All About Our Christmas Tree. And Gondwanaland.

So if you do a blog about trees, and you buy a real Christmas tree, I think it’s pretty much a law that you have to blog about your tree.

The origin and significance of Christmas trees is somewhat of a mystery to me. I have to admit that while I was in Sunday School, I wasn’t always paying 100% attention, but I really don’t remember the part where Jesus told the Pharisees to start decorating trees. I’ve even searched the online bible for the word “conifer”, with no success.

Tangent: I was raised in the Greek Orthodox church, which is just weird and irrational enough to forever turn you off to organized religion, without being quite creepy or bizarre enough to permanently scar you.

My siblings and I, who are 2^nd-generation, ¼, Greek-Americans (our grandfather emigrated from Cyprus in the 1920’s) are probably listed in some government file in Athens as the Lamest Greek-Americans Ever. None of us ever really knew what the hell was going on during the rather cryptic and incense-filled church liturgies, in part because none of us understood Greek. (Actual pic of our old church in Lexington, MA, below left. I swear you can find a pic of anything on the web nowadays…)This wasn’t for lack of trying on the part of my parents; for 6 years, 1 day a week after school, we attended Greek lessons. So that’s 312, 90-minute lessons, or 468 hours of Greek language study. It never stuck. About 5 or 6 years ago, my sister- let’s call her, ”Elizabeth”- and I were having dinner in a Chicago restaurant, and decided to list all the Greek words we still remembered. We came up with 5 words: the words for “Money”, “Tip”, “Prostitute”, “Shut up”, and another word for “Shut up.” (Apparently telling people to “Shut up” holds a place in the Greek language analogous to “snow” in the Inuit language; an activity of such frequency and vital importance that there are like 20 different words for it…) If I ever make it to Greece I’ll try to work all five into a sentence.

However it got started, we’re a Tree Family, and by a Tree Family, I mean a Real Tree, not a Fake Tree. I am a complete Real Tree snob. To me, getting the “Christmas Tree Feel” from a fake tree is like achieving happiness through illegal drugs. I am like the Nancy Reagan of aluminum trees: Just Say No. I recognize that buying a Real Tree involves a whole lot of plantation-style growing and cutting- oops I mean “harvesting”- of trees, but it’s gotta be a lot lesser impact on the environment than making millions of aluminum trees that archeologists will be digging up 100,000 years from now.

Of course, the best, most environmentally-friendly solution is to have a real live tree, that you keep alive, like in a big pot, and in fact I did this for a few years way back in Life 1.0. In my house in Colorado there was a “Norfolk Pine”, about 5’ tall, which served as a Christmas tree in December, and a house plant the rest of the year.

A Norfolk Pine actually isn’t a pine. I guess technically it’s a PLT, but it’s way more interesting because it’s a Southern Hemisphere-PLT. The Norfolk Pine, Araucaria heterophylla, is one of 19 Araucaria species. Araucarias are a genus of conifers endemic to the Southern hemisphere that are wonderfully analogous to the Pines (genus = Pinus) in the Northern hemisphere. With one exception in Indonesia, Pines don’t make it into the Southern hemisphere, and no Araucaria grows natively in the Northern hemisphere. And just as Pinus is part of a larger “Pine Family”, Pinaceae, of related genera (Spruce, Fir, Hemlock, Douglas Fir, Larch), Araucaria is part of a larger “Araucaria Family”, Auracariaceae, that includes 2 other related genera (Agathis, Wollemia.)

All About Gondwanaland

The Norfolk Pine is endemic (meaning native to nowhere else in the world) to Norfolk Island, a dinky little (13 sq miles) island which sits in the middle of the triangle formed by Australia, New Zealand, and New Caledonia. Remarkably, A. heterophylla now graces homes, gardens and lobbies in millions of locations across 6 continents; humanity has facilitated a veritable diaspora of this charming tree.

It’s not certain, but the Araucaria family may be a botanical legacy of Gondwanaland, the ancient Southern-hemisphere super-continent (as Pinaceae may well be a botanical legacy of Laurasia, as we talked about when we looked at Red Pine and Scots Pine.) Gondwanaland, which existed in various configurations between 550 million and 120 million years ago, included what is now Antarctica, Australia, South America, Africa, India and Madagascar. Gondwanaland appears to have other biological legacies, including a mammalian legacy- marsupials- and an avian legacy- the ratites, a family of large flightless birds whose descendants include the ostrich, emu, rhea and now extinct Elephant Birds of Madagascar (genus = Aepyornis) and Moas of New Zealand (genus = Dinornis.)

The real jewel of this botanical legacy is New Caledonia. Unlike Fiji, Hawaii, or Tahiti, New Caledonia isn’t some volcanic-Johnny-come-lately, pop-out-of-the-ocean, let’s-have-a-luau, Pacific island. It’s a several-hundred-million year old true remnant/ fragment of Gondwanaland, and as such supports a spectacular native flora which includes 13 of the 19 Araucaria species, all endemics.

Man, that was a great little tree. I wonder whatever happened to it? My ex probably chucked it…

Anyway, back to our Christmas tree. So Saturday Twin A and I headed on over to the tree lot.

The most common trees you see on Christmas tree lots are Firs, including White Firs, Silver Firs, Fraser Firs, Noble Firs and of course Grand Fir. The cheapest trees on the lot are usually Douglas Firs, which grow fast, but whose foliage never appears quite as lush, and whose scent never seems as rich, as the true Firs. I hear people also use real pines for Christmas trees, namely Scots Pine or Jack Pine, but I don’t recall having seen them on a lot around here.

We poked around for a bit, and then Twin A picked out the tree he like best. He made an excellent selection- a Grand Fir, Abies grandis- which I have now become convinced is the Best-Smelling Tree Ever.

There are 48 species of Fir in the world; we’ve looked at 2 that are native to Utah- White Fir and Subalpine Fir- this year, and we visited Red Fir during our Lake Tahoe trip. Grand Fir is the giant of the genus, reaching heights of over 200 feet, and diameters over 6 feet. It’s a tree of the Northwest, and for the most part hugs the coastline between a little South of Mendocino and mid-way up Vancouver Island. In the Northern half of its coastally-oriented range it stretches eastward and inland to the Cascades, where it mixes and frequently hybridizes with White Fir. It’s also present much further inland, in the Idaho panhandle and Western Montana, but the variety there, A. grandis idahohensis, is a shorter, though more cold-tolerant, variety of the species.

Our Grand Fir is about 6 1/2 feet tall and as old as the Bird Whisperer. Since Saturday it’s been sucking up water like crazy and that’s what we want. So long its xylem-tubes remain water-filled and the water-columns within taut, it’ll hopefully keep transpiring actively through the holiday, and continue to fill the living room with its fragrance. But if air bubbles, or embolisms, start appearing the xylem-tubes, the water-tension will fail, transpiration will break down, and the tree will begin to decay. Right now it’s a lush little piece of the Northwest, brightening up our brown and gray Wasatch Winter. Our living room smells like a temperate coastal rain forest, and the last couple of mornings I’ve come downstairs and sat for a few moments in the pre-dawn gloom, drinking in its almost hypnotic scent.

Next Up: The Official Watching The World Wake Up Suggested Holiday Gift List

St. George Botany in 3 Mountain Bike Rides – JEM/Gould Loop

Part 3 – The Bench

Highlighted Ride: JEM/Gould Rim/Hurricane Rim Loop

Alternative Rides: Any smaller section of the loop

Our 3rd and final St. George-area Botany Ride is on the Bench level, which we zipped past on our way from St. George up to Guacamole. Again, I’ve stolen the map from utahmountainbiking.com, but down below I’ve blown it up into 2 separate maps and added notes and features. See utahmountainbiking.com for route description and access.

Here are 6 great reasons to do this ride. Yes, SIX- count ‘em, baby!

Obligatory Enumeration Section of Post Before I Get To The Botany Part

First, if you like fast singletrack, you will love this ride. It features a long- seemingly endless- shallow-grade descent on which you can repeatedly hit 25-30 mph. Additionally, on the Hurricane Rim section, the ride features several shorter, but great, fast descents.

Second, it has awesome views, both up- Little Creek, Gooseberry, Zion, Pine Valley, the Virgin and Beaver Dam Mountains- and down- into 2 deep, dramatic gorges (Virgin and Gould.)

Third, it is a great night-ride, and as we all know, night-riding is absolutely the most thrilling thing you can do without your spouse/SO. The generally smooth singletracks are a nice break from the pretty technical riding up on the mesas, and most riders (myself included) are more comfortable night-riding these trails than Gooseberry Mesa. The only thing cooler than ripping down a smooth, winding singletrack at 25mph is doing it in the dark.

Fourth, in late April/early May it is one of the best wildflower rides anywhere, and was in fact the subject of this post back during Monocot Week (Man, was that a great week or what?)

Fifth, it’s got optional exposure. If you love riding fast along terrifying cliff edges (why yes, as a matter of fact I do, which is probably why my life was once saved by a bit o’ shrubbery) then you can add the thrill of your life by starting/ending this ride at the lower JEM trailhead, and riding it as a cherry-stem. The stem will give you a nice little spark of excitement to start the ride, as you pedal the edge of the Virgin River Gorge, and when you return you’ll be tilted just downhill enough to really get a charge as you zip along the Brink Of Death back to the trailhead. And if you return this way on a night ride, you just might pee your pants.

Sixth, and to the point of this post, it’s got some awesome botany going on.

The Botany Part

But the interesting thing about the botany on the JEM/Gould Loop isn’t any fantastic or rare new plant. In fact, every plant on this ride- and we’re talking shrubs, not trees, here- we’ve already seen before, either down on the Floor, or up on the Mesa. But what makes this ride really, really botanically cool is that it is the only ride I know of on which the rider transitions- more than once- between the Mojave and Great Basin deserts. All that stuff I went on about, on “hot” vs. “cold” deserts, and the boundary, and the transition zone, yada yada, it happens right here, on this ride. And the easy way to track this transition is by our old friend, Creosote. When we’re riding through Creosote, we’re in the Mojave; when the Creosote’s absent, we’re generally out of it.

Explanation of this section: Follow along on the 2 maps. The bold blue numbers correspond to the same numbered locations on the maps. Direction is indicated by the big blue arrows.

If we start at the lower/Northern JEM trailhead (1) take the stem out to the loop, then start counterclockwise on the Hurricane Rim trail (2) we’re just barely out of the Mojave. But soon, as we roll up and down hills and in and out of minor draws we’ll hit isolated stands of Creosote, where local aspect and elevation conditions support outlier “Mojave pockets”. (3)

After the high point along Hurricane Rim (“Goose”-something, I forget) (4) we descend into China Wash (5), a deep canyon filled with Creosote. If conditions are right, we’ll smell it as we ride through, like I did a couple weekends back on the night-ride with Clean-Colin. As we climb back up out of the wash we leave it behind momentarily (6), but as we roll down the final descent to the Hurricane Rim trailhead on Highway 59 (7), it’s everywhere around us, and we’re back smack in the Mojave.

Now switch to Map 2. (This is fun! I should do all my maps like this!)

As we climb Gould Rim and hug the edge of spectacular Gould Wash Gorge (8), we’re still well in the Mojave, with Creosote all around. But after the big climb before the dirt road section (9), it disappears, and a couple of miles later when we pick up the singletrack again (10), we’re back in the Cold, or Great Basin Desert.

Tangent: To be clear, when I say we’re in the “Great Basin Desert”, I’m using the term to describe the general flora across the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. We’re not actually in the hydrographic Great Basin, and we haven’t been since shortly after we passed Cedar City on the drive down. I’ll use the term “Cold Desert” from here on to avoid confusion.

From here on up to the top of Gould Rim and across Hwy 59 (11), we’re in the Cold Desert, and the sagebrush is back in force along the upper reaches of JEM. As we scream down JEM trail over the cliffs (12), through the wash (13), and across the dirt road that bisects this loop (14), down, down, down, we’re still in the Cold Desert. (Now switch back to Map 1.) But about ¾ of the way down JEM, a few hundred yards ahead alongside the trail, a lone large bush appears, towering above the surrounding low shrubs (15). As we get close we see it’s a Creosote- the loneliest, highest (and probably coldest) Creosote I’ve ever seen. I always keep an eye out for this guy as I descend; I even have a name for him: The Sentinel. The Sentinel stands at the very edge of his world, always looking out and up and the world he and his brothers can never manage to reach.

It’s cool enough to do such a great ride while flirting with the Hot/Cold desert boundary. But there’s a bigger, more awesome story going on if we step back and look at the boundary in scale for a moment.

In yesterday’s post I included a photo of me riding down a steep slickrock ramp on Guacamole. If you clicked on that photo, you probably noticed how grainy and crappy a photo it was. That’s because it was a still from a video that Organic-Chemistry-Rick (guy who never reads my blog) took. And while the photo gives you a bit of a feel for the ride, it doesn’t give you anywhere near as good a feel as you’d get if you saw the still in the context of the whole video. In the photo alone you can’t see where I came from, or where I’m heading, or how fast I’m going, or even whether I managed to stay upright over the next 10 feet (I did), but in the video all of those things are clear.

Similarly, when we ride JEM/Gould Loop, we’re really only seeing a “still” of the Hot/Cold desert boundary. Creosote has only reached its present range in the last several thousand years. It showed up in North America 18,000 years ago, then rapidly root-cloned and seeded its way Northward with the end of the last ice age. It likely swept even further North and higher up than its present range during the Altithermal (when Turbinella flourished in the Wasatch) and then rolled back, like a receding wave, to its current limit.

The few thousand years that it’s been pretty much where it is today is simply a pause between waves when viewed in proper scale, and as I look at the Sentinel, what I wonder is this: is he a last holdout of a retreating army being driven back to the Floor? Or is he the vanguard of a coming storm- a storm perhaps assisted by our own climate-warming activities- a mighty, sweeping, dark-olive wave of unstoppable power and fragrant beauty, both wonderful and terrible, poised to crest up and over the benches, onto the mesas, even up along I-15 to Cedar City and into the Great Basin Northwards.

That’s the video that’s playing right now. We just don’t know what happens next.

St. George Botany in 3 Mountain Bike Rides - Guacamole

Part 2 - The Mesa

Highlighted Ride: Guacamole

Alternative Rides: Gooseberry Mesa, Little Creek

So I have this theory about blogs, and it’s basically that although people state all kinds of reasons and themes for posting blogs, deep down, the real, true, core reason anybody does a blog is to have an excuse to post flattering photos of themselves on the web. Like most of my “theories”, this one’s pretty half-baked, but in any event, here’s a cool photo of me last Saturday up on Guacamole trail, outside of the (bizarre) little hamlet of Virgin, UT. Remember this photo; I’ll come back to it in tomorrow’s post.

Guacamole is a great ride, but it’s not my favorite Mesa Level ride- that would be Little Creek. Little Creek is a geological, botanical and archeological wonderland, threaded by a lacework of singletrack and open slickrock. But it’s also a 1^st-class route-finding challenge. If you go to ride it, go with someone who’s ridden it before, or at the very least start early in the day, and leave plenty of time for getting lost. Seriously, people have spent the night out there unexpectedly. Also, my friend Tim (not Raleigh-Dog-Tim, another “Tim”) got injured bad and had to be air-lifted out last year. Do not screw around with Little Creek; plan and prepare.

Gooseberry Mesa is also phenomenal, with arguably even more interesting riding, but, well, everybody knows Gooseberry nowadays.

Guacamole is sort of like a shorter, easier, more accessible, yet less-visited Gooseberry. Though navigation is tougher than on Gooseberry, it’s way, way easier than labyrinthine Little Creek, and it features a similar flora to those sister rides to the South. Again, I’ve stolen the trail map from utahmountainbiking.com, (and you should visit that site for directions and access) but in this case I’ve added to it. The trail in blue is a new side trail which is absent from the utahmountainbiking.com map. It’s fun, spends more time in the un-burnt parts of the mesa, and I recommend it over the “main” trail leading out to the loop.

Up on the Mesa level, above 5,000 feet, we’re in the trees, though they’re shorter, widely spaced trees of exactly 2 species: Utah Juniper, Juniperus osteosperma, and Piñon Pine (which we’ll get all Latin on in a moment.) These trees almost always occur together in the Intermountain West, in areas called- get ready for it- Pinon-Juniper Woodland.

Tangent: The terms “woodland” and “forest” really do have different meanings. A “woodland” features significant open spaces between the trees in question, while a “forest” basically packs them in more tightly. As a rule, Piñon, Juniper and Mountain Mahogany all occur in, and comprise “woodlands”, while PLTs, Aspens, and non-Pinon Pines typically comprise “forests.” Oaks and Maples can form either, depending on the species and location. So while Blue Oaks in California grow in “woodlands”, Northern Red Oaks in Maine grow in “forests.” Then to really confuse things, here in Utah Gambel Oak often grows in brushy, impenetrable thickets called “chaparral.” Got it?

P-J woodland covers huge areas of the west. It’s sort of a never-never land between forest or desert. A lot of outdoorheads are ambivalent toward it; they see it as something to be passed through or by on the way to a desert backpacking or mountain ski trip. I love it. I love the mix of shade and sun, the smell, and the constant sense of one secret meadow leading to another, over and over again.

At first glance, the P-J Woodland on Guacamole looks a lot like the P-J woodland around Moab or Cortez or Gallup or Torrey. But when you poke around a bit, it’s way different. The understory shrubs are a different collection than typical Southern Utah, with plenty of Greenleaf Manzanita, Arctostaphylos patula,(pic right) and Utah Serviceberry, Amelanchier utahensis, in addition to the now ever-present Sagebrush that was absent down on the Floor. Up on the mesas Sagebrush (pic left) is the alpha-shrub, assuming the role taken by Creosote down on the floor. (Although Sagebrush is less common on Guacamole than it is on Gooseberry and Little Creek, I think in part because it’s been slow to re-colonize the burnt areas following the fire on this mesa a few years back.) I always get a kick out of comparing Sagebrush and Creosote- so similar in so many ways, yet almost every detail is different: smell, leaf color, anti-dessication strategy (hairy leaf vs. waxy cuticle.) It’s like one is the alternate-universe version of the other.

Another common shrub is Cliffrose (pic below right), Purshia stansburiana,which grows often grows up into mini not-quite trees.

Fall-On-My-Sword-Tangent-About-Cliffrose: Back in April, when I blogged about Bitterbrush, Purshia glandulosa, I went off on a long, overwrought tangent on how a Bitterbrush saved my life in 1999, a tangent which included probably my most ambitious (and personal) graphic. I’ve since come to realize that the Bitterbrush in question was in fact a Cliffrose. Though the 2 species appear similar (and are closely-related), there are telltale differences in leaf shape and branching configuration that should have clued me in. I apologize for the error. (I’m apologizing to the plant, not to you.)

One last thing about Cliffrose: when it flowers, in late April (pic left), it produces one of the few desert wildflowers that really smells great. I always have a tough time describing smells; the scent of Cliffrose blossoms is somehow vaguely reminiscent of honey, and yet it doesn’t really smell like honey at all. (I know that makes no sense, but smell it next April and you’ll see what I mean.) When in bloom, larger Cliffroses are often buzzing with wild bees, and make nice places to pause for a moment on a ride.

Another common shrub here, also absent from Southeast and South-Central Utah, is our old friend, Shrub Live Oak, Quercus turbinella, or as I usually refer to it, Turbinella Oak. Turbinella is a live Oak, with small, prickly, gray-green leaves persistent throughout the winter. Under the right conditions Turbinella can grow into a small tree, but it’s always a shrub up here on Guacamole.

Tangent: A great place to see Turbinella in tree form is Snow Canyon State Park, along the Petrified Dunes trail, along the wash bottoms along the South side of the orange sandstone monoliths (pic left, Twin A for scale.) Another stretch of almost-tree-like Turbinella grows along the East side of I-15, around mile marker 25.

We’ll come back to Oak in a minute, but first let’s get to today’s Botanical Spotlight.

Jeopardy-Tangent: When I wrote that line above, I imagined Alex Trebek saying the “The Daily Double!”, and then the audience would always applaud. That always bugged the crap out of me. Why would the audience applaud when the Daily Double appeared? Shouldn’t they hold their applause for when the contestant answered the Daily Double question correctly? It seemed really odd for the audience of what was (is? Is Jeopardy still on the air?) arguably television’s most cerebral game show to be applauding for a purely chance event that represented no achievement whatsoever…

Botanical Spotlight: Piñon Pine. There are 2 species of Piñon in Utah, out of a total of between 11 and 15 species throughout the Western US and Mexico. (Ignore the Wikipedia entry on Piñons- it’s way wrong.) Colorado Piñon, Pinus edulis, (range map right, needles below left) is common across Southeast and South-Central Utah, as well as Western Colorado, New Mexico and much of Northern Arizona. Singleleaf Piñon, Pinus monophylla (range map, needles in paragraph below), is common in Western Utah and across Nevada. The two are easy to tell apart. Colorado Piñons have two needles per fascicle, while Singleleaf Piñons are the only pine to bear one needle per fascicle. There are other differences: Singleleaf nuts are a bit longer, have thinner shells, and are- in my opinion- a bit tastier.

Where the two species meet up, they often hybridize. On range maps, this Southwest corner of Utah appears to be on the edge of the ranges of both species. When you look closely at Piñons up on Guacamole, or over on Gooseberry or Little Creek, they’re almost always single-needled, indicating P. monophylla. But every once in a while, if you poke around long enough, you find a double-needled Piñon around here. And even more interestingly, over on Gooseberry, at my favorite campsite along the North Rim of the mesa, there’s a Piñon which is entirely single-needed except for one prominent limb, on which the all the needles occur in pairs.

The obvious question is: could these be hybrids? But frustratingly, Singleleaf Piñons can occasionally be double-needled as well. So until I can draft a real botanist into spending a day poking around up on the mesas with me, this one will probably remain an unsolved mystery for me.

OK, so back to Oak. There’s one more section of Guacamole worth checking out, and that’s actually the final 0.7 miles of road leading up to the mesa. I’ve talked a lot about Gambel-turbinella hybrid oaks this year up here in Northern Utah, and how rare and significant they are up here. But down in Southwest Utah, in addition to Turbinella, Gambel Oak also occurs up on the mesas, usually tucked into North-facing side canyons. (It also grows extensively on the slopes of the Pine Valley Mountains, just a few miles to the West.) And as a result, Gambel-turbinella hybrids are fairly common around the Mesa level. On the left, along steep pitch of the access road up to the Guacamole trailhead, about ½ way up the final climb, is this beautiful F1-ish-looking hybrid, with leaves about to drop.

Also of interest on this last stretch of road is the moss. The road climbs along a steep, North-facing rock wall that is covered with carpets of Sphagnum. And what’s more, up on top of the mesa, all along the trail, smaller patches of Peat Moss are quite common- far more so than on either Gooseberry or Little Creek Mesas. Why this is I can’t say- another head-scratcher…

The Mesas are the best part of any trip to the Virgin River Basin; they have the best riding, the best flora and the best camping. (P-J Woodland is probably the best car-camping environment there is- plenty of open spaces, windbreaks and firewood.) Every time I finish a Mesa-level ride, no matter how tired I am, I’m left wanting for more, like there’s something I didn’t quite get to check out, or some piece I need to ride again. And even before I get home, I’m thinking about the next trip down.

St. George Botany in 3 Mountain Bike Rides – Barrel Roll

Part 1 -The Floor

Highlighted Ride: Barrel Roll

Alternative “Floor” Rides: Prospector/Church Rocks, Bearclaw Poppy/Stucki Springs

This is a fast, fun ride, with just enough ledges and rocks to make the intermediate rider at least think about dabbing, but nothing white-knuckle. The ride is a nice-flowing loop, with great views of the eroded badlands winding down into Cove Wash below, and the Beaver Dam mountains behind to the Southwest (pic below right.) I’ve stolen the map from utahmountainbiking.com, and refer you to them for excellent trail descriptions, mileage and GPS coordinates (though if you really need a GPS to do this ride, you probably shouldn’t be mountain biking in the desert…)

When you ride one of the excellent singletracks around St. George, if you don’t notice any other plant, you should at least notice this- Creosote. This amazing shrub, which over its 18,000 year history in North America has come to dominate the Southwest like no other plant, is immediately obvious. Its foliage is an olive green distinct from that of any other shrub in the area, and its form is distinctively “spindly.” It’s also usually the biggest shrub around on any of the “Floor” rides. I did a big post about Creosote back in May during Monocot Week (Man, was that a great week or what??), which I encourage you to check out before riding Barrel Roll- it is an incredibly interesting plant.

Probably the most common associate of Creosote on the Floor- and across much of the Mojave- is Blackbrush, which we looked at back in April. And Blackbrush is interesting because it’s the one shrub that we’ll see plenty of on all 3 rides; it ranges seamlessly across 4 of the 5 terraces, always the same, monotypic species, the one constant companion to the Southwest Utah mountain biker. Interestingly, the Blackbrush, which I described back in April as being “partially deciduous”, appears to be pretty much “all deciduous” this winter down around St. George; wherever I rode over the long weekend, the Blackbrush was bare (pic right), or close to it.

Botanical Spotlight: Mormon Tea. We looked at Mormon Tea (genus = Ephedra) back in May near the Dirty Devil, and I talked about how it’s so interesting in that it’s just so way, unbelievably different from everything else around it, with a unique and strange evolutionary history. There are something like 20 different species and subspecies of Ephedra in North America, and they can be tricky to tell apart. But here on Barrel Roll trail (and on neighboring Blackbrush trail) you can see the see the two most common species in these parts side-by-side.

Green Mormon Tea, Ephedra viridis, is the most common in the Southwest. It’s the bright green ephedra, with the stalks sticking straight up, looking almost like little upside-down brooms.

Torrey Mormon Tea , Ephedra torreyana, looks different in 2 ways. First is the color; the Torrey Mormon Tea is a light blue-green, almost pale in comparison to E. viridis. Second is the stem architecture, or “geometry”. Unlike the stems of Green Mormon Tea, those of Torrey Mormon Tea branch out at sharp- almost right- angles, in a form that is vaguely similar to that of Blackbrush.

The two species overlap extensively on the “Floor” but don’t seem to hybridize much if at all. Of the two, Torrey is the more thermo-philic; it thrives down as low as 1,500 feet, but rarely occurs at over 6,000 feet. Green, on the other hand, hardly gets lower than the “Floor” (2,500-3,000 feet), but has been found as high up as 10,000 feet. Though the 2 species exist here in roughly equal numbers, when we get up on the Mesa level the Green will dominate.

The Floor is also interesting botanically for 2 things that are not here. The first is trees. The plants down on the Floor are all shrubs. Though some “trees” (Juniper, Turbinella Oak) do grow along some of the wash bottoms, and real trees (Cottonwoods) grow along the Virgin and Santa Clara Rivers, they’re otherwise absent from the Floor. The shade-less singletracks around St. George, great as they are, are no place to be riding mid-day in summer. Utah Juniper, the toughest, most drought-tolerant Utah tree, and the first to appear as you move upslope, can’t hack the brutal heat and dryness of the Floor in summer, and the spectacular Joshua Tree don’t quite make it up to this high, northernmost fringe of the Mojave. (The ones in the I-15 median don’t count; they’re planted.)

But after the ride, if we pop back in the car and drive another 10 minutes down I-15 in Arizona, all of that changes as we plunge into the Virgin River Gorge (pic right) and transition into the Basement. Suddenly we’re in the real Mojave, and Joshua trees are everywhere. Though there’s no singletrack in the Gorge, the convenience and accessibility of this part of the Basement make it well worth the short drive. Pull off at the rest/area campground about 10 minutes into the gorge and spend a little while poking around.

Tangent: If you want to ride amongst Joshua trees, the best places to do so are another 90 minutes South, outside of Vegas. But if you’re OK with doubletrack, there are numerous old 4WD roads (and plenty of open camping) just over on the South side of the Beaver Dam Mountains, still in Utah.

The second thing that’s missing from the Floor is a shrub. One shrub we won’t see anywhere on this, or any other “Floor” ride, is Sagebrush, which we checked out back in April. It’s completely absent. As a rule, where Creosote occurs, Sagebrush is absent, and vice-versa. It’s like the 2 shrubs are Superman and Clark Kent; you never see them in the same place, even though they’re similar in profile and seem to fulfill the same role in their environment. Each is the “alpha-shrub” where it grows, towering over neighboring smaller shrubs. And each produces the strongest, most wonderful- but very different- scent following a rain. If you crack your car window in the desert on a rainy night, more often than not, the scent of one or the other will tell you where you are.

Next Up: We head upstairs…

St. George Botany in 3 Mountain Bike Rides - Intro

A Note About Today’s Post: The title is a total rip-off from Thomas J. Elpel’s excellent book, “Botany in a Day,” which I heartily recommend to readers who, like me, are fascinated by botany, but have a 4^th-grade attention span.

Here’s a great holiday tip: Move 2,500 miles away from your and your spouse’s families. Go someplace warm and have someone else make the holiday meal.

That winning formula (I swear I should write self-help books) resulted in an awesome nuclear-family-Thanksgiving down in St. George. (Trifecta pictured left.) The getaway included plenty of family and pool time, hiking, mountain biking and botany. Who could ask for more?

Every time I go down to Southwest Utah I come back with head brimming full of things to blog about. But this time I’m going to try to be systematic and constructive about it, and so I plan to do 3 posts (4 if you include this one) this week with a common theme. The idea is that each post will suggest an excellent mountain bike ride somewhere in the greater St. George/Hurricane area, give an overview of what’s botanically interesting about that ride, and if I can manage it, spotlight some cool botanical item specific to each ride. In this first post, I’ll provide an intro to the series and overview of the area.

Tangent: It’s worth mentioning that I could have done- and may someday do- a similar series of posts concerning the geology of the Virgin River basin, which is nothing short of incredible. And with a bit more research, I could probably even do a series on the archeology/paleo-anthropology of the area, which is also fascinating. Seriously, there are so many great reasons to hang out in Southwest Utah…

Two things make the greater St. George area a place like nowhere else in Utah – elevation and intersection. First, elevation. The Virgin River drainage basin is laid out in distinct “terraces” or levels ranging from over 10,000 feet (Pine Valley Mountains) to under 2,000 feet (Virgin River George), and these terraces support wildly different temperatures and plant communities. The “alien planet effect” I blogged about this summer in California can be achieved several times in the same day in Washington County by car or even bike. There are at least 5 distinct elevational/botanical terraces worth checking out, and 3 of these will be the focus of the rides I’ll highlight.

In St. George proper, we’re on the “Floor” of the valley. Up on Gooseberry Mesa or Little Creek, we’re on what I call the “Mesa” level. In between, around the (somewhat odd) little town of Virgin, we’re on what I call the “Bench” level, which is intermediate between “Floor” and Mesa” in temperature, altitude and flora. Up in and behind the Pine Valley Mountains is true PLT forest, which we can think of as the “Attic” level.

It’s easy to think of St. George/the “Floor” as the bottom terrace, but if we continue driving just 10 minutes South into Arizona on I-15, it’s obvious that’s not the case. Once in Arizona, I-15 quickly descends into the spectacular Virgin River Gorge, which is immediately and obviously different again from the “Floor” and so I think of the Gorge- and Littlefield and Mesquite and beyond- as the “Basement” level.

But the really amazing thing about the Virgin River Drainage is the intersection of hot and cold desert, which I think happens more dramatically here than anywhere else in North America.

If you drive down to Moab, get out of the car and poke around a bit, you’ll notice a bunch of “desert” plants- Pinon, Juniper, Sagebrush, Rabbitbrush, Shadscale,etc. And for the most part, the plants you’ll find aren’t that much different than many of the plants you’ll find in the lower areas up here in Northern Utah. If you get back in the car, and drive East to Rifle, or Southwest to Cortez, or South to the Big Rez, or North to Vernal or West to Hanksville or Escalante, and get out of your car again, you’ll find pretty much the same set of plants, varying of course based on your elevation.

And even if you head out off the Colorado Plateau and strike out West across the Great Basin for Austin, NV or Winnemucca, when you get out of your car you’ll find a similar set of plants, which while not quite identical (and generally a subset of what you’ll find back on the Colorado Plateau) pretty much seem a continuation of the same overall Great Basin/Colorado Plateau/”Cold Desert” theme.

Now similarly it you get out of the car in Bakersfield, California and look around you’ll see a bunch of very different plants-most notably Joshua trees and Creosote and Yuccas. And if you get back in the car and drive to Las Vegas or Mesquite or Laughlin or Yucca Valley or Victorville, and get out again, you’ll see- more or less- those same plants again. And what’s more, if you get back in the car and drive clear to Phoenix or El Paso, though much will be changed, you’ll still see many of those plants- especially Creosote and Yuccas- that you saw way back in Bakersfield. All across the “hot” deserts- Mojave, Sonoran, Chihuahuan- there’s almost a common botanical understory- or “foundation”- that’s consistent across them.

But if you get in your car in Cedar City, and drive the 40-something miles down to St. George on I-15 and get out of the car- BAM!- everything is different. Different trees, shrubs, flowers. And that’s what makes St. George and the Virgin River basin so darn interesting- that super-clear, almost violent transition between the hot and cold deserts of North America.

Next Up: Riding on the “Floor”…