Legacies of Confederation: Endangered Orchids

When Manitoba became part of Canada in 1870 the stage was set for one of the largest land transformations in history. In the last 150 years nearly all of Manitoba’s wild prairies fell to the plough. The little patches that remain as ranch land, private nature preserves, and federal and provincial crown lands are home to a suite of increasingly rare organisms, among them two spectacular prairie orchids: Western Prairie Fringed Orchid (Platanthera praeclara) and Small White Lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium candidum).  Models of these two species are on display in the Manitoba Museums’ Legacies of Confederation: A New Look at Manitoba History exhibit.

In addition to their very specific habitat requirements these orchids produce seeds that are so tiny that there is virtually no nutrition available for young seedlings. In order to grow they need to form an association with a special fungus, called a mycorrhiza, which will help them get water and nutrients from the soil. The dependence of these two orchids on insect pollinators and soil fungus, along with the loss of habitat, has led to their endangerment.

It’s hard to believe that there was a time when people thought that species extinction was impossible. Humanity underestimated the power that our technology gave us over nature, and to some degree we still do. A conservation ethic did not really emerge until it was clear that there were no “lost worlds” left where rare species might still linger. The extinction of several Canadian bird species including the Labrador Duck (Camptorhynchus labradorius), Great Auk (Pinguinus impennis), Eskimo Curlew (Numenius borealis) and Passenger Pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius), largely due to overhunting, finally made Canadians understand our destructive capabilities and helped inspire the modern wildlife conservation movement. One of the benefits of confederation has been our collective will to ensure that some of Canada’s forests, tundra, prairies, lakes and ocean habitats are protected for all Canadians to benefit from–the 2-legged and the 4-legged and even the ones with no legs at all.

Tasting is something we do everyday but many of the things we think we know about taste are actually wrong. So let the debunking begin!

Fact: Your sense of taste involves your tongue AND your nose. When you are sick with a cold, food doesn’t taste very good. This is not because your taste buds aren’t working – it is because your nose isn’t working. To test this, close your eyes, plug your nose and pop a flavoured candy in your mouth. Can you tell which flavour it is? Then unplug your nose and see if you know. What you are experiencing when you unplug is retronasal olfaction (or smelling the back of the nose). Many flavours in food are released as gases while you chew, which then waft into your nose through the back of your mouth. In fact 80% to 90% of what we “taste” is actually detected by your nose.

Fact: While it is true that many fruits contain sugar, some fruits are not sweet at all. Botanically speaking, a fruit is a structure that contains, or is attached to, one to many seeds-it has nothing to do with what it tastes like. Many things that we call vegetables are actually fruits including avocados, cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash. The taste of a fruit is influenced by the kind of animal that normally disperses it. Since some animals like juicy, bitter, sour, or fatty tastes, not all fruits are sweet.

Vegetables (defined as roots, tubers, bulbs, stems, and leaves) may be bitter due to the presence of toxins that discourage animals from eating them. However, humans have bred modern vegetables to be less bitter (and therefore less toxic). For example, wild carrot root is bitterer than modern varieties. Unfortunately, breeding out the bitter compounds (which are often natural pesticides) and increasing the sweet ones make our crop plants more desirable to insect pests.

At the Museum’s recent Surviving the Apocalypse Night participants were asked a variety of questions about the nutritional value of certain foods. Sadly, very few people knew that you can make a beverage high in vitamin C from…Christmas trees!

The Indigenous peoples of North America have long known of the health-giving properties of some cone-bearing (also called evergreen) trees. In Canada, First Nations peoples drank an herbal tea of evergreen needles to ward off scurvy, usually in winter when fresh fruits and vegetables were hard to come by. This simple remedy was not known by early British and French explorers, who often succumbed to this disease. Scurvy causes weakness, gum disease, impairs healing, and eventually leads to fever, convulsion, and death. Symptoms set in after about a month of low to no vitamin C intake. The explorer Jacques Cartier was told about a scurvy remedy by the Indigenous people he encountered in eastern Canada, who felt pity for the suffering Europeans (see more here). Cartier was so impressed at the ability of the tea to cure scurvy that he called the tree species an “arbre de vie” or “tree of life”.

On the east coast, European settlers began making an alcoholic version of this beverage by adding spruce needles to molasses (from the Caribbean) and yeast to make spruce beer. By 1738, George Spence, the Hudson’s Bay Company surgeon in Fort Albany, Ontario, reported making and providing spruce beer to HBC employees as an anti-scorbutic (click here to learn more). This knowledge was eventually passed on to the British Military by Sir Joseph Banks, who encountered the beverage when he was botanizing in Newfoundland and Labrador in 1766. Captain James Cook brought casks of this beer on board his ships in the late 1700’s (along with various other foods, such as citrus fruits) and did not lose a single man to scurvy!   If you’re so inclined, you can click here for a recipe for spruce beer.

Below is a simple identification key to Manitoba’s wild cone-bearing trees. To use it, select the statement (a or b) that best describes the plant. Continue selecting statements until you come to the name of a species. Then double check the identity by consulting a field guide or reputable website. Please note that there are some exotic cone-bearing trees planted in urban areas, which may not be in this key.

The fact of the matter is there are no reliable “rules of thumb” when it comes to identifying edible mushrooms. Many people mistakenly think that poisonous mushrooms are brightly coloured like the Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria) but many Amanitas are white, creamy, or brownish. A veil on the stem and scales on the cap, other characters used to identify Amanitas, are not always present. Some mushrooms are edible only when they are young and cooked. However, cooking does NOT destroy all of the toxins in Amanitas. People may assume that poisonous mushrooms will taste bad, but the last words of a man who died of Amanita poisoning were reportedly “that was the tastiest mushroom I ever ate”. And you can’t trust squirrels either; they can reportedly eat Amanitas without dying. The fact is, to the untrained, it is easy to confuse an Amanita with a number of edible species such as Button Mushrooms (Agaricus silvicola), certain Milkcaps (such as Lactarius volemus), or Puffballs (Lycoperdon) especially when they are young.

One of the most common edible and prized mushrooms growing right now is the Honey Mushroom (Armillaria mellae). This species is actually a parasite on trees and is often found at the base of tree stumps. However, the similar Shaggy Scalycap (Pholiota squarrosa) grows in the same habitat but is poisonous, more so when consumed with alcohol (although usually not fatally) so pickers beware!

It was with some sadness that I finished my last field work of the season at the Nature Conservancy’s Yellow Quill Prairie. It will be many long, cold months before I get to go out again. However, I was eager to get back to the office to crunch some numbers and see how the pollinator community in mixed grass prairie differed from the fescue and tall grass prairies that I’ve studied previously.

The most commonly visited plant in the mixed grass prairie was wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa), receiving just over a quarter of all observed visits, mainly from bees and butterflies. This species received only 3.6% of all visits in fescue prairie and less than 1% in the tall grass prairie. You may be familiar with this species because it is often available for sale at greenhouses.

Showy goldenrod (Solidago nemoralis) was an interesting species because it is one of the top visited plants in all three prairie types. This suggests that it would be a particularly useful plant for prairie reclamation because of its widespread distribution and popularity with a wide number of pollinators.

Until next year I’ll be enjoying looking at my photographs, and remembering the smells and sounds of the prairie.

Usually cow pies are extremely uninteresting features of a prairie landscape (and one to usually avoid) but this month something funny was happening with them at the Nature Conservancy’s Yellow Quill Prairie that made me look twice. For starters, one day I saw a cow pie moving.

As it turns out though, it wasn’t really the cow pie that was moving: it was a toad, a Canadian Toad (Anaxyrus hemiophrys) to be specific. As I stepped next to a cow pie in one of my research plots, the aforementioned toad made a short hop. It took me a few seconds to actually find the toad as it blended in with the cow pies and dried grass quite magnificently. I had never really appreciated how well the colour of these creatures helps them to blend in with their surroundings. The toad looked hot and, as I was leaving for the day and no longer needed the water in my bottle, I decided to give him a shower. To my surprise he made a happy chirping sound and wiggled his back. Good deed for the day completed!

The Yellow Quill Prairie is currently being sustainably grazed by cattle, which is why the cow pies are even there. Doing so increases the fungal diversity of the prairie as some species are strictly coprophilous (e.g. poop-loving) and would not otherwise be there. Although these fungi would have initially evolved to decompose Bison pies, cow pies are not much different from them, and therefore cattle fill a similar ecological role.

As the prairie dried out the mushrooms, having completed their spore-dispersal goal, began to wither away in the heat of the day. But I won’t forget the brief glimpse that I got of the diversity that lay beneath my feet.

There are only two occasions where I thoroughly enjoyed botanizing in wetlands. One was during my field work to find a new species of water-lily (Lori’s Water-lily or Nymphaea loriana) in northern Manitoba. Manitoba Hydro offered to fly my companion John Wiersema and I up to Jenpeg, and to have a few locals take us out on a motorboat to look for it. The great thing about being on a boat is that it is windy enough on the open water to keep the bugs down. On that trip we collected plant specimens for DNA analysis which eventually led to my recent publication in the Canadian Field Naturalist (Read more here).

The other day of enjoyable wetland botanizing happened just last month at the brand new Brokenhead Wetland Interpretive Trail (Find more details here). This gorgeous 1.83 km trail (less than an hour north of the city) runs parallel to the Brokenhead Wetlands Ecological Reserve. If you’ve ever wanted to see rare orchids or carnivorous plants, this is the best way to do it. Almost the entire trail is boardwalk so your feet never get wet and you don’t have to worry about sinking and turning into a bog mummy!

The trail first passes through a fragrant white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) swamp before reaching the more open fen habitat. I was easily able to see four species of carnivorous plants: pitcherplants (Sarracenia purpurea), round-leaved and oblong-leaved sundews (Drosera rotundifolia and D. anglica), and common bladderwort (Utricularia vulgaris). Although it was lovely to see Dragon’s-mouth orchid (Arethusa bulbosa), grass-pink (Calopogon tuberosus), spotted coralroot (Corallorrhiza maculata), and several species of bog-orchids (Platanthera spp.), the bell of the ball was definitely the spectacular showy lady’s-slipper (Cypripedium reginae). One was growing right next to the trail facilitating a perfect photograph!

I love how the trail was interpreted with a First Nations perspective that included information about traditional Ojibway uses of local plants. It was lovely to be able to visit a wetland where I could appreciate the plants up close. This trail is a must see for nature lovers as it lets you experience a world that you may never see.

Unfortunately I was also greeted by something not so pleasant: rain and wind. Those two things in combination result in the dreaded sideways rain; you know the rain that hits you right in the face rather than landing on your hat. “Oh well,” I thought, “all I have to do on the first day is select my plots and I can do that in a bit of rain”. A little rain actually makes an interesting prairie organism come to life: star jelly (Nostoc commune). This organism looks like a tiny piece of crispy black poop when it’s dry but a greenish, gelatinous blob when wet. It’s actually a colonial cyanobacteria that lives on the prairies and adds much-needed nitrogen to the soil. I also saw a well disguised grasshopper blending in with the lichens and star jellies.

The next day was my first day of pollinator surveys and though it wasn’t raining, it was so cool and windy that I saw virtually no insects. Luck was with me the next day though as I encountered perfect pollinator weather: warm, sunny, and with only a gentle breeze. Plus there were no ticks or mosquitoes! That rarely happens in Manitoba and was nice break from the last few years when I was constantly picking ticks off my pants. In addition, to seeing some nice big bumblebees, sweat bees, and a really cool beefly, there were several butterflies about as well. One of them was not so lucky as it got captured by a crab spider hiding on a groundsel (Senecio spp.) flower; a sad ending to a beautiful creature but spiders need to live too!

When I first started working at the Museum 12 years ago I decided to study plant-pollinator relationships in Tall-grass Prairie because it was an ecosystem that I had not visited before. Two years ago I switched to Fescue Prairie and now, to complete my understanding of prairie pollination, I need some data on Mixed Grass Prairie as well. My research will help us better understand how these prairies differ from each other and which plant species are most important for pollinators. I will be visiting Yellow Quill Prairie every two weeks until mid September and will keep you updated on the wonderful things that I see throughout the summer.

This research is made possible by funding from the Nature Conservancy of Canada and the Manitoba Museum Foundation.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, flower sales are set to soar. Men give flowers to women to increase the chances that they’ll get some lovin’ but they don’t typically think about the fact that in doing so they’ve already helped something reproduce-namely the plant. Flowers are the sexual organs of plants and their methods of reproduction are both fascinating and bizarre. However, plants can be complicated so to make this easier to understand, I’m going to describe how people would have babies if we were like plants.

Last year an interview I did for the BBC Northern Ireland documentary Brave New World – Canada aired on television (see more here). This documentary, by journalist William Crawley, is about the Irish Ulster immigrants that came to Canada and shaped our nation. I was asked to talk about John Macoun, an Irish-Canadian botanist who explored Western Canada in the late 1800s. As only a small portion of my interview aired, I wanted to post a full response to all the questions I was asked to provide some additional insight into John’s life and character.

What sort of man was John Macoun?

John was a man who was obsessed with botany, with collecting plants in particular. The thrill of discovering a new species of plant really drove him. This obsession meant that he was willing to endure a lot of physical discomfort in order to find new species.

Why is he such an important figure in Canadian history?

People like to say that Macoun changed the map of western Canada. Prior to his expeditions with Sanford Fleming in the 1880s, the planned railway route through western Canada was going to go through the Parklands along the historic Carlton trail, parts of which eventually became the contemporary Yellowhead highway. Macoun’s explorations, reports and speeches led people to believe that the southern parts of Alberta and Saskatchewan were just as fertile as the more northern parts. As a result, the railway went along a more southern route and many of the largest cities in the prairies, like Brandon, Regina and Calgary sprung up along it. Had the railway gone along the original route these cities may not have existed at all, or may be substantially smaller than what they are today.

Did Macoun set out to prove them wrong, or was he surprised by what he discovered?

Initially he seemed to be holding back judgement until he saw the area for himself. He was certainly happy to discover that the prairies were full of lush grasses and seemed suitable for agriculture. It was not at all like the desert he heard of. Of course had he travelled the area when Palliser did his impressions would have been different, perhaps a bit more cautionary and less enthusiastic.

What did he find as he travelled through Manitoba and Saskatchewan?

The prairies that Macoun saw were already different from what they had been when Europeans first arrived. Populations of wild Bison, Plains Grizzlies, and Passenger Pigeons were in decline. Antelope and Elk populations were also decreasing. In fact, he encountered a group of First Nations people in Saskatchewan that were on the verge of starvation because the Bison were gone. He also travelled through the area during a historic wet period. The high moisture and lack of grazing animals would have resulted in a much lusher prairie than Palliser would have seen.