth, in your author's opinion, and he has taken in some fine sand in the tropics and deserts.  I even wrote a post about it.  The Ottawa Valley is full of it, especially from Mattawa and downstream, as well as along its major rivers named above.  Even down past Ottawa where the river gets a bit more broad and even slightly "southern" looking, in parts even refusing to expose its granite underbelly, there is sand to be found.  This sand, in fact, supports some of the easternmost natural prairie in North America.  The pines like it, the birches and aspens tolerate it, but nothing can handle large, flat, hot stretches of sand like grasses and friends of grasses.  Well, I suppose the pines like it as much as the grasses.

The Brent road, one of the many wilderness roads that one can take to easily explore the dense pine lands.  

That's pretty much what is underneath the Ottawa, and what it flows through.  Sand and lots of Canadian Shield stuff, mostly granites, gneisses, and even gabbros.  Down between Ottawa and its mouth near Montreal one runs into some limestone, but for the most part this is a Shield River through and through.  The water is as black as tea in many reaches, a gift of the dense forests and bogs that feed it, very much different from many of the silt laden rivers that drain the rest of the continent.  Like them, however, the river is very wide for much of its length.  The Ottawa passes through a variety of landscapes as a result, including the boreal forest, the transitional forests, pine barrens and remnant prairies, urban and rural areas, and some desolate looking sand spits and beaches that remind the explorer that even with all this water around, we tend to remain a somewhat drier continent.  For the most part, a trip up or down the Ottawa is a trip in the north country, with a few tastes of the rest of the northeastern continent.

Over her short 790 miles, the Ottawa only descends about 1,100 feet, (a descent over a comparatively steeper gradient than the Mississippi's, albeit of equal elevation) but she used to have some pretty intense rapids in places until they were dammed over in the last half century or so.  As such, the Ottawa was never really an ocean-accessible river like the Mississippi or Colorado were, at least not for larger vessels beyond canoes or logging rafts.  For the canoes and rafts, though, it was a very, very attractive road indeed, which we will explore in the next post.

Heading South To Go North

I have been through many mountains across North America, including the grand Rockies of Colorado, the Sierra Nevadas of California, even the great mountains around Mexico City which tower above tropical landscapes in glorious displays of snow throughout the year.  Try as I might, however, I find myself still more so in awe of the subtle majesty of the Appalachians.  I think this is because the forests of all these mountains are what holds the true attraction for me, and the Appalachians are amazing southern continuations of the grand Boreal forests of northern North America.  Boreal species can be found as far south as West Virginia, where the right combination of altitude and cold, boggy conditions let a forest survive as it would have during the last ice age in the same place.  At the same time, multitudes of species extending from the Atlantic, Southern, and Midwestern worlds converge in what is one of the most under-appreciated ecologically diverse areas on the continent.  Maybe I just like rooting for the underdog!

Pictured below is a scene off of NY 165 just south of Roseboom, NY.

Only a couple of hours out of New York City one can experience scenery that looks like what one could encounter hundreds of miles to the north in Quebec and Ontario.  There are some "southern" trees and shrubs even in the photo, of course, along with rhododendrons and azaleas among the pines on the mountain slopes or cottonwoods and willows lining a stream, things that one would not find in the northern Boreal world.  Then again, one would not be so close to some of the largest cities in the world, either.  One of the catchiest slogans of the Upper Peninsula tourism billboards along I-75 in Michigan is "Up North: Closer Than You Think".  In the case of the Appalachians, up north can even be to the south!  While most residents of the east coast pride themselves on the marks of civilization they have all around them, they should also know that they still have a little bit of the wilderness that not only the second born American colonists and immigrants had in their backyard, but that has been here for tens of thousands of years.

A. L. Gibson

I would not normally post so many links to other blogs in a row like this, but I absolutely fell in love with the latest post over at The Natural Treasures of Ohio:

http://floraofohio.blogspot.com/2013/02/upstate-new-york-iii-old-growth-pines.html

Now, naturally, the Adirondacks are but a mirror of the boreal beauty that northern Ontario has to offer, but damn, they really do a good job at looking the part of the "northern woods" despite being so far south.  The Adirondacks have the same wonderful granite, gneiss, and gabbro popping out of the ground that the Canadian Shield on the other side of the St. Lawrence has, as well as (I admit it!) even more rugged terrain than can be found there.  They do tend to lack the same wonderful sand...

Off of the Brent Road just south of the Trans-Canada Highway.

...but on the whole, Pre-Cambrian floored New York is pretty impressive.  What is even more impressive is Monsieur Gibson's blog.  While he tends to stick closer to home in Ohio, his nature photographs are lovely no matter where he takes them from.  I found his blog when I was looking for something on the natural side of southern Michigan.  Google decided to be a fan of Ohio State rather than the Wolverines that day, and I ended up with his blog instead.  A rather nice auto-correct blunder on their part, at least in terms of the discovery I ended up with.

Where South Persists

A few days ago we caught a glimpse of southern extensions of the Boreal world into southern Michigan in a post on a tamarack swamp.  Today's post will be a compliment of that one, taking a quick glance at the "southern" temperate eastern forests showing up in small traces in the northern forests.

Said Elm was immortalized on digital canvas from a location on Cedar Lake in Ontario.

The American Elm (Ulmus Americana), that graceful, drooping tree that so delicately sticks up among the birches, alders, aspens, and spruce is definitely a creature of another world, one that looks alien among the landscape of the Canadian Shield.  This amazing tree, which shades so many parks and avenues further south, can indeed grow here, just as it can grow in central Florida and the moderately arid parts of the Great Plains, but it does so at a disadvantage in regards to growing conditions.  The gentle appearance of the tree certainly seems to hint at this; elms growing among the more rugged and savage Boreal conifers add an exotic tough to the landscape, clearly something that probably is there under generous conditions.

They certainly looked like they did not belong, even to a knowledge-thirsty six year old.  Overall rarity was made even more interesting by the presence of the above elm to another mere yards away:

I kept wondering exactly what this tree was doing standing out among the Balsam Fir.  By the time I was six and could manage reading decently in English, I looked in every tree book we had to try and explain what the lone elm was all about.  As you can see, it has since deteriorated due to Dutch Elm Disease and now bears little resemblance to the healthier tree it once was, but even these days it still tends to stand out even among other dead trees.  That it is still alive despite brutal winters which easily feature overnight lows in the minus forties (both scales) compounded with the disease is beyond me.  The miracle is a good point to focus on, however, in considering "what belongs where".  Boreal trees are certainly hardy, but more southerly varieties are hardly weak, being able to endure extremes of temperature over 120 degrees apart or more!

The meeting of north and south is thus less of a "holding on" and more of an acknowledgement of different forms of arboreal adversity.  These elms grow here because they can, just like a Red Maple (Acer Rubrum) in the Everglades, a Ponderosa Pine (Pinus Ponderosa) in the desert elevations of the Mojave or even spruce at the arctic treeline.  Trees such as these are a wonderful reminder of how tough life is on this continent, and how interconnected, yet diverse, our ecosystems are, much like the people who live here.

Yep, here she is again, just to the left of those two fir spires.

Thus, "does not look like it belongs" is more like "yet a part of this forest".

In general, good places to see such mixes of the Boreal and Eastern North America are along the northern Great Lakes and northern Appalachians.  While the overall feeling, say, of northern Maine, central Ontario, etc. is that the north has been arrived at, such places are still only the doorway of a much more expansive world that continues more than a thousand miles northward to the edge of the tundra.  The above scenery, for instance, would seem positively southern to someone from extreme northern Quebec!  Perspective is everything.

The Northern Thrust

While the higher elevations of the Appalachian Mountains commonly feature floral extensions of the great northern forests as far south as Georgia, what most people do not realize is that remnants of great bogs can be found even at lower elevations as far south as parts of Ohio and Indiana.  The inhospitable conditions of a  bog, along with occasional cool groundwater seepages, means that our hardier northern friends are often the only plants that can thrive.  While more southerly trees and flowers might make it even to the edge of the peat, they are forced to yield to the true survivors.  Such is the scene captured below, in a rather damp, nearly bog-like place between two lakes around Cement City, Michigan.

Taken from Hallson's Gardens which neighbors the wetland.   

The large conifers sticking out of the wetlands are tamaracks (Larix Laricina), northern trees which grow all the way to the Arctic Treeline and find their climactic southern limit not far from here in extreme northern Indiana and Ohio, with, of course, the exception of higher ground in the Appalachians.  Southern Michigan is where a few more northern sentinels start to pop up, including spruce, pines, birches, and northern willows.  Like so many native plants that could otherwise be seen as the delightful blessing that they are at the edge of their range, diversifying an otherwise familiar landscape, these trees are often dismissed as scrub and uninteresting, and are often consigned to a fate of being chopped down as their wet ground is drained away to make room for a far less interesting condo development or mini-mall.  

Granted, your author is a bit passionate about having something boreal practically in his backyard.  To me, it is what makes the western Great Lakes region so interesting: we can have a tallgrass prairie a stone's throw from a boreal bog, again only a walk away from towering forest of maples, beech, oaks, hickories, and more.  Let's just say that nature makes our housing developments look mundane, what with nothing but mile after mile of carefully chopped lawn grass and manicured trees serving as green background rather than a reminder of how we can still dominate a planet that we can keep largely natural.  

Northern Forests of Arizona

OK, so by now most of my readers get that when I state something will be in the next post, I really mean the next post when it is convenient.  I wanted to take the week to share with the world just how great Detroit is and can be, and only got a little past the theoretical stage of that discussion.  The fact of the matter is that I do not have a lot of photographs of the area, despite having lived here a decent amount of time so far.  I suppose this condition is something similar to New Yorkers never going to see the Statue of Liberty, or more so, New Yorkers never taking pictures of their city.  Thus, I think I will spread out the Detroit love throughout the blog whenever I come across some interesting things to share.

To continue on with the blog in general...

This year, being the Auroral Maximum, when the Northern Lights will be more spectacular than ever, American Voyages will be dedicated to all things northern.  That's right, anything that has more spruce than people will be featured in this glorious year of 2013, even if northern falls far to the south.

Take a look at the misty forests on the north rim of the Grand Canyon:

That's right, this place is all the way down in Arizona, land of sunshine, giant cacti, and vast desert stretches.  As you can see, there is nary a cactus around, and the place is quite wet.  Elevation can extend Le Nord quite some distance south, well into Mexico.  While the trees might be a little more Western Mountain than James Bay, the overall effect is the same.  

Distant Cousins

While the corners of North America can often seem worlds apart in terms of climate and landscape, our continent is notable for having more similarities than differences between its distant ends.  White-tailed Deer (Odocoileus Virginianus) can be found both in Veracruz and central Quebec, various spruces and firs range from Alaska to the Appalachians, and even the rocks beneath us can remind the lonely traveler of a distant home.  Take a look at the scenes below:

Nope, that's not actually Canadian Shield!

While these might seem to have been taken in, say, Maine or Ontario, they were actually snapped (poorly, I know, I had yet to master the art of windshield photography) in central Utah.  The mountains of Utah and neighboring Colorado pull off Boreal artistry rather nicely despite being 1,000 miles south of the true Boreal forest.  Rather than Balsam Fir (Abies Balsamea) and White Spruce (Picea Glauca) we see spires of Subalpine Fir (Abies Lasiocarpa) and Engelmann Spruce (Picea Engelmannii), and the granites, schists, and gabbros of these relatively young mountains are old, but only recently exposed and not nearly as old as the ancient outcrops of the Canadian Shield rocks of the same names.

The western mountains, you see, are youngsters that rose less than 80 million years ago.  The life which thrives on their slopes, however, probably shares common ancestry with lower elevation life in similar climactic areas much further north.  During the last major glaciation, when the Boreal forests were much further south, these forests interacted with the northern versions at much closer proximity.  These days they are a bit more isolated, but serve as a unique southern extension of the northern forests well into central Mexico.  We are blessed and cursed, in a way, to have such a unique continent that features north-south mountain ranges and winters and summers both that can move uncontested far beyond where they can in other parts of the world.  The two worlds of alpine and true Boreal meet in the Canadian Rockies in a strikingly subtle mingling of separately evolved worlds.  Though I have never been to this grand meeting place of north and west, I can imagine that the sensations would be nothing short of incredible and perhaps even something reminiscent of a more unified continent that had to face much colder conditions as a tighter biological entity.  Again though, the differences are not too far apart from one another.  Take a look at a similar stretch of forest:

Taken off of Michigan 35 halfway between Menominee and Escanaba, MI.  

The casual viewer might not even notice a difference, even though the Utah and Michigan scenes are 1,300 miles apart.  With the exception of some aspens, none of the trees are of the same species between the two scenes, and the air in both places has rather different qualities to it.  Still, there is a little bit of Utah in Michigan and a little bit of Michigan in Utah, relations which have common roots in a more severe past.

The Northern Forests and Algonquin

A friend of mine asked what sort of things grew in "the north", by which he and so many others mean anything past where the chain hotels stop popping up and every other store advertises selling worms for fishermen.  He assumed that coniferous trees dominate in scenes such as this:

The Nipissing River not far from Cedar Lake.  Thanks again to the McElroys, where the picture can be found at  http://www.mcelroy.ca/bushlog/20110829.shtml.

Expect more pictures here in September!

By and large, they do tend to pop up far more than they do south of the 43rd parallel or so, at least in eastern North America, but it surprised him to find out that many pines actually peter out in the wet, boggy soils of the Boreal forests.  For that matter, it came as a surprise that some birches, willows, alders, aspen, and even some maples make it pretty close to the Arctic treeline, albeit most in stunted form.  Algonquin, in fact, has forests that are a mixture of these trees.

While often not considered true Boreal because it lies in an ecotone blending the Boreal world with the mixed-forests of the Great Lakes region, Algonquin does have notably similar soil and climactic conditions as areas to the north, owing to its higher elevations and the lack of a buffer it has against winter chill descending from the Arctic.  While the Great Lakes and north eastern extensions of the Appalachians can otherwise shield everything to the south and south east of Algonquin, the northern paradise itself lies in a direct wind path to frigid James and Hudson Bays, bodies of water which are responsible for extending tundra conditions far south of where they would normally exist, and giving a boost to Arctic outbreaks that can reach into southern Florida and central Mexico.  Poor Algonquin, without so much as a large lake or mountain range to block this onslaught, stands little chance of passing for anything temperate.

Remember how I said there are some maples that make it pretty far north, though?  Well, it turns out that the glacial tills and higher elevations actually work in the favor of such notable species as the Sugar Maple (Acer Saccharum), which can range as far south as Texas.  In Algonquin, they reach their peak of perfection, forming a towering canopy over 100 feet tall and, along with the surrounding areas to the west and northeast, produce the best maple syrup in existence.  Sorry, Vermont, you just don't have the same intense contrast of Winter frigidity to sudden Spring release that makes these trees both thrive and unleash some really eager sap.  Nothing beats Ontario maples, and if you don't believe me, as the blog suggests, travel there!

Maples aside, there are some other trees that reach their pinnacle of perfection in Algonquin, notably the pines.  Our Eastern White Pines are among the finest in existence, and the reason for the creation of the park to begin with.

Oh, there will be lots and lots of pictures of these come September.

That said, you can still find your typical Boreal species here as well, namely lovely stands of Black Spruce (Picea Mariana) growing in bogs that look no different from stretches of land one can encounter near the tree line.  The difference is, they usually grow with a backdrop of the other trees mentioned.  While not the apex of the Boreal forest, Algonquin is definitely part of it, and far more than just a southern extension, which the Appalachians would better qualify for in parts.  Algonquin just happens to be a place where such a nice combination of growing conditions exist to support a diverse community of forests that can largely be classified as "northern" with some dashes of "southern" mixed in.  The healthy moose population certainly agrees.