Explorer’s Log: Rare as a Day in June

The McGregor River view to Kakwa Park

This blog entry continues the story of the Walker Exploration, following the one posted on April 9.

June 10th. Continuing up further along the Walker Road, rounding the bend, the view turned from north to east further into the Rocky Mountains to their height, to the divide between the Pacific and Arctic drainages. And what height! The photo above doesn’t do it justice; the distance is diminished. I use only point-and-shoot camera for all my photos. I can’t heft about a bulky SLR camera during fieldwork. So I lose opportunities to capture the telephoto grandness my eyes register in landscape views like this up the McGregor River into Kakwa Park. Jaw-dropping. Literally. I gasped. I think even the most jaded indoorsman would pause and gasp at that view. In any other country, this would be a much-loved national park. But Canada wants to industrialize it, to clearcut its trees and turn it into plantations, as has happened to portions of this drainage already. Jaded indeed.

Rivershore habitats can be rich in plant species. The flood-shifted bars give newly refreshed habitat opportunities, sweeping away tangled willow and alder growth, exposing fresh sand and mud. Seeds get washed down from highland habitats through avalanche chutes to rivers. Birds transport seeds as they land in sloughs. Beavers and other furred animals on their daily journeys also carry seeds and leave them ready to germinate when the opportunity arises. As with seeds, so for spores.

Trevor calls habitats like these sand bars “petri dishes”. And that’s just how they function. They are nutrient-rich and bare, ready for colonization. Strolling along the bars, I can pick out dozens of species that have no other opportunities to grow at low elevations. And because it’s harder for me to explore high elevations than low, it’s an easy way for me to register those species as part of the Robson Valley flora. So here on the bars is the first Hedysarum I’ve seen in the region. Maybe it’s common up there on those mountain slopes. But here I find only one plant. There are moonworts, columbines, anemones, milkvetch, sweetgrass, and the seldom-seen moss Bryobrittonia longipes, including male plants with the antheridia exposed, ready to send their sperm out to meet the female plants that they hope are somewhere nearby.

Bryobrittonia longipes, males, their reproductive parts exposed and visible as the pincushion-like pads in the centres of the leaf rosettes.

This is pleasant and easy work, so long as I remember to look up once in a while to make sure I’m not obliviously stalking a grizzly bear. I wonder how many times I’ve unknowingly been in sight of a bear because I’m too focused on the plants at my feet. Fortunately, most bears are tolerant and just go about their business so long as you don’t do anything to scare them. Or they just run away at first terrifying sniff of the human scent.

Turning back into the forest, facing the slopes above the road, I’m back in the rain forest and riparian floras, where the anemones, columbines, milkvetches and such have no habitat. But another flora thrives in the filtered light, cool humid air, and in the shelter from wind, the conditions that are reversed when these rich old forests are cut down.

Scrambling up and down and along the slope contours, as best as I can do on my bandaged foot, I’m making slow but productive progress. In mature, undisturbed habitats like these I can record a lot of species without moving much. A single tree trunk, the rocks by a stream, the twigs of conifers in the nutrient rain below a giant cottonwood tree. All this can keep me recording for long stretches of time. Cliffs can keep me busy for hours, they’re so loaded with species.

As I observe and register species using my voice recorder from cliffs or other worthy habitats, I collect. Lichen specimens are placed in paper bags for rapid drying and later curation, with GPS-derived latitude-longitude data, basic habitat notes, and the date of collection written on the bag. My backpack can fill rapidly with these bags, and bags of mosses, liverworts, and plastic bags filled with vascular plants that later in the day are splayed out between the blotter sheets of a plant press. When the backpack is full, I start carrying specimen bags in totes so long as I don’t need both hands free for safe scrambling. When unable to carry more, I call an end to the exploration and return to the vehicle or tent to unload. By now, the truck’s back seats are full of specimen bags tumbling over each other. Once curated and identified (a lengthy and meticulous process involving months of microscopy and other methods), the specimens go to Vancouver, to the Beaty Biodiversity Museum at the University of British Columbia.

But for now, I don’t have to worry about curation and microscopy. I can just be a naturalist in an exquisite landscape, delighted at the diversity of life, and feeling completely at peace in this beautiful world (no exaggeration).

Well, there is beauty and there is beauty. Breaking out of the brush, I see another jaw-dropping view, this time much closer than telephoto distance. A limestone cliff, its ancient sediment-settled strata turned by tectonic forces from the horizontal to the perfectly vertical. At its base, a pool of clear, azure water. So clean. And why so blue?

Later I learned that although this pool and its cliff are out-of-sight and difficult to find, it is known to the locals. It has a name: The Sacred Pool. It may look shallow (testament to the purity of the water), but it is deep enough to dive into head-first. But I didn’t. I recognized its sanctity even before I learned its name. I was sweaty and fieldwork-dirty, and my foot was wrapped in a bloody bandage. A body badly lacking in purity. I didn’t want to pollute it.

The Sacred Pool

There are habitats that make a lone botanical explorer whisper aloud with no one to hear “exquisite!!” This is one. It’s a rare habitat. Cool, moist, undisturbed, alkaline cliffs, surrounded by sheltering rainforest, protected from aggressive and overdominant plants by the stony lack of soil. In conditions like these, mosses and lichens that require stillness and ecological constancy grow like the way crystals grow in the still and unchanging conditions required for every molecule gradually to fall into place. Here are Anomobryum concinnatum, Blepharostoma arachnoideum, Bryum blindii, Hymenelia epulotica and H. heteromorpha, Orthothecium chryseum and O. strictum, Timmia norvegica. These are not the species found on dry cliffs, or in rainforest understory, or along streams, and certainly not in industrialized landscapes. These are the species of a sort of ecological perfection.

It had to be in a habitat like this where Canada’s first isidiate Porina species would be found. Porinas are seldom-found lichens which contain as their photosynthetic partner a Trentepohlia species. To a lichenologist, they are delightful, maybe triggering the same part of the mind that responds to rose bouquets and boxes of chocolates. Trentepohlioid algae are distributed primarily in tropical and oceanic climates. They can impart a pinkish colour to their lichen symbioses (as with the present Porina) due to their content of carotenoid pigments (like what makes carrots orange). “Isidiate” refers to asexual reproduction by tiny fingery projections that rise from the lichen thallus surface and which break off potentially to establish a new thallus where they land. I’m not sure if this Porina has a name; it has some unique characteristics among the few isidiate Porina species known to lichenologists. I chiseled a piece of it on a flake of limestone to be able to identify it and to preserve a specimen as part of the proof of the remarkable habitat. I did so with an apology to the Sacred Pool. Chiseling a few pieces of this place was necessary for science–naturalists’ license. For now, the Porina is listed in my collection ledger as “Porina coralloidea P.James aff.”, the aff. standing for the Latin affine — related to. True P. coralloidea is a rare species known only from Europe. Perhaps this one from the Sacred Pool is new to science?

Porina aff. coralloidea

While river shore habitats like those along the McGregor rely on frequent disturbance to maintain biodiversity. This cliff and pool habitat would lose its specialist species if disturbed. A change to this habitat (the clearcutting or burning of the surrounding forest) would ruin the stillness and send it all into a small-scale but highly significant ecological collapse. The opening of the canopy would allow light in that would give the currently shade-inhibited shrubs what they need to grow rapidly and choke the cliff walls and overhang the pool. It would give the mat-forming mosses and liverworts the opportunity to smother out the less competitive lichens and smaller bryophytes. It would allow weedy species the chance to grow robustly and build up thatch that in turn would form soil where there should be none. Upslope cutting would cause erosion that would charge the surface water flow with nitrogen that would drip down the cliffs, enriching them in favour of larger plants. It would become ugly. It would lose its sanctity.

But for now, the Sacred Pool and its sacred cliffs and all its rare wonders are left alone. Let it be beautiful. Let it be.

Beaver Work

I have a dispute with the beavers. Their dams have raised the pond levels so high that some of the spruces on the margins are starting to suffer from flooding. I don’t want any more dead trees. So Buki and I went out to the dams to dig sluice channels to let some of the water out.

Buki helped pull waterlogged wood out of the dam. What could be more fun for a dog and a man than this kind of muddy work? My expression was similar to Buki’s. We laughed a lot. But I think the beavers won’t be laughing.

With our spillway, we created a sort of waterfall–a thrill for Buki, who knows the meaning of the word ‘waterfall’. I was happy with the quantity of water tumbling over the dam. When I went out at dusk to examine the change in water levels on the opposite side of the pond, I found it had gone down by only about a quarter of an inch, but I want the water level to drop by 3–4 inches. I don’t know how long it will take the beavers to discover and repair the breach. If they fix the dam by the morning, then I’ll have to breach it again tomorrow. I’m sure Buki wouldn’t mind undoing the beavers’ repairs.

The swamp candles (Lysichiton americanus) below the dam now have a bit more water flowing by, but they won’t be harmed.

Here’s Buki on the largest of the three beaver lodges. And notice the distant shore of the pond with the row of alders…that is all beaver dam. That portion of the dam is about six feet high. It amazes me to see what enormous structures beavers can create. Admirable animals.

Ravena watched what Buki and I were doing the entire time we were on the dam. And after we finished, she flew home with us and we all had treats. It was a good day.

The next morning, the spillway was blocked again. Beavers hate unplanned water flow. They will rush to the sound of falling water and start to work right away to repair the damage. And I got to work undoing the repairs and creating three more spillways. This time (as of another morning later, as I write this), I got my desired three inch decline in the pond level, but all the spillways are now repaired.

Notice in the photo below the engineering used by the beavers to fix this spillway: 1) wood placed parallel to the outlet flow, 2) wood placed perpendicular to the flow but parallel to the pond shore, 3) mud packed against the shore-parallel wood. Each of the spillways was repaired in this same manner. I wonder if beavers everywhere use this same engineering. Or could our beavers be idiosyncratic, just making it up as they go?

I’ll be interested to see how long it takes the pond water to rise again. The rate of filling will give us some idea of the amount of spring inflow into the pond.

Today We Saw…

A little sylvan pool with…
Ubiquitous pea clams (Pisidium species)

If someone told you to go find some live clams, how long do you think it would take? Probably less time than you think, so long as you know what to look for and where to search. Pisidium casertanum, the “ubiquitous pea clam” occurs all over the place, wherever it’s wet enough for long enough. I once found pea clams on a drippy cliff in an Idaho rain forest. I would love to know of any other example of vertical terrestrial bivalve habitat.

Every year, in early spring, when our sylvan pools are flooded, I go to see the clams. It’s reassuring, somehow, to find them, living happily in their ephemeral habitat. In a month or so, this pool will dry up, and the clams will be dormant until next spring.

The Columbia spotted frogs have been vocal during the past few days. They make a subtle sound. Most people wouldn’t notice, even when there are dozens calling. Just a muffled clicking sort of sound. They’re also rather hard to see. There is one in this photo, but even I as the photographer have a hard time making it out. Trust me, it is there. They like to go unnoticed.

We visited the Symplocarpos foetidus (eastern skunk cabbage) planted at the edge of Sky Pond. It’s in full bloom now, as are the wild western skunk cabbages (Lysichiton americanus). The two genera are rather closely related. I wonder if I could force a hybrid progeny from them, just to prove I’m not completely opposed to mischief science.

A squirrel went bounding along the top of the rock wall and dashed up this little spruce. It chattered away up there, vexing Buki. If only she could fly, then she’d get the squirrels. I do wish she could have a pair of hovering wings, like a hummingbird. She’d be even more fun if she were airbound. So would I.

We went out by headlamp to look for night creatures. In early spring, earthworms emerge part way out of their burrows at night, like little sarlaccs. They scavenge for food among the dead leaves. Or maybe they eat the leaves. When approached, they retract suddenly into their burrows, making a rustling noise as their bodies disturb the dry leaves in passing. If you approach very slowly and quietly, as Buki and I did here, they don’t retract and you can watch them forage. When you get bored with watching them, then jump up in the air and land with both feet hard on the ground: THWUMP! The impact causes an outgoing ring of leaf-rustling sound as thousands of earthworms retract into their holes, each as the shock wave reaches them. It only works in early spring, before new growth smothers the previous year’s dry, rustle-y leaves.

As we often do, we enjoyed a late night canoe ride. Penetrating the dark pond water at night with a headlamp beam reveals much that can’t be seen easily during the day. Such as:

A giant water bug, here lying in wait to ambush its prey. They use their muscled front legs to grab a passerby, and when they have a grip, they then stab the poor animal with their dagger-sharp mouth parts. And then they suck the juices out. It’s a rough world. Poor prey.

And so as not to end on the giant-water-bug-nightmare, here’s a scene from the garden, with potted Princess Irene tulips. It’s still brown season. April isn’t the prettiest month here in the north. But the lawn is starting to turn green. And we’re enjoying some spots of colour here and there, both in the garden and in the wild. The sap is still flowing up into the forest trees, the pressure is building in their buds, and soon, the green-up will happen suddenly, entertainingly, and beautifully.

Today we Found…

A catbird nest from last year. It’s a flimsy construction, but that seems to be characteristic of catbird architecture. This one is made of loosely bound twigs and bark peels of paper birch, plus the horsetail species Equisetum fluviatile. The nearest E. fluviatile is about 250 meters away, and there are other, more abundant Equisetum species nearer the nest. But it seems that only E. fluviatile would do.

And we also found:

The remains of a snowshoe hare. Probably killed by a lynx, which specialize in hunting rabbits.

Poor rabbits.

In some traditional European cultures, a rabbit’s foot is a luck charm, especially if found on a Friday (it was indeed Friday), and especially-especially if found on a Friday the 13th (we missed that by one day). So we brought home the foot, which is now in the freezer to kill any creepy-crawlies that first claimed the foot. Poor creepy-crawlies. Later, I’ll make an amulet of the foot, and it will bring me good luck.

…which weighs almost nothing, and which has two kinds of fur: the upper side has straight, forward-pointing hairs, and the lower side has fuzzy, downward pointing hairs, which would be good insulation against the winter cold, and which would allow the rabbit to run on snow without sinking in much. The fur on the lower surface is amazingly soft. If you asked a friend to close their eyes, and then you brushed that fur over the palm of their hand, they would hardly be able to tell that anything was touching them. I was reminded of a line from Elizabeth Bishop’s poem The Armadillo, in which she describes a fire-fleeing baby rabbit she caught in Brazil: “So soft! – a handful of intangible ash”.

Poor rabbit.

Here’s a link to the poem, which is a life-long favourite of mine:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/57076/the-armadillo

Explorer’s Log: Moonwort Magic

For the previous entry in the Walker series, see my blog post of 6 April.

During this June excursion to the Walker, Shane and I spent some time crawling and crouched, scanning the roadside ground for moonworts. Strange, elusive little plants that had talismanic power in various traditional cultures. Moonworts still possess their magic, but their lore has faded; hardly anyone is even aware of them today. Moonwort hunting is a favourite of northern North American botanists. If you drive along country lanes or forest service roads, and you see one or more people down on their knees & elbows in meadows or old pastures, peering at the ground, stop and ask if they’re hunting for moonworts.

To the Europeans of hundreds of years ago, moonworts had special authority over metals. There were beliefs that moonworts could un-shoe horses. Alchemists used moonworts to catalyze common metals into rare ones. Moonworts could open locks in lieu of a key. Maybe this was because moonworts are vaguely key-like in appearance. Like this:

Botrychium pinnatum

Moonworts are ferns, and ferns are cryptogams. Cryptogam is an old-fashioned term that sprang up in the days when people still placed all things, at the highest level of classification, into “animal, plant, or mineral”. Looking one level down in classification, early botanists didn’t know what to do with those various unrelated plants and plantish things that have no flowers: mosses, mushrooms, lichens, ferns. When scientific botanical classification was just getting underway, plant classification depended foremostly on numbers of flower parts, Linnaeus’ floral formulas. The flowerless had nowhere to go in this schema. So ferns and the rest had to be swept under the rug of crypto – hidden gamy – sexual union, the cryptogams.

Even earlier European naturalists believed that cryptogams really did have flowers, but those flowers were extremely secretive and ephemeral, unobserved except by the blessed or the lucky or the insane. Ferns were said, by master naturalists, to flower only at midnight during a full moon, on St. John’s Eve, or at other such occult moments. How else could they reproduce?

But now we know that ferns make spores, which in turn make male gametophytes that issue free-range sperm, unlike the pollen-bound sperm of flowering plants. And they also make spores that in turn make female gametophytes to receive their male visitors inconspicuously, in moist dark places. No flowers necessary. And no seed. The mature plants arise direct from the secret union of gametes, direct from the wee and seldom seen female fern gametophyte.

The intriguing cryptosex of those never-seen fern flowers, naturally, was an indication of magic power. How could it not be? All powers are impotent if not harnessed by humans, yes? So the power of ‘fern flower’ secrecy had to be classed as a power of human invisibility. Used correctly, ferns could confer the power of going unnoticed.

We have the receipt of the fern seed; we walk invisible — Shakespeare

Moonworts (the genus Botrychium) were especially potent in this regard. Like the rest of the ferns, their “flowers” were never observed. But the ephemeral nature of the moonwort plants themselves piqued more interest yet. Most ferns have a long season of conspicuous growth, or they’re evergreen. The above-ground plants of moonworts are tiny, and short-lived. They may appear for a month or two in early summer, then disappear from sight without a trace. And where seen in one year, they may be unseen again for another ten years before popping up unexpectedly. And they are ecologically unpredictable. Their criteria for good habitat seem to be completely different from the preferences of every other kind of plant.

And so, according to moonwort lore, one could tap the power of Botrychium invisibility and go unnoticed on crime sprees. Moonworts, “more beholden to the night“, were complicit in breaking/entering crimes. But only for those who had the botanical skills to know what a moonwort is and where and when to find one. Don’t worry, though, botanists are beholden to the day and are too busy to go thieving in the night. Botanists are more interested in keys for identification than the keys for unlocking doors and the invisibility needed for successful crime. At the end of this post is my draft key to the moonworts of British Columbia (including Botrypus and Sceptridium, which only recently have been commonly segregated from Botrychium). Give it a try (ask me if you don’t know the terminology). Notice how many species appear in this key. A lot.

Why do we have so many moonwort species in North America, whereas very few occur in Eurasia or beyond? Maybe there’s something special about this continent that is lacking elsewhere. Or maybe it’s because moonworts have never been studied anywhere so superbly as by the American taxonomists and moonwort explorers Herb & Florence Wagner:

The Wagners had the good botanical eye (the capability of visual memory, which is key to the work of a plant taxonomist) that could meticulously sort out bewildering variation into sensible classification. Considering the rarity and here-today-gone-tomorrow nature of moonworts, that was not an easy task. The Wagners left us a legacy of taxonomic clarity. Without them, we would still be moonwort-blind. I wish they were alive today so I could ask them whether they agree with me that some of our North American species are present in Eurasia but overlooked by the botanists there. I’ve mentioned those overlooked moonworts to some European botanists, and so far I’ve received only the correspondence equivalent of a blank stare.

I’ve been working intensively since 2016 to document the flora of the Robson Valley. Throughout those years, I’ve been struck by the relative low diversity and abundance of moonworts. So many habitats in the region seem ideal, but there never was much. Maybe I was just searching in the wrong years, when the moonworts were dormant? Or maybe I just wasn’t “blessed” or “mad” enough to see them. It’s hard not to believe in intentional elusiveness of the moonworts. But the 2023 work, exploring the Walker, brought many more species, many of the long expected ones, into the Robson Valley flora. Maybe I was finally blessed. Or maybe Shane brought good luck. And such moonworts that Shane and I found! Like these (B. alaskense, B. boreale, B. echo, B. lanceolatum):

Thank you Shane. And thank you Florence & Herb Wagner. It was great fun moonworting in the Walker!

                  Key to Botrychium sensu lato of British Columbia
1a Trophophores evergreen, trophophore of previous year present ...Sceptridium
  2a Trophophore stalk 15–30 mm; fertile portion of sporophore 1–2 x long as wide, 
  branches spreading; mostly INT ...S. multifidum
  2b Trophophore stalk 30–140 mm; fertile portion of sporophore 2–5 x long as wide, 
  branches steeply ascending; COAST and COL ...S. silaifolium
1b Trophophores all deciduous, relatively delicate, one per plant ...2
  3a Trophophore 3–4 x pinnate, mostly >100 mm wide, green from late spring through 
  summer ...Botrypus
  3b Trophophore 1–2(-3)x pinnate, <<100 mm wide, ephemeral, usually fading after 1-
  2 months ...Botrychium s. str.

                 Key to Botrychium sensu stricto of British Columbia
1a Trophophore modified into a second sporophore, no expanded blades present ...B. paradoxum
1b Trophophore with expanded blades (though sometimes bearing sporangia) ...2
  2a Terminal pinna of trophophore broadly rounded at apex; common stalk of    
  trophophore and sporophore at or near ground level ...B. simplex
  2b Terminal pinna of trophophore truncate or emarginate at apex; common stalk 
  elevating the trophophore-sporophore attachment above ground level ...3
    3a At least proximal pinnae of trophophore pinnatifid or pinnate ...4
      4a Trophophore proximal pinnae as long as the distal portion, hence 
      trophophore more or less deltate or pentagonal in outline ...5
        5a Pinnules more or less ovate to flabellate, touching or even overlapping  
        ...Botrychium boreale
        5b Pinnules more or less narrowly oblanceolate to linear, well spaced ...6
          6a Trophophore dark green, ultimate segments mostly <2 mm wide ...B.   
          lanceolatum subsp. angustisegmentum
          6b Trophophore medium or yellowish green, ultimate segments mostly >2 mm 
          wide ...B. lanceolatum subsp. lanceolatum
      4b Trophophore proximal pinnae distinctly shorter than distal portion, 
      trophophore of narrower shapes, usually more or less ovate in outline ...7
        7a Trophophore proximal pinnae exaggeratedly long, much longer than the 
        second pinnae ...B. michiganense
        7b Trophophore proximal pinnae <, = or slightly > second pinnae ...8
          8a Trophophore conspicuously stalked ...B. pedunculosum
          8b Trophophore sessile or nearly so ...9
            9a Plants glaucous; trophophore pinnae pinnatifid, often shallowly so 
            ...B. hesperium
            9b Plants not glaucous; trophophore pinnae (except depauperate plants) 
            pinnate or deeply pinnatifid ...10
              10a Trophophore veins relatively inconspicuous; pinnules not 
              overlapping, mostly not contiguous, proximal ones of the proximalmost  
              and/or second basiscopic pinnules more widely spreading than the 
              others (thumb-like) ...B. echo
              10b Trophophore veins conspicuous; pinnules mostly contiguous or  
              overlapping, those of all pinnae having about the same orientation 
              ...11
                11a Trophophore pinnae more or less tapered to the apex; sporophore 
                proximalmost branches often much longer than the adjacent ones, 
                sporophore stalk often so short that the proximalmost branches arise 
                from near the base ...B. alaskense
                11b Trophophore pinnae rounded to the apex; sporophore proximal 
                branches not much longer than the adjacent ones, sporophore stalk 
                consistently elongated ...B. pinnatum
    5b Trophophore 1x pinnate, though some proximal pinnae may be deeply notched 
    downward from the distal margin ...12
      12a Trophophore pinnae more or less square; plants minute, thick, stiff, 
      friable; usually emerging in late summer-autumn ...B. mormo
      12b Trophophore pinnae flabellate, (ob)ovate, elliptic, oblong, spatulate, or 
      suborbicular; plants sometimes leathery or fleshy, but not stiff or friable;  
      usually emerging spring-mid summer ...13
        13a Most or all trophophore pinnae sporangium-bearing along their margins; 
        spores abortive ...B. x watertonense
        13b No or few trophophore pinnae sporangium-bearing, if sporangia present, 
        then only on the basiscopic half proximal pinnae margins; spores mostly well 
        formed ...14
          14a Trophophore pinna apices spanning an angle of 100–220° or more ...15
            15a Trophophore comparatively thin, not leathery, pinnae distal margins 
            consistently crenate and/or erose ...B. crenulatum
            15b Trophophore comparatively thick, leathery, pinnae distal margins 
            entire or slightly and irregularly notched or crenulate ...16
              16a Trophophore pinnae lateral margins separated by an angle of 100- 
              180° ...B. neolunaria
              16b Trophophore pinnae lateral margins separated by an angle of 180-
              220° ...17
                17a Proximal pinnae asymmetric, the basiscopic margin distinctly 
                longer and straighter than the acroscopic margin, often deeply 
                notched (like moose antlers); mature sporophore stalk usually <2x 
                trophophore length ...B. tunux
                17b Proximal pinnae more or less symmetric, the lateral margins 
                roughly equal in length and curvature; mature sporophore stalk 
                usually >2x trophophore length ...B. yaaxudakeit
          14b Trophophore pinnae apices spanning an angle of up to 100° ...18
            18a Trophophore pinnae linear, narrowly oblong or narrowly oblong-
            oblanceolate ...B. lineare
            18b Trophophore pinnae of wider shapes ...19
              19a Trophophore pinna attachment 3–4 mm, basiscopic margin decurrency 
              distinct to the next pinna below; plants glaucous ...B. adnatum
              19b Trophophore pinna attachment <3 mm, basiscopic margin decurrency 
              absent or inconspicuous and usually not reaching the adjacent pinna 
              ...20
                20a Pinnae strongly ascending; distal margins conspicuously dentate-
                lacerate ...B. ascendens
                20b Pinnae perpendicular to the rachis or weakly ascending; distal 
                margins entire or crenate ...21
                  21a Trophophore incurved proximally and distally, up to 40 x 10 
                  mm, pinnae up to 5 pairs; proximalmost pinnae usually with a deep 
                  central cleft; reported based on a poor specimen, needs 
                  confirmation ...[B. campestre]
                  21b Trophophore flat at least distally, up to 100 x 25 mm, pinnae               
                  up to 10 pairs; pinnae usually entire or with numerous shallow 
                  notches ...22
                    22a Proximal sporophore branches usually 1-pinnate; trophophore 
                    usually stalked; proximalmost pinna pair usually = second pair; 
                    common and widespread ...B. minganense
                    22b Proximal sporophore branches usually 2-pinnate; trophophore 
                    sessile; proximalmost pinna pair usually distinctly > second 
                    pair; rare ...B. spathulatum

So there you have it. Moonworts and magic. Plants for non-linear thinking. And why not leave a bit of room for magic in this world? For the inexplicable. If everything everywhere can be explained, including moonworts, and us, then what fun is life? And why not? The universe is capricious.

Take that, Richard Dawkins!

A morning walk, 6 April 2024

Setting out for our morning walk, we checked on the trail-side beaver lodge. The beavers, at least two, survived the winter. Their tail-slapping has resumed.

It’s “Brown Season” in the Clearwater Valley. The retreating snow reveals a lot of dead, squashed, moldy things. The green-up won’t start for a few more weeks. That distant late-lingering snow patch corresponds to the Pucker Bog, the only true bog within walking distance of the house. There’s a reason why the snow leaves the bog last. And that is the reason for the bog’s presence there. Bogs like it cold. Sadly, Pucker Bog is evolving into a Spiraea stand. The local climate’s gotten too warm for bogs in the southern Clearwater Valley. The fens are OK, but the bogs are doomed.

Moose poops. We used to see dozens of moose poop piles along our usual trails. But now we’re now lucky if we see one. I suspect the main problem is all the crisscrossing jiggle-jaggle of blown-over drought-dead trees in the forest. It’s hard to get around now, even for the moose despite their powerful long legs. They’ve had to move on to where they aren’t so restricted. The wolves can more easily pass through all the wreckage of dead trees. So for them it’s good hunting, and for the moose it’s a catastrophe.

In all our waking hours it never ends, the game of “Can’t Have My Stick”.

Four rattly birch bark cylinders strung along the stick, and the whole assembly perched on saplings beyond jumping height. Buki’s doing “push-push” to knock the stick down. She’s had a lot of practice at this, and she usually handles the task expertly. This game of push-push was difficult at first. It’s not a natural canine action. But once she mastered it, we transferred push-push to more applications, such as opening and closing doors.

In this photo is one of the nearby forest patches (which we call “Whisper Wood”) that remains in relatively good condition, without so many dead and fallen trees. It’s in a moist hollow, so the trees are somewhat buffered from the effects of the drought years. It’s become a favourite place for us to visit. A reminder of how healthy our local forests used to be before the climate started accelerating in its warming/drying. Buki knows this forest by name. She’ll lead us there if we ask her to take us to Whisper Wood.

Home again to an afternoon’s worth of maul-work, chopping aspen rounds. Or in other measures, this is one tree worth of aspen rounds. Poor tree. Yet another of our loved old aspens reached its fungal and ant-chambered end. I admired this tree for 20 years. Today, I saw its interior in each cross-section from base to tip. I smelled the perfume scent of its polypore fungal infection and examined the dark sinewy borders between the fungal territories mapped out within the trunk. It’s a scent that will alter to something less pleasant as the wood dries, but today, it was a scent I wouldn’t mind having in bottled form. I chopped each of those sections and felt the grain and knots resist or give with each strike of the maul. I set aside the rotten portions from the trunk base for campfires, and retained the less punky portions to burn two or three winters from now in the woodstove for winter heat.

Except the twigs, this whole tall tree will pass, log by log, through our house, transforming into heat and ash, and smoke that will drift out the chimney. A strange thought.

Before today, I knew this tree only from the outside. Its standing glory is only a memory. But now I know something of its anatomy. Poor tree. But at its roots, it remains alive. New stems will grow, but I won’t live long enough to see them as tall and glorious as the stem I chopped today.

Explorer’s Log, 9 June 2023

This entry continues the story of the Walker explorations, following the one posted on March 21.

The free-flowing Fraser

Nature is never ugly. If human economy leaves it all alone.

I have preferences for one landscape over another, but all wild places are delightful if you really open your eyes. Deserts, arctic tundra, coastal bogs, aspen parkland, alpine pinnacles, canyon walls, rain forest, savanna. It’s what this planet has given us. It’s all we have, and we should treasure it as it is.

The accounts of European explorers and settlers to western Canada found beauty in landscapes that they found familiar, that are similar to their origins. The oaks and meadows of southern Vancouver Island, so England-like. And the rest they found “gloomy”, or “desolate”, or “savage”. The error of cultural reference. In this case, the error of cultural landscape reference. The colonizers weren’t really seeing the landscapes they were conquering and settling. They were only looking for familiarity, wealth, comfort, and safety. The criteria for what, to them, was “beautiful”. Not much has changed. The European implant cultures are tenacious and still haven’t put down the tools of colonization. Still haven’t let go of European ideals. Still haven’t learned to live here.

Now that I live in the north and have few chances to return to my old botanical stomping grounds, in the inland northwestern U.S., I miss (and sometimes really long for) the Scablands, the Oregon High Desert, the Challis Valley, the Lemhi. But now, I face north. I arrived desiring and expecting the familiar, but I had to learn that my points of reference were left behind and that I had to learn to be truly present in my new landscape.

I came to Canada with a prejudice against northern biota. I expected utter boredom in the vascular plants. The lichens seemed pretty OK. But they felt like a consolation prize for having to turn my back on the more southern vascular plant flora that was my botanical first love. Wells Gray isn’t quite boreal. It’s a south-facing valley that takes in a milder southern climate compared to other drainages at this latitude, so it’s essentially at the northernmost limits of the inland temperate. It is, in fact, the location of the northernmost lizards in the New World. Many temperate-climate plants reach their northern limits here, and not so many boreal species reach their southern limits here. So I can keep some of my points of reference in the Wells Gray Country, but I had to learn to be receptive to what the north actually offers. That took some time.

My first job going north from Edgewood into the true boreal left me feeling reluctant to go. I thought it would be a waste of time. “Oh, the boring boreal, there’ll be nothing interesting, just the same species you could see right across northern North America”. That’s what most western North American botanists would think. But it’s only a prejudice. It’s only botanical points of reference. I even expected the boreal plains to be “ugly”. But not at all. That land is beautiful.

Now I know there is much for a botanist to discover in the north, at least because it’s so neglected. And since I track my daily catch of plant and lichen species, I have informal data that show that there is a lot more to see in a day’s work in the north than in the south, even in areas known for high floristic diversity (Oregon, California, for example). My average in the botanically famous Siskiyou-Klamath region of California and Oregon was around 250 species per day. My average in the Peace Valley of boreal northeast British Columbia was over 400 (sometimes topping 500) species per day

The Walker was certainly not anyone’s botanical Mecca. Prior to the 2023 fieldwork, only eight specimens of lichens and plants from the study area had been databased in herbaria (archives of scientific plant specimens). All of those were from the easily accessed fringes. And none of those eight species were anything a botanist would find unusual. Much could be expected from the Walker, but essentially nothing was known.

On these early days of the Walker project, I was justified often in commenting “Wow!”. There is so much diversity packed into that landscape that it’s overwhelming, even for me after 30+ years of botanical inventories. Even if it weren’t so diverse, it would still delight me. It’s wild. And, despite my expectation of boreal ugliness, I know now that wild places are never ugly, no matter the climate, no matter whether the landscape is steep or flat. Even the highest arctic latitudes, with precious little plant diversity, would still be spectacular for any botanist, as well as dazzling to the eye. The Walker certainly does not disappoint. It is spectacular.

Rosa engelmannii nothosubsp. britannicae-columbiae, a regional specialty, growing along the Morkill River.

Explorer’s Log, 8 June 2023

This entry continues the story of the Walker explorations, following the one posted on March 13

The Walker

Stitched up. Somehow in 50 years of living, these were my first stitches. I’ve had plenty of bruises and scrapes, and a few minor bone fractures. But no previous major lacerations. Maybe this means I’ve been too cautious and should fling myself harder at life.

Buki is safely back at home, bleary-eyed and sad this early hour of the morning as I depart again for the Walker. It’s always difficult for a dog to be left at home. To Buki, it means she’s rejected while the rest of the pack (me, solo in this case) heads out for the excitement of exploring and (to a dog’s understanding of the world) the hunt. But in this case, after Buki’s intense experiences in the Walker over the previous two days, I’m sure she feels especially devastated to be left out of the trip. But it just wasn’t going to work out between her and the big, rambunctious, intimidating dogs at the accommodations.

Now the rest of this trip is a hobbling job on my cut and patched-up foot. It hurts, but there’s a job to do, and it doesn’t matter very much how I feel. I won’t remember the pain after the wound heals.

After four hours of driving, I meet Shane in the town of Mcbride for breakfast at the Beanery 2 Bistro, a favourite of mine. It’s a cafe in a historic train station, filled with train lore, paintings, knick-knacks, potted plants, and antiques. The ultimate reason why I became a botanist is because I’m drawn to the dazzling variety of the world’s plants, and this cafe, with its packed yet tidy decor appeals to that same sense of fascination I have in all arrays of variation. There’s a lot for the eye to explore all along the walls. The proprietors are kind people, the food and coffee are good, and it’s where you can sit back and chat with the locals. The diners at the table next to Shane and me strike up a conversation with us, first about fire fighting (that’s another story). And then they express curiosity about what we’re up to. I mention the Walker project, and they lean in to the conversation, eager to express their admiration for that nearby wilderness. They hunt, they explore. They know the wilds. I like this town.

It’s time to go. There’s work to do. We drive up the Walker Forest Service Road to get our first look at the western edge of the study area. There’s a lot for my eye to take note of, as always on these summer days in the wilds. If you take most people and place them where I’m standing, and then ask them to look at what I’m seeing and describe it all, they would report “trees”. Asked what else they see, “um…mountains?”. What else? “Aaah, a butterfly!”. And that’s all good. Great, in fact. But they will never see much more than that. But if you bring in a birder, they’ll rattle off the names of warblers, sparrows, flycatchers, raptors, ducks, all kinds of species I can’t even identify, let alone notice. I have a botanist’s senses. It does my work no good to notice the mobile beings. For me, motion is distracting, so I filter it out. When the wind blows through the grasses, I have to see only the grasses, not the grasses in motion. I have to filter out the flights and songs of birds; they’re distracting. But I’m happy to complement the work of birders.

Ever heard of the “Invisible Gorilla Experiment”? It’s a psychological demonstration of selective attention. The subjects are asked to watch a video showing several crowded basketball players passing two balls. Half the players are wearing black shirts, and half wear white shirts. The experimental subjects are asked to count how many times white-shirts pass a ball by the end of the video. In this short video, someone in a gorilla suit walks into the middle of the crowd, looks right at the camera, drums their chest, and then walks onward out of view. When asked if there was anything odd about the video, only half reported the gorilla. The rest were too focused on the action to see the ridiculously obvious. Even when told that there would be a gorilla in the video, many did not see the gorilla. I quickly lost count of how many times white-shirts passed the ball; I found that boring and couldn’t force myself to concentrate on all that commotion. I was more interested in the players’ hair, their slouched posture, the colours of their pants, their frumpy shirts, the letter S scrawled on the wall behind them, the scuffed floor, the ugly portals (elevator doors?), and then, obviously, the gorilla. I noticed nothing about the two balls, who had them, who passed to whom how many times.

This describes how I see the world. My selective attention goes for the colours, the patterns, the lines, the shapes, the variation. And so I see the grasses as if they were stationary, even in a stiff wind. A botanist with a trained eye scarcely notices the bird’s flight across the view of the grasses. A good birder sees the bird’s flight and ignores the grasses and all else that is affixed to the ground. I see the gorilla. The passing of the basketballs is irrelevant and uninteresting. I never could get interested in basketball–it’s all motion, dozens of arms and legs and elbows and knees all in non-stop motion, and I find it exhausting to watch.

Sisyrinchium montanum

Standing on the side of the Walker Road, looking at what’s growing in forest clearings or at the epiphytes on the conifer twigs, or in the sedge fringe around a beaver pond, I have to see (not just look at, but see) dozens of species at once. I have to filter out the ones I’ve already recorded and notice only the novelties. Sometimes they’re stand-outs, not at all hard to notice, like the paintbrushes (Castilleja), or blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium montanum, a new find for the Robson Valley). But most are inconspicuous, the mosses, liverworts, crust lichens, or the smaller grasses and sedges. Searching like this for a species inventory is like the “Where’s Waldo” books in which you scan across the complicated illustrations to look for the amiable-looking fellow named Waldo in his characteristic coke bottle glasses and red-striped shirt & cap. Except you’re also at the same time having to recognize and name everyone of the hundreds of beings in the illustration. And you can’t turn the page to the next illustration until you’ve accounted for everyone. It’s exhausting. I have little leftover attention for the bird that flies across my view, so I fail to notice most of the avifauna on my jobs. And I fail to notice much else. Like the caribou that moved out of the corner of my view. I saw the motion, but I zoned it out. If Shane hadn’t said something, I would have missed it altogether.

This was only the second caribou of the deep-snow subspecies that I had ever seen. We saw their tracks in our first days in the Walker, so I’d hoped to get to see one of the animals live, but didn’t hold out much hope. This subspecies is rare and has been in fast decline for decades. They used to be common, but the widespread industrialization of the BC landscape, done with the blessing of government, has nearly wiped them out, and the remaining herds are reduced to such small population sizes that they’re bottlenecked into vanishingly small chances of continuation. The local subpopulation is one of the larger ones, but how much longer can they last as the province condemns more and more wilderness to the devourings of the feller-buncher machines? So to see this caribou, loping down the road, is a splendid treat. Shane took off his hat and gave the animal a deep bow. We were charmed by the caribou’s gait. Such a beautiful, dignified looking deer, and yet we couldn’t help but to laugh at the way it trots: each leg swiveling wide in an outward semi-circle. The bureaucrats in the “Ministry of Silly Walks” would have a special file on deep-snow caribou.

Rhinanthus sp.

Rattlebox (Rhinanthus) is blooming early. Not surprising in such a hot year. This is one of the genera whose species in North America can be identified only with a “who-knows?” It’s taxonomic terra incognita. A few names are given to the various North American species, both native and non-native, but in reality, the taxonomic certainty stops at “who knows?”. The taxonomic work is lacking. It’s a difficult genus to study in the herbarium, which is where most botanical taxonomic heavy-lifting happens. No matter how carefully the plants are pressed and dried, the resulting specimens are always blackened, looking as if they rotted in the press. So the characteristics become obscured. The genus must be learned “in the field”, as botanists say of the study of live plants in situ.

The least satisfying plant taxonomies in North America apply to those genera that make poor specimens (Lupinus, Taraxacum), or for which specimens don’t really capture the key characteristics of growth form or seasonal variation (Artemisia, Huperzia), or that grow mostly in remote, hard-to-access regions (Oxytropis). Rhinanthus is a triple-whammy in all these regards, so it doesn’t surprise me that the existing taxonomies are unrealistic. Most of the native species grow at high latitudes and/or elevations. You need time, energy, and funding to get from home to the field see them in their living state. I’m one of the few botanists who is paid to explore the North American northern wilderness, so I’m in as good a position as anyone to study this genus; it feels like a responsibility. Slowly, slowly, I’m trying to piece together a taxonomy that works. But there’s a long way to go. Neither of the two roadside Robson Valley Rhinanthus species are clearly identifiable.

I’m not even certain whether those two Rhinanthus are introduced European species, or native species that benefit from the disturbed habitats of roadsides. Most road fringe plants in British Columbia are European invasives. Landscape industrialization comes with a lot of road-building. Roads, including the astonishing total length of logging roads in British Columbia, are conduits of weed invasions. The weed populations spread along roads and establish new colonies like metastasizing cancer cells spreading along the veins of a body. The weeds follow the roads, then go off-road. It’s a progressing ecological catastrophe that almost no one knows about (due mostly to selective attention).

Whole horizon-to-horizon landscapes in western North America have become nothing but ugly European invasive weeds. And the locals end up feeling ashamed of where they live, because it’s ugly, though they may not understand why they see it as ugly. Most people are blind to plant diversity, but no one can be blind to the ugliness of a landscape that is nothing but cheatgrass or tumble-mustard or Halogeton as far as the eye can see. Landscape industrialization comes with such dire costs. If the Walker Wilderness is logged, wherever roads are cut in, the vegetation will be invaded by weeds. All those clearcuts in surrounding landscapes, and their feeder roads, and their weeds, are ugly, and that’s not how I want the Walker to end up. But for now, it’s beautiful, at least where you look away from the clearcuts around its fringes. And Rhinanthus, native or not, is harmless. It grows with a light touch. And in fact, it can help to reduce the potency of spreading invasive grasses, on which it is parasitic.

As I’m writing this, months later, I realize that today is the first day of spring. There’s much to be done in the garden. No time for blog posts or reminiscing. So I’ll close, abruptly, with a glimpse of the sundew patch Shane and I admired in the calcareous fen where we ended our day. So much more could be written about all we saw. But enough is enough.

Thanks, Shane, for being such a good field assistant and for seeing the caribou. Cheers, my friend!

Drosera anglica

Explorer’s Log, 6/7/2023

The Wild Upper Fraser

N.B.: The blog entry posted on 1 March 2024 is this entry’s prequel.

I arrived in the Walker pre-exhausted. It’s peak garden season, and I’d only just finished moving load after load of compost to turn it into the vegetable and grain beds one shovelful at a time, double digging, as deep as I can go, by the trench method. Weeding took a long, long time since the snow had melted, and no amount of weeding is ever enough. And no matter how much work there is to do in the garden, Buki must have at least her daily four hour quota of exercise that we disguise as fun & games (those games are fun indeed, but that’s another story). April, May, June are a tough time for a northern gardener, and then my exhausting field season commences. This is an intense lifestyle to keep a body healthy, and it’s certainly working for me. But it is exhausting.

Our cabin accommodations for the Walker study is home to two goofy, wonderful, free-range guard dogs whose rambunctious greeting Buki found so threatening, especially as they were jumping up to get to her through my truck window, that she reacted with vicious defensiveness, which in turn triggered their own vicious defensiveness. The truck door had to remain between them. But, bad timing, both of my legs, upper and lower portions, front and back, broke out in one of my notorious bouts of severe muscle cramping. I had to get out of the truck to try to work out the spasms, and I just managed to squeeze out the door, keeping the opening narrow enough that Buki couldn’t pass through to engage her fangs in a potentially dangerous dog fight.

Our host had a strange first encounter with me: agonized expression, walking stiff-legged in Frankenstein fashion, hyperventilating to send maximum oxygen into the muscles (oxygen depletion causes cramps), and trying to talk to explain what I was experiencing. All this with so much barking and leaping and pushing at the truck window from both sides that everything was in confusion. I get cramps a lot, especially when I’m so severely sleep-deprived as now. This was the second bout of these whole-leg/both-leg cramps this day. The first time was along the Morkill Road, a better place to get out easily and do the Frankenstein walk and hyperventilating to get the muscles to relax. Shane commented as I stumbled about back and forth “that looks painful”. It is. But I’m used to it.

I got a fuller explanation out, finally, as the cramps were easing after ten minutes of agony. Though it was already late in the day, the decision to get Buki back home to Edgewood, a 4.5 hour drive one-way, was unavoidable. The accommodations were already paid for and were otherwise ideal, so she had to go home, where I would have to stay overnight to return early in the morning, further sleep-deprived and cramped or not. Without much hope, I called the hotels in nearby McBride just in case there was a pet-friendly vacancy so I could take Buki home tomorrow instead. It would be so nice to get some badly needed sleep here, just down the road from the Morkill Road. “No vacancy, sorry”. And “sorry, no vacancy”. It’s tourist season. And all along the under-construction oil pipeline from Alberta that elbows its way through the southern end of the Robson Valley and onward to Vancouver, accommodations and housing are taken up aggressively by the Albertans employed on the project. Early booking for hotels and bed & breakfasts are a must. Hopeless, indeed. And I’m too desperate for a long sleep to try sleeping in the truck, and I don’t have sufficient camping gear to be comfortable.

One hot possibility left: “No rooms tonight, sorry, except the four-bedroom family suite”…”oh?”…(The price? Worth it?)…”I have a dog with me; we’re in some trouble, I’m so sleep deprived that I keep getting severe leg cramps, and I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep at the wheel on the way home to Clearwater”…”You say you have a dog? We don’t accept pets in the suite…what sort of dog?”…”She’s an Australian shepherd, she’s very clean and gentle”…”An Australian shepherd? Really? Can you please come into the office so I can meet her?”…”Certainly! We’re just down the road, we’ll be right over.” Buki put on a good show, very clean and irresistibly cute and very gentle and friendly (with people, if not always with other dogs). Bless you, Buki! Bless you, Travelodge desk attendant, for giving us the suite for the price of a single bed…Bless you!

I got a good night’s sleep. And now, the morning of the 7th, I meet Shane at the Morkill Road to resume our fieldwork before traveling tonight to return Buki home to Edgewood. Well rested, no cramps.

It’s a hot day again. And it’s spring. There’s a lot to discover, and the discoveries keep coming at a fast pace. It’s still overwhelming, trying to see every species as my eyes sweep across river shore, cobble bars, cliff faces, up and down tree trunks and shrub stems trying not to miss any of the crust lichens and little tufts of epiphytic mosses. This biodiversity treasure hunt gets easier as the project species list grows longer. The number of species to add to the list per minute goes down precipitously. But today, most of what I see is new, and must not be omitted. And while I’m trying to pay attention to the near distance, I’m still looking far-sightedly up into the mountains of the Walker Wilderness, wondering how I’ll manage to traverse so much roadless (even trailless) landscape later this summer during high-elevation botanizing season. This project continues to be intimidating.

But forget all that, the heart of the Walker can be explored later. For now we can keep to the easy fringes, and I have to keep my concentration on what’s growing in the nearby. Here is a Plagiobryum, a new moss genus for the Robson Valley region. And close by that is the crust lichen Lecanora argentea, also a new one for the Robson Valley. Here’s Fuscopannaria cheiroloba, another new lichen for the region? I’m not sure if I remember, but I’ll be thrilled with the discovery anyway. And, WOW! There’s the spectacular lichen Pilophorus robustus, an unexpected new find for the whole Rocky Mountain system, and the furthest from the ocean of any known population. I’ve been working intensely since 2016 to explore the plants and lichens of the Robson Valley, already an astonishing amount of biodiversity fills out the regional species list, and still the new additions are coming on fast.

Pilophorus robustus

Working our way further up the Morkill Road, we make several stops to browse anything that looks especially interesting. With each short drive, Buki rides between Shane and me, at first peering through the windshield, on duty: “watch for deer, you gotta watch for creatures, there could be deer!” But soon settling down to curl up against Shane and snooze a bit while I drive. She has her own sleep deprivation problem. Motel sleeping is unfamiliar for her. It doesn’t bother me that people come and go in the night, people rising before dawn to shower and pack and be on their way to the mountains. But with so many unfamiliar noises, Buki was on vigilance duty all through the night. This does not happen at home. This isn’t the occasion for sleep. These people we can hear are not part of our pack. But also through the night, she was on be-quiet-so-Curtis-can-sleep duty. I woke a couple of times in the night and found Buki awake, alert. Coming over to check on her, she wiggles her tail stump to greet me, but also looks desperately at the door to say “We have a problem here, don’t you understand?! We gotta get outa here!”

Our main destination is a good one for such a hot day. Morkill Falls is a powerhouse of crashing water, mist, and waterfall wind. Every sizeable waterfall creates a breeze by the force of its cascade. The wind carries on downstream, cooling and humidifying, and even nutrifying (due to mineral-nutrient solutes aerosolized in the spray) all the surfaces reached by the mist. Due to these attributes, waterfall sprayzones are major centres of biodiversity, where rare and surprising species can be expected. And each sprayzone is unique, its own masterpiece with its unique suite of biodiversity specialties. Morkill Falls does not disappoint.

And the falls is certainly a thrill for Buki, who relishes the hot-day coolness, especially after the challenging access to the sprayzone, lowering ourselves down and between great rock slabs. Easy enough for two tall men with basic rock climbing skills. But not easy for a three-year old, inexperienced pup who seems to be in a state of vertigo. Shane descends, and I follow, and Buki whines and races back and forth along the trail above trying to convince us to stop this nonsense and retreat. It takes a few minutes of “be brave” encouragement, patting the part of the route that she should be able to descend fairly easily and perfectly safely. “Come on, Buki, you can do it!” Whimpering, trying, close, almost, but she backs up at the last moment. Another try, and the she backs up and runs along the trail again out of sight. Buki’s trust in me is strong, but not a hundred percent yet. I know she’ll work up the courage eventually. And she gets the chance to do so on two future visits to the falls. But today, she finds her own route down, maybe not the best route, but it worked for her, and she’s very pleased with herself. On we go to the sprayzone.

Buki, blissing

And it’s a wonderful sprayzone indeed! Here’s sweetgrass along the river shore, bathed constantly in that nutrifying mist. Any place with sweetgrass (Hierochloe) is a good place. Some cultures recognize magic where sweetgrass grows. Crust a leaf of sweetgrass, and you’ll be reminded of incense. Or for those in the know, you’ll be reminded of Polish Żubrówka vodka, each bottle of which contains a blade of the grass and its essence. It’s a good flavouring for liqueur, evoking wild places where a person can be at peace. The medieval English used sweetgrass as a strewing herb for special church occasions so that those walking ceremoniously aisle-to-altar would crush the leaves underfoot and release the holy fragrance. For some indigenous cultures, sweetgrass has the powers of blessing or of perfuming the hair and skin. In some cultures, a sweetgrass braid is more than a keepsake. It can bring both good and bad influences into a household, depending on how it is treated, whether it is respected. The ranges of two North American sweetgrass species, the ones most often used by humans, are in retreat during the ongoing advance of invasive European plants, especially Phalaris arundinacea (reed canary grass), which replaces whole river shore floras with its un-diverse self.

Sweetgrass florets

Morkill Fall’s sprayzone continues to delight: Here is Maianthemum canadense, new for the Robson Valley. And here on the rock slab where Buki, Shane and I descended to the falls, is Viola renifolia var. renifolia. This violet is out of place in the west, which is supposed to have only variety brainerdii. Has the typical variety been overlooked in various western outposts, or is this population a true loner, far separated from the core range in the eastern deciduous forests?

Viola renifolia var. renifolia

The seldom-seen cyanolichen Lempholemma radiatum is a major surprise to find here. It belongs in the tundra, not in a subboreal waterfall sprayzone. But here it is, a robust population, looking more vigorous than any I’d seen before, not that I’d seen more than two populations in the field previously. And curiously, the lobes are tomentose on the lower surface, a characteristic unknown from this species–or is this trait trying to tell me that this is not L. radiatum, but a new species to science? And growing with it: Odontoschisma francisci, a new addition to British Columbia’s liverwort flora. And so forth.

Lempholemma radiatum, or thereabouts

Waterfalls everywhere are important for biodiversity. Black Swifts, those high fliers whose aerobatics are enjoyed only by keen-eyed birders, nest only behind waterfall cascades, where they are guaranteed protection from predators. In various parts of the world, fish species occur only in only one waterfall splash-pool. Or amphibians, like Tanzania’s Kihansi spray toad, live only in one or few sprayzones. There are waterfall-endemic ferns, mosses, liverworts, lichens, and so forth. Snails, too: I challenged Shane to be the first to find a snail here in Morkill’s sprayzone. There are at least two species here in the sprayzone, one a Catinella, the other…I don’t know. Malacology is beyond my reach.

While Shane looked for snails and while Buki blissed out, I had my attention off of the lichens and plants to get the best possible photos of an unfamiliar earthworm. For decades, we’ve been told that (except for the rare and regionally endemic Palouse and Willamette giant earthworms) all earthworms in western North America, our familiar garden ones, are invasives from Europe. But more recently a few native species have been found that live in wilder habitats. This one seems not to be one of those known natives, as best as I can tell without any experience. But what is it? I’ve never seen an earthworm in a place like this, so far from lawns and gardens. Is it exotic or native? I hope to know some day.

The worm in the sprayzone

Morkill Falls, as lovely and as biodiverse as it is, appeared about 15 years ago in a power company’s proposal for hydroelectric development. The Robson Valley residents organizations and regional environmental organizations said, emphatically, no. The proposal was shelved, but development is still possible at some point. Hundreds of British Columbia’s waterfalls are threatened with diversion-type hydroelectric development, and many have already been impacted, with the result of flow loss that sometimes exceeds 80%. The diversion of water, bypassing the falls through pipes downslope to a powerhouse, diminishes the misting effect, drying the sprayzone and reducing the nutrifying and ventilating effects of the spray to a smaller area. The effects on biodiversity of these projects is of no more concern to government regulators than that due diligence is done in development applications to write formalized stock statements about biodiversity. We Canadians really excel at greenwashing.

This hot afternoon will soon turn over to evening. Time to go. Before departing for McBride and southward to Clearwater, we make a stop at the bridge over the Fraser River. There’s a beautiful sandy beach at the shore, with an eddy-pool, and outcrops that look promising to a botanist’s eye. A good place to submerge to wash off the day’s sweat. And Buki, like every dog I’ve known, loves a beach. Swimming in the eddy pool, chasing sticks, enjoying well-earned treats. And then Buki, zooming around in circles and leaping in the air just for the joy of going air-bound, goes completely bonkers: an explosive and vocal emotional outburst and a crescendo of canine ecstasy. Shane and I both just had to watch her, amazed. I’ve never seen a city-bound dog act this way, only in the wilderness with good human friends. This should be a dog’s everyday.

The outcrop is limestone, scoured into interesting shapes during high water flow. It isn’t for the bare-footed; the finely eroded tops are blade-sharp. So I submerge once more to finish cooling before putting boots back on for some outcrop exploration. Walking out of the pool, my right foot slips and my weight comes down suddenly on my left foot, which finds a submerged limestone point in the sand. It’s a bruising pain, but I shrug it off and go lie down in the sun to dry off. Later, before putting on my boots, I sit down and pull my foot up to have a look at my throbbing heel and find it’s cut deep. There’s a loose slab of flesh. Darn it! It doesn’t hurt much, but with a wound like this, intensifying pain can be expected later, pain enough to keep me from hiking effectively.

Shane and I part ways, he goes north to the cabin to wait for my return from home tomorrow. And Buki and I go on south for the long homeward drive. At least I’m well rested today, and have no cramps. A cramped and wounded foot would bring the sort of pain I’d rather not experience. Within an hour of driving, the anticipated pain comes on strong, and I’m imagining what’s happening deep in the wound as Fraser River water and sand must be lodged in there, bacteria and all. A call to the Clearwater hospital ensures me that the emergency room will be open tonight. The good work of the ER doctor and nurse gets the wound cleaned out and the dying tissues cut away. Bandaged now, I’m told to keep my weight off the wound for two weeks.

I’m back in the Walker the next day. I can hobble. Pain…whatever…it won’t last. I’m just sorry to be without Buki for the rest of the trip. This was her first “big trip”. Her first time trusted as a working trail-dog. She did an outstanding job, keeping alert for wildlife and recognizing when I’m not to be distracted. She was sad (probably devastated, considering how emotional dogs are) to see me depart again in the morning, as she always is when I have to leave her behind. But I’m sure this time it’s especially hard on her after all that she’s enjoyed these two days. She must imagine that all my departures lead me to the joys she experienced in the Walker, and she must feel punished to be denied the “big trip”. But she will return in September for the last two days of work in the Morkill and Walker Valleys. And I’ll hope she and I will return again to that beautiful wilderness in future years.

Buki in paradise

Feeding Time

The envoy

On our way toward the road for a walk, Buki and I passed the inner gate on our driveway. There on the gate post was a gray jay, one of the flock that was otherwise perched on various twigs in the nearby trees. An envoy, come to plead the gray jays’ case for treatment equal to Ravena & Rowan, the ravens. The Steller’s jays were attentive nearby, with their own interest in this case. A few times already, Ravena & Rowan had to share their gatepost-top kibble meals with the gray jays. Gray jays are clever and bold. Though much smaller, they will raid a raven’s meal. “Oh, come on, Ravena, they’re just little gray jays, they can’t hurt you.” The Steller’s jays, which are astonishingly beautiful dark blue, crested corvids, are shy, even around the smaller gray jays. They hover around the feeding scenes, hoping to find a moment of unguarded food they can swoop in on, but so far they’d had no success. Though she and Rowan are easily scared off by the gray jays, still, they will hold their ground long enough to take most of the food.

And so, now, the gray jays want a meal served expressly to them. It’s clear they recognize me. This little jay wouldn’t be sitting on the gate post staring at any other human. It’s me. I’m the overly generous one known to the whole corvid neighbourhood. Ravena and Rowan already know me so well, they track my whereabouts all day. They watch me chop wood, garden, swim, nap. They join Kabuki and me on walks along the road or through the forest. Even when I’m in the house, I’m monitored by them. They stare at me through the windows. Sometimes when I’m upstairs, they perch on the roof. I can hear their claws scratching along on the tin ridgeline, sauntering along from one end of the roof to the other end, corresponding to my movements between my office and Trevor’s and then back again. They must be able to hear my footsteps below. I wonder, do I ever appear in Ravena’s and Rowan’s dreams?

And now the jays seem to know me personally. And this one had come to plead a case. “Oh what have I started?!” as I returned to the house for a bowl of dog kibbles for the day’s second corvid feeding time. I knew I shouldn’t, but I did. A pile of kibbles on one post, and a pile on the other. And then I stood a few feet away to watch several gray jays swooping to the gate posts in turns each for their share. Buki sniffed around for her own snack, which I buried under the snow so she’d have to put some effort into it and so that she would keep some distance from the jays. I was pleased to see the Steller’s jays work up their courage to snatch a few kibbles, too. Ravena & Rowan came around, also. Everyone had a portion. Buki worked her way over to the gate posts to look for any spilled kibbles, and the jays, even the Steller’s jays didn’t mind her. How beautiful they all are, the corvids and Buki. I sometimes dream about them.

Direct communication is now established with two more species. More friends. The banquet repeated the next day. And again two days later. This will continue. Gray jays, Steller’s jays, two ravens, a dog, and a man.

This morning, while waiting for my coffee water to boil, I stood looking out the dining room window, where two Steller’s jays were perched on the veranda railing, staring back at me.

Here’s a story I read recently:

I was reminded of the Pygmy legend of the Bird with the Most Beautiful Song. This bird was found by a young boy who heard such a Beautiful Song that he had to go and see who was singing. When he found the Bird he brought it back to the camp to feed it. His father was annoyed at having to give food to the Bird, but the son pleaded and the Bird was fed. The next day the Bird sang again; it sang the Most Beautiful Song in the Forest, and again the boy went to it and brought it back to feed it. This time the father was even more angered, but once again he gave in and fed the Bird. The third day (most Pygmy stories repeat themselves at least three times) the same thing happened. But this time the father took the Bird from his son and told his son to go away. When his son had left, the father killed the Bird, the Bird with the Most Beautiful Song in the Forest, and with the Bird he killed the Song, and with the Song he killed himself and he dropped dead, completely dead, dead for ever.

–Colin Turnbull, The Forest Pygmies: A Study of the Pygmies of the Congo, Simon & Schuster 1962.