The Alpine Botany excursion on August 24, 2019 was led by Sybille Haeussler (botany), Renata Neftin (photography) and Anne Hetherington (wildlife and general biology). We meandered up the trail to Crater Lake, striking out across the Prairie toward Miller Creek.
The outstanding mushroom crop of the drizzly summer of 2019 extended right up to treeline, providing excellent opportunities to try our hands at mushroom photography. Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) was particularly charismatic and abundant. While most of the toadstools were of the paler yellow variant (Amanita muscaria var. guessowii?), the bright red caps proved to be most photogenic. Warts on the cap are remnants of the universal veil that encloses the fruiting body when it first emerges from the soil, breaking into pyramid-shaped fragments as the cap expands.
Fly agaric (Amanita muscaria) growing near start of Crater Lake trail (R. Neftin photo).
This mushroom is both deadly poisonous and hallucinogenic, renowned for its ritual use by shaman as a means to enter the spirit world. The common name, fly agaric, is variously believed to refer to the ability of this mushroom to kill or to attract insects.
Our excursion took place too late in the year to catch the alpine flowers at their peak. Instead, we examined curiosities such as these pseudoflowers on willow:
pseudoflowers on willow (R. Neftin photo)
“pseudorose” on willow (S. Haeussler photo)
spider on senescing pseudoflower (R. Wilkinson photo)
Pseudoflowers are typically produced by pathogenic fungi in an elaborate form of mimcry that induces pollinating insects to disperse fungal gametes and spores to a suitable host. In addition to looking very similar to real flowers, pseudoflowers often produce floral scents (volatile oils) and they reward insects for their work by exuding a sweet nectar. The willow pseudoflower system we observed on Hudson Bay Mountain has not been studied, but the green of this “flower” suggests that whatever dispersal agent it is attracting does not recognize colours. Barbara Roy, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Oregon studied buttercup-like pseudoflowers induced by a rust fungus (Puccinia monoica) in species of rockcress (Arabis spp.). Her work provides a hint of how complex and fascinating the interrelationships among the fungus, its insect vectors and various plant hosts can be.
In the rockcress pseudoflower system, flies and bees feed on the sugary nectar produced by the fungus on the bright yellow pseudoflowers. As these insects move between the rockcress and real buttercups growing in the same meadow, they effectively ensure that mating occurs among the various life stages of the rust fungus occurring on the two host plants.
Once we arrived in the alpine tundra, we made our way across the south-facing slope of Hudson Bay Mountain. Crossing an oversized stream channel that still had traces of snow. Here the flowers were still in bloom, but it is unlikely they managed to set seed this year.
And here is its taller relative, fireweed (Chamerion, formerly Epilobium, angustifolium)
River beauty (Chamerion, formerly Epilobium, latifolium) flowers late in the gravellly margins of an alpine creek (R. Wilkinson photo)
