The bones pull us up and over the mountains.  Years of collection are entombed and displayed under dim lights in the cool expanse of the Royal Tyrell Museum of Paleontology.  But it is the layers of sediments exposed in the surrounding hillsides that draw my attention most.  In the heat of the day while everyone else is still safely ensconced within the museum, I stand outside, reading the colours, learning how strong sunlight saps the intensity of the merlots and rusts.  Three days east of the mountains teaches me about prairie light on haystacks and shadows pooling in coulees.  We leave too soon for me to tire of the gentle contours, the push and pull of sediments resisting the erosion of time.

Leaves of the pitcher plant, Saracennia spp.

My time in the Nova Scotia coastal barrens has me thinking about home and floras, known and not.  In the barrens, with my hands and knees wet from the soggy ground below, the sensuous curves of the charteuse, red-veined, vase-like leaves of the pitcher plant were a miracle of attraction. When we found the sturdy flower stalks perched well above the leaves, a gleeful joy bubbled within.  This I saw, amidst the larger tapestry of this exposed, soggy landscape not far from Peggy’s Cove, this I saw.

In this eastern maritime landscape, some of the flora I knew.  The pitcher plants and huckleberries I had learned in similar wetlands in Vermont.  Others I had forgotten or never knew.  What was startling to me, amidst the tour of botanists, exclamations bouncing off the stunted vegetation, was how content I was to remain a visitor.

View across the barrens

In this place, spruce and Sphagnum, Drosera and huckleberry, Gaylussacia and Myrica, belong not to me, nor I to them.  At home, in the dry grasslands and forests of interior British Columbia, the flora is both a comfort and a responsibility. The rhythm of a known botany is a constant companion.  When I find a plant new to me, the excitement of the find also carries with it the burden of sorting through the taxonomic keys to find its name.

But in the barrens, not knowing all the names gave me permission to play.  Pen scribbling in my field journal, I could relish the miniscule flowers of the sundew (who knew they were bright yellow!), the clustering of the spruce in islands of refuge, the delicate contours of the grass pink.

In the barrens, as a botanical tourist, my task was simpler.  I was, as Linnaeus once described botanists,  “much given to exclamations of wonder,” reveling in the subdued shapes and forms of flora I didn’t have to know by name.

Two coastlines, two maritime landscapes.  The juxtaposition of work and holiday have me flying from Halifax NS to Washington State’s San Juan Archipelago in less than a week.  Based on my comfort level with the plants, one counts as home.  One doesn’t.  The fact that “home” doesn’t correspond with “country” makes me question the validity of arbitrary political boundaries for plants and those that track them.

Point Pleasant, Halifax, July 18, 2011

Spencer Spit, Lopez Island, Washington

Early July brings on the Saskatoon berries.  Each cluster on the tall, sparse shrubs is a mixture of deep-purple black and carmine pink fruits.  Down along Petersen Creek, the Saskatoon shrubs are heavy with ripe fruit and early in the morning , a woman stands alone in the fresh sunlight, pulling fruit.  At the end of the walk, I break off a small branch to sketch.  The next day, the summer heat descends upon this cut-valley landscape with a vengeance.  Summer solstice come and gone, I linger on the rich texture of the saskatoon, cognizant of the diminishing possibilities.

Early July on the two track that stretches between Rose Hill and Juniper Ridge…

Lupines and gaillardia everywhere.  Alumroot poking up amongst the grasses on the shaded cutbanks of the road.  Green, green grass and the luscious contours of an aspen canopy above us on the hills.  The flanks of the hills across the valley are cast into shadows.  On the Sunday of our long weekend, I ride the length of this road twice–once early in the morning and then I convince the family to come back again after dinner.  Even though the evening ride is brisk with an evening wind, I feel like I ride through eye candy, every turn in the road offering a new image worth a painting.

I’ve been working on a chapter about the colours of plants and I find myself writing about delphinium purple and gallardia yellow.  Right now in the grasslands north of town, both are blooming.  This time of the year is ephemerally fecund with plant pigment of all sort.  It is a rare treat to transfer the lines and colour of our native wildflowers into images on a page.  I fear the blooming season will end all too soon.

After 3 weeks in Kamloops, the combined classes of Field Botany and Field Ornithology from TRU embarked on a whirlwind tour of the plant and bird life of southwestern BC.  As part of Field Botany, I asked students to keep a field journal (notebook) of the landscapes and plants that we encounter.  These journals are often the best things I have to mark in my life as an academic naturalist.  I spent the last two days pouring over my students field journals and it seems only fair that my sketches and scrawls are similarly viewed.

Our trip took us from the lush coniferous forest (Fritillaria lanceolata in full bloom!) along the north side of Adams River into the drier landscapes of British Columbia’s  Okanagan Valley.  At the end of a long rainy day, the clouds lifted just as we pulled into our campsite at Fintry Provincial Park.  The next day, White Lake Protected Area harbored blooming bitterroots on the ridge that looms over the saline waters of the lake.  After leaving the arid zone of the South Okanagan, we went up and over Manning Park and descended into the lush maple forest surrounding Cultus Lake.  Teapot Hill was an extravaganza of Saxifragaceae and Liliaceae.  The abundance of both plants and birds at Reifel Wildlife Refuge was in stark contrast to the surrounding suburbia of Greater Vancouver.  Our last major stop was amidst the forests of Golden Ears where bryophytes loom large in their sheer expansiveness, covering seeming every stable surface.  Old forests, and after spending four summers sampling their abundance in coastal western hemlock forests, I said their names aloud to the students, relishing the familiarity of these old friends.

Excerpts from my Field Journal during the Field Botany Finale:

Fintry Provincial Park

Up Short Creek Canyon at Fintry

The view from the bitterroot ridge at White Lake

White Lake botany

Vaseux Lake

Hayne’s Lease to Teapot Hill

Reifel Wildlife Refuge

Gold Creek at Golden Ears Provincial Park

Botany Pond–A visit with the Field Botany class to the NCC property in Lac Du Bois brings with it a sense of abundance.  Sandhill cranes call in the near-distance, meadowlarks trill and ducks swim on the pond.  We climb the hill to the largest aspen stand I’ve found in these upper grasslands.  Near the top, the students spread out to sketch rolling landscape.  This is my favorite place in these grasslands.  Each time I visit, I feel bequeathed with natural history moments to treasure. I lose track of time completely (my wind-up watch running down completely) and it is not until Christine reminds me that it is nearly noon that I face leaving this oasis of diversity.  As we head down the old, grown over road, I look back to catch a glimpse of the pond(s) shimmering in the sunlight.  Back in my office, surround by the trappings (encumberances) of an academic life, I rest easier knowing that that there is a calm spot of quiet up in the hills.

The buttercups are slow this year.  After three years of watching buttercups emerge above Kamloops, we know that the first flower emerges typically between March 10 and March 31.  This year we don’t see the first buttercup until March 28.  As part of a fourth-year plant evolution class, my students are monitoring the flowering phenology and we spent the middle two weeks of March, waiting while the buttercup buds remained tightly closed.  Yesterday we tagged our first open flower.