Natural Landscapes (01)
October 2, 2006
E.C. Manning Provincial Park
Autumn colours in E.C. Manning Provincial Park, taken last year on October 2. This photograph doesn't rank among my favourites, but it serves as a reminder of the photographic potential here – warm, autumnal colours set against the cool blue rock of the area. I'm not certain I will get a chance to return to the park this autumn, but if I do, I hope I'll be able to improve upon this image.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:11 AM| Comments (1)
September 6, 2006
Lower Nicola Valley
I spent part of last weekend breathing in smoke and ash from the Tatoosh and Tripod wildfires while on a trip to British Columbia's Southern Interior. Haze can create exceptional light and shadows or transform landscapes into unique scenes. Although I didn't take full advantage of the photographic opportunities (the weekend wasn't dedicated to photography), I did manage to take a few pictures to share.
The area where this photograph was taken is approximately 95km (60mi) north of the Tatoosh fire. Although I associate this type of scene with the narrow slice of time post-sunset or pre-sunrise, it was actually taken an hour before sunset.
To add a botanical element to today's entry, I suggest reading about the ecology of fire from Wikipedia.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 6:27 AM| Comments (1)
August 29, 2006
Trail to Botanical Beach
Today's photograph is a companion image to last week's entry on Alnus rubra (the trees forming the walls and ceiling of this outside hall).
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 1:18 AM| Comments (3)
August 23, 2006
Cliff at China Beach
I couldn't resist sharing today's photograph in both vertical and horizontal orientations. The correct perspective is the vertical, since this is a cliff with seeping water. Still, I imagine the horizontal image could be used to trick more than a few people.
The challenges of the vertical environment for plants include exposure to wind and sun, poor or lacking soil, nutrient availability and gravity. These factors would be studied by cliff ecologists; cliff ecology is a specialized discipline within ecology that examines and studies organisms of cliff environments and how they interact with each other and the physical environment. Never heard of cliff ecology? A book review for “Cliff Ecology: Pattern and Process in Cliff Ecosystems” explains why. Here's the lede of the review: “Question: What is vertical, predominantly rock, virtually unstudied and largely taken for granted by land managers? Answer: A cliff. Perhaps no other landscape feature has been so consistently ignored despite being pervasive and prominent across the world. Ecologists haven't studied cliffs, and land managers haven't assumed responsibility for protecting them.”.
Two of the three vascular plants I noticed growing on this particular cliff face are in this photograph: Adiantum aleuticum and Saxifraga mertensiana (I've yet to ID the third, but it is not in this image). If I had to identify the moss, I'd hazard a guess and suggest it is Hypnum subimponens (Hypnaceae). This tentative ID is based on environment (seeping cliffs), habit (mat-forming), and colouration (yellow-green new growth, brownish-green in older areas) via the description in “Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast” by Pojar & MacKinnon.
Photography / agriculture resource link: International Plant Genetic Resources Institute's Image Bank contains images on the subjects of plant and crop diversity (my favourite is this photograph of an orange-fleshed banana).
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:56 AM| Comments (2)
August 21, 2006
Alnus rubra
The photographic opportunities at Botanical Beach are rich. Along with the hundreds of tidepools and the seashore, early morning oceanside fogs in the associated forest yield yet more reasons to carry a camera when visiting. I think this complex scene would be extremely difficult to render under any condition other than a background fog (and I'm speaking from personal experience, having tried similar other photographs dozens of times and having been disappointed).
The trees in the image are red alder. As mentioned and better illustrated in a previous BPotD entry, the bark of red alder is grey, yet often appears mottled with white and green because of a covering of lichens and mosses. The effect is not easily visible in this black-and-white image.
More information on Alnus rubra is available via the Flora of North America project, including a mention of the importance of the tree to First Nations peoples.
Photography resource link: for inspiration, the photography of Oregonian Mark Hudon.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 4:54 AM| Comments (2)
August 17, 2006
Botanical Beach
Hundreds of tidepools can be found at Botanical Beach in Juan de Fuca Provincial Park; many of these contain this species of surfgrass shown in the photograph, Phyllospadix scouleri. I wanted to write about both the adaptations (how does a vascular plant survive in a salt water environment?) and sex lives of these dioecious plants (how does the pollen travel from the male to the female plant?), but entertaining texts for these already exist online, courtesy of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute: Phyllospadix – the Surfers (about adaptations) and Seagrass Courtship (about reproduction challenges).
Today's entry is number 500 in the BPotD series of images and write-ups. Thank you all for your continued contributions and support.
Botany resource link: Celebrating Wildflowers, a site from the USDA Forest Service, assembles some very valuable information: where to see wildflowers in the US. Discovered via the Botanical Electronic News.
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:00 AM| Comments (8)
July 24, 2006
Chiricahua National Monument
If you're like me, you look at this photograph, note the yellowish-green colouration of the rock and then ask, “What lichen causes that?”. If you're also like me, you've spent hours trying to figure out what lichen it might be, and not knowing has stopped you from posting a photograph of the Chiricahua National Monument until today. I still don't know what it is, but I'm sharing this photograph from late March anyway. After dozens of false leads on the lichen identification, I'm pursuing a laborious path: the process of elimination, using this listing of Lichens of the Chiricahua National Monument. Considering it's one of the few National Parks and Monuments for which the travel literature actually mentions lichens, you'd think it would be easy to find the scientific name. No such luck.
The Chiricahua National Monument lies at the intersection of four large-scale plant communities: the Chihuahuan desert, the Sonoran desert, the southern Rocky Mountains and the northern Sierra Madre. Like many other confluences of landforms, biodiversity is high. Read about the animals and plants of the Chiricahuas from the US National Park Service site or see a series of photographs of plants from the different zones here: Sky Islands and Montane Communities. The monument's geology makes the area even more stunning to a naturalist.
Science resource link: Dendronautics – exploration of the rainforest canopy by airships and similar aerial platforms (with photos!).
Posted by Daniel Mosquin at 12:00 AM| Comments (13)
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Botany Photo of the Day and all associated images are licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Botany Photo of the Day is a project of the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research, located in Vancouver, British Columbia Canada. UBC BGCPR is a department of the Faculty of Land and Food Systems within The University of British Columbia.