Piney-Looking Trees Part 1: Basic Identification (i.e. Don't Be Clue-less)

Quick Life Update/Preamble to Post

So 2 things real quick. First, this has been kind of a cool week. On Saturday I kicked ass in a brutal race (a 15 mile hill-climb) It was one of those climbs that everything clicked for me, and my finishing time put me 3^rd place in the Cat 4’s and was better than any of my teammates (including several who really are stronger/better riders…) As a result, all this week I’ve been getting “well done/nice job” type emails from friends and teammates and have been feeling generally on top of the world.

Second, I’m flying East tonight for 10 days in Massachusetts and Maine. My wife and kids are already back East in NJ with her family and will fly up to meet me in Boston Friday. (Pic left of #2 Son aka ”Twin A” buried in NJ beach sand…)The first 2 days of my trip are work; next week is vacation. I grew up in the suburbs of Boston, and my folks and brother still live there, so this will be a trip to catch up with family. Later in the week we’ll head up to Southwestern Maine, where my Dad built a cabin on a lake 35+ years ago for a few days of swimming, sailing and canoeing.

I have mixed feelings about the trip. I’ve been really into the Wasatch this summer, and there’s a lot to do, see and blog about here. But I’m also ready for a break from Utah. I wouldn’t mind a little more green, and I love natural lakes, which are lacking in this part of the country. While I’m gone I’ll try to blog a bit, but I’m not sure if I’ll continue the “Piney-Looking Tree” series, or blog about stuff back East…

Enough Rambling – Let’s Talk Trees

So seeing as pretty much all my biking and hiking these days (OK biking really- I am riding my ass off but haven’t hiked in a month+) is up over 7,000 feet, we should talk about trees. Because even though I’m still often riding past the same 3 “Foothill Friends”- Gambel Oak, Bigtooth Maple, and Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany, they’re not the dominant trees over 7,000 feet.

The good news about the trees over 7,000 feet is that they are absolutely, indisputably, real trees. Not oversized shrubs, or thickets, but real trees with real shade. And in the summer in Utah, it’s all about shade.

One of the great things about living in a part of the country with minimal floristic diversity is that you can quickly learn what few tree types grow naturally in a given milieu, and then be filled with boundless self-confidence as you confidently identify those trees. And certainly when you compare the forests of the Wasatch with the forests of the Sierras or the Appalachians, they’re pretty species-poor. But those we have are wonderful and worth knowing.

At the highest level, there are 2 broad divisions of Wasatch trees: Aspen and Conifers. Aspen are easy. If you can’t recognize them, go back to New Jersey. And we’ll talk about Aspen soon enough, but first let’s look at the Conifers, or as I often think of them, the “Piney-Looking” trees.

There are loads of coniferous trees in the Wasatch, but the good news for a wannabe botanist is that the vast majority of them are of just 3 species. And none of those species is actually a “Pine.” (There are pines in the Wasatch, but we’ll come to them- and their problematic distribution- later.) The three are a Fir, a Douglas Fir, and a Spruce. And the 3 look pretty similar, especially from a distance, until you know what to look for. So in this post I’ll talk about how to identify the 3 from one another, and then in subsequent posts we’ll look at each in a bit more detail.

But first, what is a “Piney-looking tree?”

Way back when, we talked about how pretty much all trees are either Angiosperms (flowering plants) or Gymnosperms (no flowers.) And we talked about how Angiosperms have pretty much conquered the world, but that Gymnosperms, despite far fewer species, still dominate large areas of the planet. The largest (by far) division of gymnosperm trees are the Conifers. There are over 600 species of conifers and they include all of the Pines, Spruces, Firs, Douglas Firs, Junipers, Redwoods, Larches, Cedars, Hemlocks and a bunch of other stuff that grow way far away, like Araucarias (think “Norfolk Pine”.) Within the Conifer “Division”, the largest “Family” is the Pine Family, or Pinaceae, with ~250 species across 11 genera. 4 of those genera- Pine (Pinus), Spruce (Picea), Fir (Abies) and Douglas Fir (Pseudotsuga) occur naturally in Utah

Background on Pine Taxonomy

Most people, when they think about pines at all, assume that any tree with needles is a “pine tree”, which is not the case. Pines are evergreen conifers that bear cones, and whose needles are clustered together in little bundles called fascicles, which connect the needles to the branch. Spruces, firs, Douglas firs, hemlocks and most everything on a Christmas tree lot are not pines. But they’re all members of the Pine Family, so we’ll refer to them as “Piney-Looking Trees”.

Tangent: Many people also assume all Conifers are evergreen. Most are, but not all. Larches for example are deciduous. (There are no Larches in Utah, but they occur as close as Northern Idaho.)

The 3 main players of the Wasatch Conifers represent 3 of those 4 genera, and what’s interesting is that even though they all look similar, they haven’t shared a common ancestor since dinosaurs walked the Earth, well over 100 million years ago. In other words, they’re about as closely-related to each other as we are to Kangaroos. Another interesting thing about them is that looking at them, you’d assume that they’re all more closely-related to one another than they are to Pines, which look noticeably different.

But DNA research (on nuclear, mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA) in recent years indicates that Spruces are more closely related to Pines than to Firs or Douglas Firs, and Douglas Firs in turn are more closely related to Pines and Spruces than they are to the very-similar-looking “True” Firs.

And what’s really interesting, is that here we are in the Wasatch, like 150 million+ years later, in a totally changed world, and each one of these very distinct genera has evolved a species that is a major player in the Wasatch, standing side-by-side, duking it out.

Identifying Pine-Looking Trees

So, how do you tell them apart? The two best tools are cones and needles. Cones are easiest, but they’re not always there, so needles are your back-up. First cones. If the tree has cones hanging downward from its branches, it’s either a Douglas Fir, Pseudotsuga menziesii, or an Engelmann Spruce, Picea engelmannii.

White Fir, Abies concolor, like all “True” Firs has cones that stand straight up from the branch, and occur only on the highest branches- not down at eye-level. Fir cones don’t drop either- they disperse their seeds and then disintegrate on the tree. So chances are, you’ll never see a White Fir cone close up.

Absence doesn’t prove anything, but with the downward-hanging cones, you know the tree is a Douglas Fir or an Engelmann Spruce. The cones are roughly the same size, but have an important difference: Douglas Fir cones have small, 3-pointed bracts (miniature, specialized leaves) sticking out from between the scales of the cone. Engelmann Spruce cones have no bracts.

The obvious problem with cones is that they’re only an identifier when they’re there, and Spruce and Douglas Fir don’t always have cones hanging off them. (Oftentimes, cones on the ground below the tree can be a clue, but this can be tricky in a mixed stand.) But all three of these trees always have needles.

Pluck a needle from the tree in question and hold it between your thumb and forefinger. Try to “roll” the needle between your finger pads. If it ”rolls” successfully, that’s because it’s 4-sided, and therefore an Engelmann Spruce. Most Spruces have 4-sided needles (Norway Spruce needles are 3-sided and Sitka Spruce needles are flat, but neither occurs here in Utah. So, like smooth, hairless Wyethia leaves, this trick works in Utah, but not everywhere.)

If the needle doesn’t roll, it’s because it’s “flat”, or 2-sided, which means it’s either White Fir or Douglas Fir. To determine which of the 2 flat-siders it is, look at how the needles are attached to the branch. White Fir needles connect with a clear, round “landing pad”, and the needle stays almost as wide all the way down to the base. Douglas Fir needles (pic left) narrow to a tiny stalk in the last ½ a millimeter as you go toward the base, and it’s this little stalk that attaches them to twig.

More Subtle Differences

Fir and Douglas Fir needles generally grow in two “rows” long either side of the twig. Spruce needles grow out from the twig perpendicularly, but in all directions- sideway, up, down or in-between, making Spruce twigs look more like bottle brushes than Fir or Douglas Fir twigs.

Subtle Differences From a Distance

The bark of mature Engelmann Spruce takes on a subtle reddish/pinkish/orangey tone (pic right). Once you recognize it, it’s a cinch to identify.

When White Fir and Douglas Fir occurs together, such as in Porter Fork, I’ve noticed that in the Winter the Douglas Fir needles have a slightly yellower tone than the White Fir needles. I’ve only noticed this in Winter.

Lastly, the foliage of Engelmann Spruce and Douglas Fir is denser than that of White Fir. The forest floor under the 2 former trees feels shadier, darker, and a bit less “friendly” than the floor under White Fir. This “density” of foliage means they provide better rain protection, should you need to wait out a quick shower in the backcountry (standard lightning safety rules apply.) In mixed Douglas Fir/White Fir country, a stand of pure Douglas Fir may manifest itself as an especially dry, dusty stretch of deeply-shaded trail.

Now to be clear, these 3 guys are not the only conifers in the Wasatch- just the most common. Next we’ll check out each in turn, and in doing so, mention a few of the “bit players.”

The Bird Whisperer

So a couple weeks back when I was in San Diego, I mentioned that Wonder Boy was in Bird Camp. Bird Camp was a roaring success, adding to his already formidable avian knowledge base. Last Saturday the kids and I headed up to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, and Wonder Boy was our infallible guide. Every bird we saw- Ibis, Avocet, Pelican, Egret, Franklin’s Gull, Yellow-Headed Blackbird, whatever- Wonder Boy identified it for us. Even for an adult- much less a 9-year old- his ornithological expertise is daunting. He reads, sees or hears something once, and like a computer, it’s part of his database. Take my botanical knowledge, multiply by 10, and you get a feel for Wonder Boy’s level of bird-related knowledge.

BTW, the Bear River Refuge is an amazing place- one of those “I can’t believe I’ve lived here all these years and never been there” places. It plays a vital role in the migrations of many, many birds. Here’s a quick example: Franklin’s Gull, Larus pipixcan. There are around 50 species of Larus, or “Gull” in the world, many (most?) of which look pretty much like a common “Seagull.” I’m partial to Franklin’s Gull mainly because it has a cool black head and doesn’t try to steal your lunch. But the really cool thing about Franklin’s Gull is its lifestyle. It summers and breeds mainly on and around prairie lakes in Alberta and Manitoba. In fact it builds floating nests along the reedy shores, which it constantly replenishes with new nest materials as the stuff on the bottom decays and sinks. But it winters clear down in Chile and Peru. That’s a monster commute, and it wouldn’t work without places like the wetlands where the Bear River empties out in the Great Salt Lake.

Besides its impressive migration, the really interesting thing about Franklin’s Gull is that it summers and breeds only around freshwater, far from the coasts, but frequently winters in/on salt water, along South American beaches and estuaries.

But the really cool thing about the Refuge is that there are dozens of interesting birds like L. pipixcan, and each one has it’s own great story about how it lives, migrates, breeds, etc. And it seems like Wonder Boy knows them all.

Tangent: Wonder Boy also displays this encyclopedic-sponge-like capability in other areas, including dinosaurs and mammals, as well as a series of (to an adult anyway) non-productive geeky pursuits, such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh! Surprisingly though, he’s socially well-adjusted and seems popular in school…

Wonder-Boy often kills time pacing back and forth in the back yard, muttering to himself, reciting animal facts or snippets from Yu-Gi-Oh! Cartoon episodes, or who knows what. My wife and I are convinced this is how he “processes” all of his facts. And lately, he’s added a new backyard habit- “stalking” birds at the feeder. He creeps up, getting closer and closer, until he gently touches the bird with his hand, stroking the back-feathers! (I swear I am not making this up.) Here’s a picture of Wonder Boy closing in on a female House Finch, Carpodacus mexicanus, which he “made contact” with less than a minute later. My wife now calls him “The Bird Whisperer.”

The level of brains and patience this kid has is incredible. Of all the creatures I’ve been checking out and blogging about this year, Wonder Boy is surely the most amazing.

I Make a Mistake, But Make Up For It By Identifying The Best Natural Toilet Paper

So for several days I’ve been suspecting I made a significant ID error in my July 1 post. And I confirmed today that indeed I did. When I realized that I’d made a significant error, 3 options occurred to me:

Option 1: Do nothing. Nobody ever reads this blog anyway, and the few people who do probably know less about flowers than I do.

Option 2: Go back and edit the post. Fix it. If anyone did read it already, they probably won’t remember the original anyway.

Option 3: Admit the error, leave the original post intact, correct the error here.

Upon reflection, Option 1 is probably the most sensible, but Option 2 would be best for my ego. So I’m going with Option 3. (This kind of decision-process probably gives you some idea of why my investment-related decisions generally suck.) I guess my reasoning is that this is a blog, not a book, and a blog is supposed to not just convey information, but capture the author’s experience related to that information.

Here’s the error: I’m pretty sure that the yellow, post-Balsamroot/Mules ear flower blooming all over the foothills a week and a half ago is not Heartleaf Arnica. The truth is I don’t know what it is… some member of the Sunflower family to be sure, a species of Helianthela or Groundsel perhaps. And in fact I’m not 100% sure that it’s not Heartleaf Arnica, but the fact is that on 2 recent mtn bike rides, I’ve come across a yellow flower that looks more like Heartleaf Arnica (pic right), and is where Heartleaf Arnica is supposed to be: on the floor of a coniferous (specifically spruce/fir) forest.

Check out the leaves (left): those points are the giveaway. The foothills flowers lack them, but those in upper Mill Creek drainage have them. What really got me excited and threw me off about the yellow-unspecified-foothill flowers were the Dandelion-like parachute achene/calyxes…

What can I say? When you learn botany by the seat of your pants, you’re gonna get tripped up in the forest a couple of times…

Wherein I Redeem Myself with an Extra Botanical Nugget about the Flower in Question

So I’ll try to make up for my bum ID steer first off with another cool nugget about Heartleaf Arnica. In my original (flawed) post, I discussed the interesting polyploidy of that species (which by the way, was all correct.) And I mentioned that most Heartleaf Arnica plants are either chromosomally triploid or tetraploid. A cool thing about this is that the triploids seem bloom earlier than the tetraploids. So chances are that the Arnicas blooming right now are triploid, but as the bloom tails off over the next 3-4(?) weeks, most will be tetraploid.

Wherein I Redeem Myself Further with Another Great Flower

So here’s another flower I just saw (and ID’d) today in the upper Mill Creek drainage: Thimbleberry, Rubus parviflorus (pic left) There are 2 cool things about this flower. First, it produces wild raspberry-like berries. The genus Rubus is a massive (couple hundred species) genus rife with polyploidy, hybridization and apomixis. From a botanist’s perspective it is both rich and complicated. Rubus has been around for more than 30 million years, and includes all of the raspberries, blackberries and dewberries. Thimbleberries are generally raspberry-like, but bigger. They make a great jam, but they’re so soft that they can’t be packaged or shipped commercially. They grow in dense understory-thickets and spread by root-cloning.

Recipe Tangent – Thimbleberry Jam: Equal parts thimbleberries and sugar, boil for 2 minutes, pack in jars.

The second cool thing is actually nearer to my heart, because while I’m generally good about packing snacks on extended backcountry excursions, I often forget toilet paper. The soft, oversized, vaguely maple-like leaves of Thimbleberry (pic right) make excellent wipes, and the leaf hairs are non-irritating (unlike so many other plant hairs.)

Wherein I Go Off the Deep End and Provide Way Too Much Botanical Info

If you think Thimbleberry flowers look a bit like a “white wild rose”, it’s because they’re part of the same family, the Rose Family, Rosaceae. Rosaceae is a huge and very successful family of plants, with well over 3,000 species across ~100 genera, ~50 of which are native to North America.

A common trait of all Rosaceae flowers is 5 distinct petals and number of stamens that is always a multiple of 5. Many of the plants we’ve looked at previously are members of Rosaceae, including Wild Rose, Blackbrush, Bitterbrush, Cliffrose, Mountain Mahogany and several shrubs/flowers I haven’t profiled but have been passing and seeing the past several weeks, including Serviceberry and Chokecherry, as well as apple, cherry and peach trees.

Tangent: Numbers of petals or stamens can often be an indicator of the family or order to which the plant belongs. For example, and important numeric indicator I skipped over during Monocot Week (man, was that an awesome week or what?) was the number 3. Monocot flowers typically have petals, sepals and stamens in multiples of 3- Lilies and Iris are 2 great examples. This “magic 3” indicator of monocots quickly identifies Columbine as a dicot; it has pointy, suspiciously monocot-ish looking petals, but it always has 5 of them- not a magic monocot number (i.e. multiple of 3.)

Nested Tangent: Columbine, by the way, is not part of Rosaceae, but rather the Buttercup family, Ranunculaceae, to which Western Clematis and Low Larkspur also belong.

Next Up: Enough with the flowers already- let’s see some trees!

Columbine Explosion!

Yes, another wildflower post. I know it seems like I’m posting an awful lot about wildflowers, which is odd, given that I’m really much more of a “tree guy” than a “flower guy”. But the flower landscape is changing so rapidly and dramatically around the 8,000 ft level in the Wasatch that it’s hard to notice almost anything else right now.

I’d planned to post about Columbines today, and intended to highlight them on a trail called “X trail” in Pinebrook. “X Trail” isn’t an “official” name; as my friends and I explored the Pinebrook trail network a few years back, we gave names to the trails we found so we that we’d be able to describe and discuss routes with each other.

I’d been noodling over how best to describe access to X trail, and procrastinating on the post for a few days, as the various twists and turns to get there would be tough to put in writing, but last night the problem was solved for me: the explosion has spread to the Mid-Mountain trail, which is easy to access either from the South End (Deer Valley), or up where we were on the Northern End, by The Canyons.

Most Tuesday nights in the summer I mtn bike with a couple of friends; we’ve been doing so for more than 10 years. Last night we did a ride we call “Up & Over”, that climbs up out of Mill Creek Canyon, crosses the crest into the Park City drainage, and descends to connect with Mid-Mountain trail, which we follow North into the Pinebrook network before returning. Right now the section of Mid-Mountain trail between The Canyons and Pinebrook is exploding with Columbines.

Aquilegia coerulea, the Colorado Blue Columbine is a classic “early summer” flower, appearing in early July, and practically disappearing from the Wasatch by August 1. It’s a super-cool flower for several reasons. First and foremost, it’s probably the most graceful/elegant/sexy wildflower in the Wasatch. Its dramatic profile makes it a cinch to identify, even from a distance. Second, it’s the best-smelling wildflower in the Wasatch. I’ve been going on and on about how beautiful the various flowers of the Wasatch are, but I haven’t talked much about smell, because most wildflowers have no real smell (at least not that we can detect) and when they do, it’s often not a very nice smell. Crushed Scarlet Gilia for example has a vaguely skunk-like odor. But Columbine has a scent sweeter than any perfume I’ve ever smelled. Often when alone on a trail I’ll skid my bike to a halt to sniff a Columbine.

An interesting thing I’ve noticed about Columbines is that they’re only good for 2 or 3 “deep sniffs” before the scent tapers off dramatically. It’s not an issue of sensitivity; if I switch immediately to another Columbine flower, the initial sniff is just as strong. But sniffing the same flower a few times somehow “sucks up” or diminishes the scent significantly. I don’t know whether the scent “comes back” after an hour/day/week or so; guess this is another future “experiment” I’ll put on my list.

The taxonomy of Columbines is complicated. The genus Aquilegia includes more than 60 species, and there are 5 distinct “varieties” of Aquilegia coerulea, the Colorado Blue Columbine, 4 of which occur in Utah. The Columbine along Mid-Mountain last night was overwhelmingly white, which makes me think it’s the variety ochroleuca, “White Colorado Columbine”. But the problem with Columbines is that they’re terribly promiscuous, and the various species and varieties hybridize like crazy.

Tangent: Aquilegia canadensis, the Western Red Columbine, also supposedly occurs in Utah, in the extreme North of the state. I’ve never seen it here, but saw several in California on our recent Mendocino trip (pic left).

Speaking of promiscuity, this leads us to another fascinating behavior in plants that we’ve mentioned previously only in passing, when we looked at Musk Thistle and Sagebrush: Self-Pollination, or Selfing.

In a plant with a perfect flowers (male and female parts in the same flower), selfing is always a risk, and many plants take active measures to prevent it, such as dispersing pollen from the anthers before the stigma can accept it. But other plants make use of selfing extensively, usng an opportunistic Dandelion-like either/or strategy to hedge reproductive bets. But selfing is very different than other forms of self-reproduction we’ve looked at, such as apomixis or cloning (via root or stem). Where apomixis and cloning can be described as asexual, selfing is really self-sexual, in that the full sex process works and is completed, but the same plant provides both pollen and ovule.

Tangent: One of the things that’s really hit me in writing this blog is the wealth of different ways plants have found to propagate without a partner. To be sure, some asexual reproduction occurs in many animals as well, but it’s nowhere near as common, nor found in so many different reproductive methodologies. And when I think about why this may be, my likeliest guess is the most obvious: Plants don’t move. And when you’re stuck in one place, it’s probably harder to find a partner.

The downside of selfing is inbreeding depression. Inbreeding depression typically occurs in limited populations with a small gene pool and has been studied in all sorts of cases including plants, various animals, and specifically humans, including hemophiliac European royalty and two-toed Zimbabwean tribesmen. As a rule, out-crossing almost always works out better for sexual creatures than selfing, and in the case of Colorado Columbine Blue Columbine, the effects of selfing were studied in depth about 15 years ago. The net of the research on selfing in Columbines is that overall, when measured in terms of seed production, viability, germination and seedling survival, is that out-crossing is about twice as effective as selfing in the long-term. Some things are better done with a friend.

Tangent: Yesterday at work I was stuck on a series of phone calls for about a couple of hours non-stop. During this time a group of colleagues walked over to a nearby ice cream store for a snack, something we only do once every month or so. Later in the day, I was disappointed to learn I’d missed the excursion. Like selfing (or drinking), eating ice cream alone is OK, but it’s a lot more fun with friends.

Flower Updates, Nectar-Robbing Bees, and a Tangent of Great Irony and Sadness

Today I have a couple of updates, a new/old flower, a new example of a type of pollinator relationship we’ve seen earlier this year, and a Tangent of Irony and Sadness.

They Are Everywhere

First, the tantalizingly paracarnivorous Sticky Geranium, Geranium viscosissum (pic right). When I first mentioned this guy, it was when I’d first observed its cousin, Richardson Geranium, growing on the aspen-forest floor North of Jeremy Ranch. I talked about how there’s evidence that it might be para- or protocarnivorous, and mused about how much I’d like to see one. Then I mentioned it again when I returned from California and found it blooming in our back yard garden. Well now I almost feel a bit silly. Thursday I biked the Northern end of the Mid-Mountain trail in Park City and the trail was positively lined with Sticky Geraniums. Sunday I rode up the Mill Creek Drainage (Great Western Trail) to the crest of the Wasatch, and the wide open basin in the upper drainage was filled with P. viscosissum as well. You can’t swing a dead cat in the Wasatch right now without hitting a clump of Sticky Geraniums.

Way Bigger

The Mid-Mountain trail, and the trails through The Canyons resort connecting to it (Specifically Rob’s Trail) are also loaded with Wild Rose, Rosa woodsii (pic right), with flowerheads much bigger and showier than those I noticed last week in Dry Creek.

At Times I Am So Lazy And Disorganized That It Takes Me A Year To Get Around To ID-ing A Flower I’ve Seen 8 Zillion Times

There’s plenty of new stuff blooming at the ~8,000 feet level as well. I’ll cover Blue Columbine in a follow-up post, but I feel I should mention this guy, Scarlet Gilia, Ipomopsis aggregate, If this fellow looks familiar, it’s because it was the flower featured in my very first post. At the time I was just digging through old photos to find an inspiring-looking flower; I didn’t even know what it was. Now it’s blooming all over the place.

Scarlet Gilia is a good place to talk about Nectar-Robbing Bees. Scarlet Gilia has a deep, narrow, tubular flower, and so its most effective pollinator is something that can reach down into the bottom with its bill, tongue or proboscis, such as a Hummingbird or Hummingbird Hawk Moth, and in doing do get its bill/proboscis coated with pollen, which it then takes to the next flower. The same is true for other deep, tubular flowers, such as Low Larkspur and Blue Columbine.

Now the common native Bumblebee in these parts, Bombus occidentalis, is also an important pollinator of many other flowers. But with many of these deep, tubular flowers, such as Scarlet Gilia, its proboscis simply isn’t long enough to reach the nectar at the bottom of the flower. But Bombus still wants the nectar. So she chews a hole in the bottom of the flower, and sucks out the nectar, while never even brushing the stamens, and flying on, pollen-free, to the next flower. In this case the bee gets what it wants (nectar), but the Scarlet Gilia receives no pollination benefit.

Flashback

Now if this sometimes-mutualistic-sometimes-predatory relationship story sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard it before way back when, albeit in a different context, when we looked at Corvids and Pines, or more specifically the mutualistic relationship Stellers Jays have with Pinon Pines vs. their predatory/parasitic relationship with Whitebark Pines.

For me, this is another cool aspect of the Beauty of the World. As we look at more living things and the relationships between them, we start to see common patterns and the various plants and bugs and critters start to fit together in the living world like pieces of a great puzzle.

Speaking of Hummingbirds, my daughter found this dead Black-Chinned male on a neighbor’s porch.

Tangent of Great Irony and Sadness

Tangent: So it occurs to me that the last time I blogged about hummingbirds, the post featured live hummingbirds and a dead cat. My neighbor swears that her cat nabs birds in mid-flight, and is willing to bet that this here hummingbird my daughter found on her porch was killed by her (the neighbor’s not my daughter’s- we’re non-pet people… but that’s a really long, involved and self-absorbed tangent…) cat. And I can’t escape the irony of this next hummingbird-related post featuring a live cat and a dead hummingbird…

The photos give a feel for the delicate beauty of its form, feathers and colors (though I was unable to capture the shifting, elusive violet tone of the black chin-feathers) as well as the tip of the tint delicate tongue protruding from the tip of the bill. Like I said before, it's a far more elegant and sophisticated package than any set of road-pedals I ever bought.

Cercocarpus Part 2: The Other Mountain Mahogany

Last Fall I went through a period of searching for, and finding, a number of rare hybrid oaks. These oaks will be something I cover in a future post, but the important thing about these hybrid oaks as relates to this post is that the leaves of these oaks are persistent much later in the season than “regular” Gambel Oak, meaning that oftentimes the hybrid oaks will bear green leaves when the surrounding Gambel thickets are brown and bare.

Because of this, late October and November are the best times to search for these oaks, and doing so typically involves scanning a section of foothills- from foot, bike or car- and seeking out clumps of green on an otherwise brown slope. In early November 2007, I scrambled down from a trail on the North slope of the Traverse Mountains (the foothills South of Draper, leading out to Point of The Mountain) to check out what looked like a suspect tree, only to find it wasn’t an Oak, or anything I’d ever noticed before. I took leaves and pics, and when I returned home, identified it as Alderleaf Mountain Mahogany, Cercocarpus Montanus.

Alderleaf Mountain Mahogany (AMM) occurs throughout much of the same range as Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany (CMM) and shares many similarities with it. It’s also a small, shrubby, slow-growing tree with dense wood, growing on dry, gravelly soils, with apetalous wind-pollinated flowers that produce achenes with long feathery plumes following pollination. But the leaf form and strategy is completely different. AMM leaves are oval, less than 2” long, sawtooth-edged and deciduous, and covered with fine hairs, employing the “hairy-leaf” strategy of Sagebrush as opposed to the “waxy –cuticle” strategy of Blackbrush (and CMM) to mitigate water loss in an arid climate. Though they hold their leaves much longer than neighboring Gambel Oak and Bigtooth Maple, they lose most/all of their leaves in the late Fall.

Tangent #1: At least up here they do. Down in Arizona and California they may keep more than half their leaves.

Tangent #2: Another common name for AMM is “True Mountain Mahogany.” I refuse to use this name. When I read it I had a flashback to Greek Orthodox Sunday School (man, talk about the very definition of “time-sink”…) circa 1975, when my teacher explained that, due to some weird theoretical disagreement of the nature of Christ, the Armenian Orthodox were “Nestorian Orthodox” (I probably have the term wrong) and the Greek Orthodox (us) were “True Orthodox.” Even then, I was pretty certain that our Armenian counterparts didn’t see it that way, and I’ve detested the modifier “true” for any variety, type or species of anything ever since.

Discovering AMM was a double-surprise for me; it had been years since I’d encountered a genuinely “new” tree in the Wasatch, and, while CMM occurs (albeit in bits and splotches) all over the Wasatch, I’ve yet to see AMM anywhere but the Traverse Mountains, an area I’d never really bothered to explore until my hybrid oak search.

In my last post I talked about how interesting and unique CMM is, an evergreen angiosperm tree in Northern Utah. AMM adds another dimension to the “remarkability” of Mountain Mahogany. Cercocarpus is a genus which has both deciduous and evergreen species. And it’s not a case of a Wyethia-like mis-categorization from an earlier, pre-DNA analysis age; CMM and AMM regularly hybridize when they occur together- they’re clearly in the same genus.

Tangent: Interestingly though, they can only hybridize when CMM provides the pollen and AMM the ovule. Why this is, and whether it’s an issue of timing (CMM flowers ~2 weeks earlier than AMM) or anatomy or genetics, I’ve been unable to discover.

This evergreen-vs.-deciduous variation within a genus is extremely unusual. Willows, Aspen, Cottonwoods, Palms, Maples (with 2 very rare, remote, and newly-discovered exceptions), Sycamores, Beeches, Elms- you name it- they’re all one or the other. The only other angiosperm tree genus with a similar variance in leafing strategy- at least that I’m aware of here in North America- is Quercus (Oak). And this makes me think about the relationship between Mountain Mahogany and Oak.

I mentioned in the last post that CMM only occurs sparsely and at the “margins” of the foothills, pushed there by competition from Oak (and Maple). But I have seen larger expanses- almost forests- of pure CMM in a couple of places outside the Wasatch, including the lower West slope of the Ruby Mountains in Nevada and the Lower North slope of the Raft River range, near the Utah-Idaho border. And it occurs to me now that both of these locations are outside of the range of Gambel Oak (or any other native Oak) as we saw back in May when we looked at the interesting distribution of that tree.

And this leads me to the whole “what-if” of Mountain Mahogany: if Oak hadn’t evolved, or hadn’t made it to the New World, or if Mountain Mahogany had evolved first, would Mountain Mahogany have evolved and adapted and speciated into the roles filled today by oaks? Would the Wasatch foothills be carpeted in CMM? Would “live” Mountain Mahogany ring California’s Central Valley? Would the greens of English villages be shaded by gnarled, giant, centuries-old variants of Mountain Mahogany?

Tangent: Also similar to oak, there’s an ongoing, century-long debate regarding the relationships, taxonomy and past and current hybridizations of species within Cercocarpus. (And- again like oak- the debate has been complicated/enriched by the discovery in recent decades of new Cercocarpus species down in Mexico.) A (fairly technical) synopsis of this debate can be found in the introduction to the dissertation of Brian Vanden Hauvel of the University of Texas, Austin. (Thanks Brian!)

This is all conjecture of course. But it makes me think about what trees say about how and why the world is the way it is, and how it might have turned out differently. As we’ve seen with Creosote, Joshua Trees, and Ponderosa Pine, the floral landscape of the Intermountain West (and the world) changes continually over time. I like to think Mountain Mahogany’s day is yet to come.

Cercocarpus Part 1: Mountain Mahogany Stands Alone

It’s hot, hot, hot. No rain in the forecast. The valley air has a whitish, unhealthy-looking haze, and all I want to do is zip up one of the canyons and hike or bike in the shade of aspen and fir. But before I do, there’s one more foothill tree, which I’ve been mentioning here and there ever since my very first post. And though it may seem scrubby and unassuming, it’s worth checking out and thinking about, not just for what it is, but what it hints at how the world might have turned out.

A Whole Bunch Of Info Before I Get To The Point

I was in Utah a full year before I noticed Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany, Cercocarpus ledifolius. I was climbing up the ultra-steep, ultra-exposed Grove Creek trail down in Pleasant Grove during a Winter thaw, and I thought how odd it was that these trees lining the trail should have green leaves in February. Since then I’ve run into Curlleaf Mountain Mahogany (CMM) all over the Wasatch- in Upper Mill Creek Canyon, on the high slopes of Wire Peak, capping Alex Peak up in Pinebrook. In the foothills, it’s the only green thing for most of the winter (with the sparse exception of Juniper.) When it occurs alongside Juniper, it can be easily distinguished even from a great distance by its lighter, almost olive tone.

Tangent: The trees that remind me most of CMM are olive trees. Several years ago my wife and I drove across Spain through endless hills of olive trees, and it was like driving through an endless, rolling CMM woodland.

Quick Clarification: “Mountain Mahogany” is not at all closely related to “Mahogany”. True Mahogany trees are of the genus Swietenia, native to Central America and the West Indies, and today commonly grown on plantations in places like India. The term “Mountain Mahogany” was coined by settlers probably in light of the density of the wood, the only conceivable similarity to Swietenia. This type of mis-naming also occurred with Utah Juniper, which is today still commonly known at “Cedar” by many native Utahns, due to its vaguely cedar-like scaled needles, and perhaps the aromatic smell of its burning wood.

I think of CMM as the “third” foothill tree. Like Gambel Oak and Bigtooth Maple it’s wind-pollinated, constitutes important browse for deer and various other foothill critters, and largely disappears around 7,500-8,000 feet. But if Oak and Maple are the “A” and “B” players, then CMM is the distant “C” in the Wasatch. It grows almost exclusively in treacherous footholds on rocky ridges and exposed gravelly slopes, seemingly pushed to the margins by its more successful companions. They often appear in ones or twos, but sometimes in larger stands, such as the one capping Alex Peak, or these south-facing slopes at around 7,500 feet between Pinebrook and Summit Park.

At the end of May, CMM flowers appear. The flowers are perfect, petal-less, and like most wind-pollinated flowers, pretty unassuming. After pollination, the plant produces achenes with long, plume-like tails.

Tangent: “Achene” is one of those botanical terms I skipped over earlier in the season, but have found it’s such a common thing it’s worth defining. An achene in a dried fruit that encloses and nourishes a single seed. Achenes are typically small, and often wind-borne away from the mother-plant with the help of a parachute of plume formed by the dried and extended calyx of the original flower, such as we’ve seen in Dandelions, Musk Thistle and Heartleaf Arnica.

The achene-plumes of CMM are highly distinctive, appear in late June, and give the whole tree a whitish, almost hazy, ephemeral appearance until you get right close up.

Tangent: This “hazy” effect often gives me the impression that the trees are “out-of-focus”, especially when I’m passing them quickly on a mountain bike. This time of year, the sense that some tree/shrub is out-of-focus in the periphery of my vision is usually the first alert that I’m passing CMM.

CMM grows slowly; trees take ~100 years to grow to full height (which is only 20- 30 feet max) and can live for over a thousand years. The wood is brittle and extremely dense: CMM wood sinks in water.

Tangent: I don’t know if it sinks in salt water. One of my half-baked “experiment” ideas is to get a chunk of CMM wood and take it to the Great Salt Lake to find out. This sounds easy enough, but most of the time that I come across a dismembered CMM limb I’m far enough from a trailhead that I’m not up for carrying the ridiculously heavy piece of wood back to the car…

The Point

OK, so what? So CMM is a slow-growing, scrubby, arid-climate tree without dazzling flowers or foliage. Why blog about it? Here’s why: it’s an evergreen angiosperm, in the Intermountain West, occurring here at latitude 40 degrees North, and in fact way up into Montana, around 50 degrees North. Think about that for a minute. The closest other evergreen angiosperm “tree” is Shrub Live Oak, Quercus Turbinella, at least 250 miles South of Salt Lake, and only under the most extreme circumstances and generous definition could it ever be called a “tree”. The next closest contender would be the Joshua Tree, also pushing it for a “real” tree, and a monocot to boot. The closest “real” dicot evergreen angiosperms would be live oaks, which you don’t get till the far side of the Sierras going West, or the South side of the Mogollon Rim (well into Arizona) going South.

In this light, CMM is remarkable. Its small tough, waxy leaves hang on throughout the winter (It uses the Blackbrush strategy of a thick waxy coating vs. the Sagebrush hairy leaf strategy) when every other “real” angiosperm tree within 500 miles is standing bare. Evergreen angiosperms belong in the tropics, in the jungle, not in the middle of the Great Basin. But here CMM is, living and thriving through our wind-swept, icy winters with a completely different way of tackling the winter/leafing problem than any other tree around. It’s a bizarre, unique, wonderful anomaly, totally unlike any other tree around.

Tangent: I get a weird sense of comfort and optimism from CMM. I love the idea that success in life isn’t necessarily bound to a single path or a unique formula. That there are different ways to survive and thrive and propagate are a large part of what fascinates me about the plant world, and I’d like to think that at some level, the same is true in the human world.

The CMM story in itself is worth appreciating, but it wasn’t until last Fall, when I stumbled across another species of Cercocarpus, that I fully appreciated the significance and possibility of Mountain Mahogany.

Next up: The other Mountain Mahogany