bulbs of the north
Jane McGary (Wed, 19 Dec 2018 10:54:50 PST)

I pulled out my venerable copy of Hulten's "Flora of Alaska and
Neighboring Territories" (1968) to look some of these ranges up. It has
circumboreal distribution maps for each species. Given the date of the
book, please excuse any no longer valid names in the next paragraph.

Tofieldia (3 spp. in Alaska) extends to the Arctic Ocean coast of both
North America and Eurasia, T. pusilla (no tuber) being the most coastal.
Toxicoscordon (Zigadenus) is North American only and gets to apparently
the higher part of the Brooks Range, well above the Arctic Circle. No
North American Veratrum reaches the Arctic, but the Old World V. album
does. Allium schoenoprasum (chives) is arctic (how did I forget that
one); I recall that one of its native (Dene) names is tl'oo drik, which
means something like "indigestion grass." lloydia serotina, which we are
told is now a Gagea, reaches the Arctic Ocean coast. There are records
for Iris setosa (not bulbous but it has a thick rhizome) above the
Arctic Circle. Among the terrestrial orchids, we find Cypripedium
guttatum, C. Calceolus ssp. parviflorum, C. passerinum, Amerorchis
rotundifolia, Coeloglossum viride (Orchis bracteata), Platanthera
hyperborea, P. obtusata, Spiranthes romanzoffiana, Listera borealis,
Goodyera repens, Corallorrhiza trifida, Hammarbya paludosa, and Calypso
bulbosa.

And as mentioned there are quite a few Ranunculus species in the high
Arctic, but I haven't examined the tuber situation there.

I spent 12 years in interior Alaska and had opportunities to travel
around the state. The wealth of plants to be seen is wonderful, though
the growing season is so short (and dense with mosquitoes). Best of all,
you can see and photograph "high" alpines at elevations where you don't
even start breathing hard. And running around among the plants are
hundreds of kinds of birds.

Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA

On 12/18/2018 9:29 PM, Lyndon Penner wrote:

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