Cranberry bogs are surreal! By cranberry bogs, I really mean black spruce forests with sphagnum so deep you want to sleep on it (but for the mosquitoes). The Ericaceous shrubs out here as an understory make sense. I haven't taken any pH readings, but I'm sure its low (high acidity = low pH). The heath family is an acid loving family and its Virginia members include Rhododendron, Blueberries (the vaccinium corombosum from a previous post plus another), mountain laurel, wild azalea, and probably one or two others I've missed.
Out here in the Interior of Alaska, there's Vaccinium uliginosum (blueberry), V. vitis-idea, V. oxycoccus (cranberry), Ledum groenlandicum, L. decumbens (Laborador tea), Arctostaphylos uva-ursi, and A. rubra (see below for common name). So that's a lot of names, BUT, some of them are really cool!
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| Stunted Picea (likely P. mariana) in a bog |
Kinnikinnick is the common name for Arctostaphylos uva-ursi (sometimes hard to tell from V. vitis-idea). First off, I'm not sure how Kinnikinnick is any easier to remember than Arctostaphylos uva ursi. It's also one of many "bear-berries" which would make sense with the "ursi" in its name. Kind of like the constellation Ursa Major (big bear), but there are several bear berries up here. Likely because bear like to eat just about any of the berries up here....
Anyways, so Arctostaphylos. It sounds like a winged dinosaur and with the specific epithat being uva-ursi it sounds like a winged dinosaur resembling a bear. A rather impressive name for the little plant with super-cute impressed leaves!
So out here there are decidous conifers (like Larix larcina or Tamarack), evergreen conifers (Picea Mariana or black spruce), evergreen decidouous shrubs such as the cranberry (Vaccinium vitis-idea), and deciduous broadleaves such as birch and alder (Betchula papyrifera or paper-bark birch, B. nanna, B. glandulosa, Alnus tenuifolia and A. crispa).
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| Picea mariana |
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| Populus tremuloides |
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| Larix larcina |
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| Ledum groenlandicum |
Not all broad-leaves lose their leaves in the winter time and not all conifers keep theirs in the winter. All of these different types of growth strategies are up here!
There's so much more I want to write about. The insulating moss, the neat epiphyte, the frogs up here, the permafrost, the many wildlife signs, tussock-hopping, and just more cool pictures! But this will be a little bit for now. I'll put up a few neat ecology stories with pictures soon! My transfer cable is at work, but I'll have some extra exciting pictures soon!
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