Vascular plants of west-central Montana-identification guidebook
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- EARLY BOTANICAL EXPLORATION
- HOW TO USE THIS MANUAL
- GLOSSARY A-.
- Alpine.
- Anthesis.
FLORA In this area of west-central Montana, 1,607 taxonomic entities (taxa) have been collected. These include 1,501 species and 106 well-defined varieties, representing 485 genera and 106 families. Intro- duced species total 250. These are most numerous in the populated valleys. In contrast, in the timber- line and alpine zones only one introduced species was found—common dandelion (Taraxacum
is the result of considerable investigation, users may well find additional species in the study area; and in that case, the author would appreciate being informed of such discoveries. Of the 12 species strictly endemic to Montana, five occur in our study area (Lesica and others 1984). These are: Arabis fecunda Endemic in Rollins western Montana Draba daviesii Restricted to the (C.L. Hitchc.) Rollins Bitterroot Mountains Lesquerella humilis Restricted to the Rollins Bitterroot Mountains Saxifraga tempestiva Endemic in Elvander & Denton western Montana Trisetum orthochaetum Endemic in Missoula soil horizon development occurs locally, generally at lower elevations. Continuous sods have devel- oped only in small areas of the timberline and alpine zones. More often, Carex nigricans and other species form a sod locally in moist subalpine basins. In rocky, nonforested areas at high elevation, most vegetation appears in cracks and crevices and in fellfield-like situations. Soils developed from the Idaho batholith granites are strongly acidic. The Lolo Creek, O’Brien Creek, Blue Mountain area west of Missoula (fig. 1) is characterized by mountains of modest height, with few summits reaching 2,130 m (7,000 ft) in elevation. The Lolo Creek valley provides a major low-elevation route up to the Bitterroot/Clearwater River divide at 1,585-m (5,200-ft) Lolo Pass. Highway U.S. 12 follows the general route of explorers Lewis and Clark up Lolo Creek to the pass. Immediately west of the pass lies the moist inland-maritime forest of the Clearwater River drainage, in northern Idaho, where Pacific coast conifers are abundant. These include western redcedar (Thuja plicata), grand fir, Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), western white pine (Pinus monticola), and mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana). Little of this maritime vegetation extends eastward into the Lolo Creek drainage or elsewhere into west-central Montana (Arno 1979). From the Lolo Creek valley north to the Clark Fork River, most of the country is underlain by layers of the Precambrian Belt sedimentary rocks. These rocks surface also on Mormon Peak and the northeastern tip of the Bitterroot Range. In the vicinity of Lolo Hot Springs a distinctive granitic intrusion is known as the Lolo batholith. Although it has a relatively mild, Pacific- influenced climate, this region’s forests are generally drier than those of either northwestern Montana or adjacent northern Idaho (Arno 1979). Thus, west-central Montana has only small amounts of Pacific Coast forest species such as western redcedar, western white pine, Pacific yew,
restricted to moist canyon-bottom sites or seepage areas. Some of these small populations may be remnants of extensive distributions that occurred during a wetter climatic period. Grand fir is locally common, but is much less abundant than it is farther west. West-central Montana is, however, characterized by an abundance of intermountain forest species, which become rare farther east. These include western larch (Larix occidentalis), alpine larch (Larix lyallii), Pacific ponderosa pine (var. ponderosa), Xerophyllum tenax, Menziesia ferruginea, and Luzula hitchcockii. Prior to 1900, fires were very frequent at lower and middle elevations (Arno 1980), with the result
5 Hitchc.
County In addition to the endemics mentioned, 22 species occur in Montana only in our study area of Ravalli County and southwestern Missoula County: Agrostis borealis Allium acuminatum A. parvum A. simillimum Athysanus pusillus Castilleja covilleana Chrysosplenium tetrandrum Erigeron evermannii Eriogonum pyrolifolium v. coryphaeum E. umbellatum v. stellatum Eupatorium occidentale Idahoa scapigera Lewisia columbiana Linanthastrum nuttallii Lomatium bicolor Mertensia bella Penstemon payettensis Saxifraga tolmiei Sedum debile Synthyris missourica Trifolium eriocephalum T. gymnocarpon The main distributions of these species lie to the west of Montana. In fact, the vegetation of the Bitterroot Mountains is similar to that of the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon in several respects: an abundance of plants of the heath family (Ericaceae), the dominance of Carex
appearance at and above timberline of two tall herbaceous plants, Angelica roseana and Polygonum
Seven species common and widespread in Montana mountain ranges, including the Sapphire Range, could not be found in the Bitterroot Mountains. These are: Agropyron latiglume, Poa
and Viola canadensis. EARLY BOTANICAL EXPLORATION Meriwether Lewis and William Clark were the first European explorers and botanical collectors in west-central Montana. They traversed the Bitterroot River and Lolo Creek valleys twice; first on their journey west in early September 1805, then on the return trip in June and July 1806. According to Cutright (1969), Cypripedium montanum, the white lady’s slipper orchid, was first collected and described by Lewis at or near Lolo Hot Springs on June 30, 1806. Four species were collected July 1, 1806, at “Traveller’s Rest” at the mouth of Lolo Creek. These collections were later described and named by German botanist Frederick Pursh: Lewisia rediviva (bitterroot, the Montana State flower), Sedum stenopetalum (stonecrop), Ortho- carpus tenuifolius (owl-clover), and Trifolium microcephalum (small-head clover). (Thompson [1985] provides a more detailed account of Lewis and Clark and other botanical collectors in Montana prior to 1865.) Nathaniel Wyeth was the next plant collector to travel through west-central Montana. Born in 1802 in Cambridge, MA, Wyeth became a friend of Thomas Nuttall, the famous Harvard University botanist. When Wyeth prepared an overland expedition to the Oregon country, Nuttall asked him to bring back a few plants. Traveling south from the Flathead Valley, Wyeth entered the Bitterroot Valley near the present city of Missoula in the spring of 1833 and departed it from the south across Gibbons Pass. Although he collected a great number of plants, most of them were lost or spoiled by accidents. Still, Wyeth delivered 113 species to Nuttall, who described the genus Wyethia in his honor. In 1843, Karl Andreas Geyer collected here. Geyer was born in 1809 in Dresden, Germany—a gardener’s son who became a gardener himself. He developed a keen interest in botany and corre- sponded for years with Sir William Jackson Hooker, a leading English botanist who profoundly influ- enced him. On his second expedition to the American West, Geyer traveled through the Beaverhead Valley and across Gibbons Pass to the Bitterroot Valley. He stayed at Father Pierre DeSmet’s newly established St. Mary’s Mission at today’s town of Stevensville. Geyer was hospitably received and used the Mission as a base camp for exploring and collecting. He remained until mid- winter 1843-44, when he left for Spokane. In his reports, he praised the beauty of the Bitterroot Valley and the surrounding mountains and forests. He wrote eloquent accounts of the area’s gigantic old ponderosa pines and of the majestic Thuja trees (western redcedar) in the mountain canyons to the west. He also described the Indian (Salish) inhab- itants and their methods of collecting camas (Camassia quamash) bulbs and bitterroots. About a dozen species were named after Geyer, including the following plants common in our area: Carex geyeri, Allium geyeri, Physaria geyeri, and Salix geyeriana. He also named several frequently occurring species, including Melica bulbosa, Viola orbiculata, Ranunculus alismaefolius, and Micro- seris nutans. Sereno Watson first named and described about three dozen of our common plant species, including
6 Aquilegia flavescens, Lomatium cous, Lonicera utahensis, and Saxifraga occidentalis. Watson also established three new genera—Hesperochiron, Les- querella, and Orogenia; however, this was only a minor part of the scientific contributions of this self- taught botanist. Watson came first to the West with the King expedition in 1867. He then served as a general handyman and horse wrangler. In 1880 he traveled from Dillon through the Bitterroot Valley to Missoula and then westward over Lolo Pass. On this trip he was collecting for the Gray Herbarium, now located at Harvard University. From 1880 to 1923, Marcus E. Jones lived in Salt Lake City and collected mainly in the Great Basin; but his wide-ranging collecting expeditions led him at least once into the Bitterroot Valley. This is documented by his 1910 collection of Trifolium gymnocarpon, hollyleaf clover, from the valley of the West Fork of the Bitterroot River. Marcus Jones became a leading botanist, discovering and naming several plants native to western Montana. During the 19th century, botanists and plant collectors in our region were explorers, mostly from the cultural centers of the eastern United States. In the late 1800’s, the founding of the State university at Missoula (now the University of Montana) and the agricultural college at Bozeman (now Montana State University) ushered in the era of resident botanists. The history of floristic explor- ation in the western United States has always been closely connected to the personalities teaching botany and the curators of the herbaria. Morton G. Elrod, who joined the University of Montana in 1897, was a biology professor and an active botan- ical collector in western Montana. By 1909 he had obtained about 7,000 botanical specimens, which he entrusted to his colleague J. E. Kirkwood. Kirkwood became an immensely active botanist and forest ecologist. He formally established the University of Montana herbarium and collected extensively even in the rugged mountains, traveling by horseback and afoot. For instance, he was the first botanist on Lolo Peak and Trapper Peak. In 1932, C. Leo Hitchcock took over as curator of the University of Montana herbarium. A nationally known botanist and leading author of today’s standard Pacific Northwest floras (Hitchcock and others 1955-69; Hitchcock and Cronquist 1973), he devoted much of his time to exploration and collec- ting throughout western Montana, from bottom lands to mountain summits. By 1937, when Hitchcock left for a similar position at the University of Washington in Seattle, he had helped broaden and modernize the mission of the herbar- ium, striving to build a complete representation of the native flora to serve both science and the public.
Alt, David D.; Hyndman, Donald W. 1986. Roadside geology of Montana. Missoula, MT: Mountain Press. 427 p. Arno, S. F. 1979. Forest regions of Montana. Res. Pap. INT-218. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 39 p. Arno, S. F. 1980. Forest fire history in the Northern Rockies. Journal of Forestry. 78: 460-465. Arno, S. F.; Habeck, J. R. 1972. Ecology of alpine larch (Larch lyallii Parl.) in the Pacific Northwest. Ecological Monographs. 42: 417-450. Arno, S. F.; Hammerly, R. P. 1984. Timberline— mountain and arctic forest frontiers. Seattle, WA: The Mountaineers. 304 p. Cutright, P. R. 1969. Lewis and Clark: pioneering naturalists. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press. 279 p. Davis, R. J. 1952. Flora of Idaho. Provo, UT: Brigham Young University Press. 835 p. Dorn, R. D. 1984. Vascular plants of Montana. Cheyenne, WY: Mountain West Publishing. 276 p. Finklin, Arnold I. 1983. Weather and climate of the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness. Moscow, ID: University Press of Idaho. 144 p. Gleason, H. A.; Cronquist, A. 1963. Manual of vas- cular plants of northeastern United States and adjacent Canada. Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand. 810 p.
Gruell, G. E.; Schmidt, W. C.; Arno, S. F.; Reich, W. J. 1982. Seventy years of vegetative change in a managed ponderosa pine forest in western Montana—implications for resource management. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-130. Ogden, UT: U.S. Depart-ment of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 42 p. Harrington, H. D. 1954. Manual of the plants of Colorado. Authorized by the Colorado State Board of Agriculture and prepared with the cooperation of Colorado A&M College. Denver, CO: Sage Books. 666 p. Hermann, Frederick J. 1970. Manual of the Carices of the Rocky Mountains and Colorado Basin. Agric. Handb. 374. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service. 397 p. Hitchcock, C. Leo; Cronquist, Arthur; Ownbey, Marion; Thompson, J. W. 1955-69. Vascular plants of the Pacific Northwest. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press. 5 vols. Hitchcock, C. L.; Cronquist, A. 1973. Flora of the Pacific Northwest, Seattle, WA: University of
7 Washington Press. 730 p. Kuijt, Job. 1982. A flora of Waterton Lakes National Park. Edmonton, AB: University of Alberta Press. 684 p. Lackschewitz, Klaus H. 1970. Alpine and timberline flora in the Bitterroot Mountains, Montana. In: Proceedings of the Montana Academy of Sciences. 30: 1-30. Lackschewitz, Klaus. 1986. Plants of west-central Montana—identification and ecology: annotated checklist. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-217. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Research Station. 128 p. Lesica, Peter; Moore, G.; Peterson, K. M.; Rumely, J. M. 1984. Vascular plants of limited distribution in Montana. Monogr. No. 2, Montana Academy of Sciences, Supplement to the Proceedings. Vol. 43. 61 p. Moss, E. H. 1959. Flora of Alberta. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press. 546 p. Mueggler, W. F.; Stewart, W. L. 1980. Grassland and shrubland habitat types of western Montana. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-66. Ogden, UT: U.S. Depart- ment of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermoun- tain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 154 p. Pfister, R. D.; Kovalchik, B.; Arno, S.; Presby, R. 1977. Forest habitat types of Montana. Gen. Tech. Rep. INT-34. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Intermountain Forest and Range Experiment Station. 174 p. Ross, C. P.; Andrews, B. A.; Witkind, I. J. 1955. Geologic map of Montana. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of the Interior, Geological Survey. Thompson, L. S. 1985. Montana’s explorers: the pioneer naturalists 1805-1864. Helena, MT: Montana Magazine, Inc. 109 p. Weber, W. A. 1976. Rocky Mountain flora. Boulder, CO: Colorado Associated University Press. 479 p.
To identify an unknown plant, first use the Key to Plant Families (page 12). Once the correct family has been determined, use the key to the genera which follows the description of the morphological characters of the family. After identifying the genus, use the key to species within the genus. The keys are dichotomous, consisting of a series of paired alternatives, each preceded by the same number. The two statements are designed to be mutually exclusive. Examine the specimen and its habitat and decide which alternative is true. Be sure to read both alternatives before making a decision. At the end of the chosen alternative there is a number or a name. A number directs you to another couplet (pair of alternatives) in the key. Repeat the above procedure, choosing the appro- priate statement in each couplet until a name is arrived at. Verify the family, genus, and species indicated in the keys by reading the descriptions of that family, genus, and species following the keys. To avoid excessive repetition, words used in species descriptions are usually explained in the descrip- tions of the family or genus. Technical terms are also explained in the Glossary (page 8). To aid identification, some of the larger genera have been divided into subgeneric groups based on similarity of appearance or habitat (for example, species with yellow flowers, species of meadows). Within genera and the subgeneric groups, species followed by their descriptions are presented in order of their decreasing commonness in west-central Montana. The distribution listed at the end of each description is for the species, not any particular variety or subspecies. Taxonomic nomenclature used here generally follows that of Hitchcock and Cronquist (1973). Dichotomous keys have often been adapted from those in Hitchcock and others (1955-69), Dorn (1984), and Kuijt (1982). Species descriptions were developed by the author based on field experience and Davis (1952), Dorn (1984), Harrington (1954), Hermann (1970), Hitchcock and others (1955-69), Moss (1959), and Weber (1976), and were edited to follow the style and order of Hitchcock and others (1955-69). Species are grouped by division, and divisions are organized phylogenetically, with the more primitive plants first. Thus the nonflowering plants (club- mosses, horsetails, ferns, and conifers) are placed first, followed by the flowering plants, which are further divided into dicots (broad-leaved plants) and monocots (grasses, sedges, lilies, etc.). Within these groups, species are arranged alphabetically by family, genus, and species. Scientific names follow the nomenclature of “Flora of the Pacific Northwest” by Hitchcock and Cronquist (1973). A small number of species in the checklist are not found in Hitchcock and Cronquist, and references must be sought in the recent literature or in a flora of the eastern United States, such as Gleason and Cronquist (1963). Scientific names that have widespread use but are considered incorrect by Hitchcock and Cronquist (synonyms) are placed in brackets and follow the accepted name. Each scientific name (taxon) is followed by a common name, most of which are also taken from “Flora of the Pacific Northwest.” Two additional species were found so recently that they could not be incorporated in this manual. They are Atriplex heterosperma and Suaeda depressa, both members of Chenopodiaceae. Both are rare in our area and were found on the east side of the Bitterroot Valley. They are indicators of alkaline soil.
8 GLOSSARY A-. A prefix denoting a lack or without. Achene. A dry, 1-seeded fruit that does not open along regular lines. Acuminate. With concave sides long tapering to a point.
Acute. With mostly straight sides tapering to a sharp point.
Adventitious. Arising not from the usual place. Alpine. Occurring above treeline in mountains. Alternate. Arranged with one structure (leaf, stem, etc.) per node. Amphibious. With the potential to inhabit water or land, but not removed from surface water. Annual. A plant, usually with slender taproot, completing its life cycle in a single growing season. Anther. The pollen-bearing portion of the stamen, remote from the point of attachment. Anthesis. That period when a flower is open for pollination. Apex. The furthest or highest point, the tip. Apical. At the top or tip. Appressed. Pressed close to another organ or surface. Aquatic. Growing (anchored or floating) in water. Download 0.59 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |
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