Finding the Impossible, Part 1: Getting There

I’m a landlubber I admit it. How could I not be? I’m from Saskatchewan. That’s the driest place in the country! Not only is it completely devoid of coastline, but its largest lake is practically in the arctic. Before I came here I did field work in Grasslands National Park, a place where the Frenchman “River” is shallow enough to wade across. Then I did field work in the Great Sand Hills, a place where there is no water at all, just sand.

Being a prairie girl, I was attracted to the idea of doing field work in tall grass prairie, an ecosystem that I was unfamiliar with but that I assumed (incorrectly) would be dry. So I got permission to do some pollinator research out at the Tall Grass Prairie Preserve in 2004. When I got there, I could barely find any prairie that wasn’t soaking in at least a foot of water. Eventually I found out about Spruce Woods Provincial Park and its famous sand dunes. “Now that’s my kind of park” I thought “dessicatingly dry”. But as it turns out Spruce Woods ain’t no Great Sand Hills. Sure there are dunes there, but they’re surrounded by spruce forests, wetlands, a river and little springs bubbling out of the sand. Even the deserts in Manitoba are wet!

Image: The dunes at Spruce Woods Provincial Park are actually pretty wet. There are rivers, lakes and springs in the park as well as sand dunes.

Then one day I was asked to prepare a collections assessment report to identify gaps the Museum’s plant collection. I found out that of the 562 species of native plants that are underrepresented in the collection, a whopping 43% of them grew in some kind of wetland: a bog, a riparian area, a lake, or a marsh. Clearly, reducing the gaps in the collection was going to require that I get wet. But I was reluctant to dive in to aquatic plant botany, never having done it before so I decided to focus my research on pollination ecology and ugly little rare plants that grew in sand dunes. As a result, I was able to avoid wetlands for many years.

Then one day a man named John Wiersema called me up. John is an American water-lily expert who helped write the volume on those plants in the Flora of North America. He had discovered several unusual herbarium specimens of water lilies from Canada, including one on the Minago River, which he thought might be a different species. But he needed fresh material to do genetic work to make sure. Was I willing to come along with him to search for this species? I was wary. We might need a boat. I don’t really do boats. “Perhaps we could just walk along the river bank?” I suggested.

Well that turned out to be a terrible idea as the banks of the Minago River just off of highway 6 contain the densest collection of deadfall and brush that I’ve ever bushwhacked through. I can’t recall how many times I tripped and very nearly impaled myself on a fallen log. Fortunately, John determined that that part of the river seemed unsuitable for this particular water-lily so we cut our surveys short. We decided to go further north to where the Minago crosses the highway leading to Manitoba Hydro’s Jenpeg Generating Station. Although no one at Manitoba Hydro was available to take us out on the water that day, they generously offered to fly us up at a later date and arrange a boat trip down the river. It was on that trip that I was to see what a real aquatic botanist was made of.

This summer I began the field work necessary to understand the province’s floral diversity so that I can write a book on the Flora of Manitoba. At last I was going to have start looking for and collecting those aquatic plants that we know so little of. This summer I was going to have to get wet. But there’s a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.

It’s amazing how many aquatic plants you can collect from a shore line without actually stepping in the water. I spent many days combing shorelines for aquatic plants that had washed up so I wouldn’t have to go in the water. Out at Turtle Mountain and William Lake Provincial Parks I discovered the joys of lake docks and wetland boardwalks! I was able to collect all sorts of plants by just lying on my belly and reaching as far as I could. When necessary I used my trusty hiking pole to capture a few things that were just out of reach. I even went boating to collect a few things. Paddle boats are great for this. I know they’re the goofiest looking boats invented but for a botanist that wants to collect aquatic plants they are awesome. All in all I was pretty pleased with myself for avoiding the water.

Image: Boardwalks are great places to reach submerged aquatic plants. This one is in Hecla Provincial Park.

P.S. Collecting plants in national and provincial parks is illegal (with the exception of berries and mushrooms) unless you have a permit (which I do).

Last week I spent some time looking for rare and under-collected plants in the “Turtle Mountains” of Manitoba. First off let me say that I think the term “Manitoba mountain” needs its own definition in the dictionary. To most people the word “mountain” conjures up images of snow-capped peaks and sure-footed Mountain Goats clambering up rocky screes. Climbing a mountain is to risk life itself due to treacherous terrain, exposure to harsh weather and utter physical exhaustion. In contrast, climbing a “Manitoba mountain” is to risk breaking out in a light sweat, if it’s a hot day-a really hot one. Now please don’t get me wrong, I love the Turtle Mountains. I just don’t think they should be called “mountains”. But I suppose perspective is everything and the people who named them were likely so tired of the monotony of the Red River Plain that something that you could see rising up slightly in the distance was good enough to be called a “mountain”.

In Turtle Mountain Provincial Park, I hiked several trails searching for rare sedges. I was also interested in seeing if the brome (Bromus) and wild rye (Elymus) grasses that I was searching for in the Otterburne area in June might occur here instead. Jackpot! I discovered that the brome and wild rye grasses I was looking for are present in the park, likely because human disturbances that favour non-native grasses are minimal here. I may have found some of the rare sedges, although I won’t know for sure until my plants are completely processed here at the Museum as they have to be thoroughly dried, and then frozen for pest control purposes before I can look at them closely.

While I was in the area, I decided to search for rare plants along the Turtle’s Back trail in William Lake Provincial Park, a small park adjacent to Turtle Mountain Provincial Park. At the summit (84 m above nearby William Lake), I discovered that this area was visited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years as it is the highest point of land for many kilometers, providing an excellent view of the area around it. It was humbling to know that in climbing this peak, I was following in the footsteps of First Nations from long ago, and those who still visit here today.

For the last 13 years I have spent part of my summer studying beautiful plants; plants with big displays of nice-smelling flowers. The reason I was studying them was because I was interested in learning which insects like to visit them for their nectar and pollen. However, this year I realized that for too long I have been neglecting the ugly plants; you know the ones that we step on without a care.

Some grass flowers such as this Fringed Brome (Bromus ciliatus) are actually quite attractive.  The colourful uppermost leaves (=glumes), which cover the flower parts, are purplish and covered with fine hairs.

So why am I studying them? Well, we must remember to not confuse appearance with ecological importance. Although ugly plants aren’t always particularly nice to look at, they play extremely important roles in the functioning of ecosystems. Grasses with their enormous root systems, remove tremendous quantities of carbon from the air and lock it underground in the form of soil organic matter. Unlike the carbon in trees, this soil carbon will not burn up in a wildfire. Grasses also provide livestock and wild animals with an abundant source of food. In wetland habitats, the dense roots of grasses, sedges and rushes filter the water, removing contaminants and nutrients like phosphorus, which would otherwise cause algal blooms in our lakes.

Unfortunately, some of these plants are in trouble. While searching for several historically collected grasses, Wiegand’s Wild Rye (Elymus wiegandii) and Hairy Woodland Brome (Bromus pubescens) in southern Manitoba this June, I was upset to realize that the habitats where these plants once occurred have been completely taken over by weedy Eurasian species like Smooth Brome (Bromus inermis) and Quack Grass (Elymus repens). These aggressive, invasive species have benefitted from the soil disturbances associated with human activity and have been able to spread into native grasslands and woodlands, displacing pretty much everything else. I will continue my search for these elusive species during my next field trip further north in the hopes that I will still find them somewhere in the province.

I was watching an old episode of “The Big Bang Theory” and Sheldon asked Stephanie what her favorite fruit was. Stephanie said “strawberries” to which Sheldon replied “technically NOT a fruit”. My daughter turned to me and asked “is that true” and I said “yes, sort of.” Let me explain why.

Plants have sex. The evidence of their many dalliances lands on our lawns and patio furniture in the form of pollen in the spring and later on in the year as spores, seeds, and fruits. What’s the difference between these structures? Well, pollen is like sperm in a tiny ping pong ball, a spore is like a naked baby, a seed is like a naked baby with a bottle and a fruit is like a baby with a bottle wearing clothes (or sometimes even driving a vehicle). So at this point you’re probably thinking, “Eeww, I’ve touched that stuff” but let’s cut plants some slack cause if they didn’t have sex, they’d go extinct and that would be bad for us given that we can’t photosynthesize!

Spore-producing plants, including mosses and ferns, are terrible parents: they just abandon their children to the whims of fate with nothing to eat and not a stitch on their backs! Cone-bearing plants (=gymnosperms) like spruces, pines, and junipers, are better parents as they provide their babies with something to eat. Giving their babies a source of food enables these plants to grow in drier, less fertile habitats than spore-producing plants can. However, as their babies are “naked” with no protective covering, they are vulnerable to thieves that want to steal their “bottle”: animals!

Flowering plants (=angiosperms) include most of the plants we are familiar with: grains, fruit trees and yes, strawberries! These species don’t let their children go out without a snack and a coat on. However, not all fruits are fleshy and edible as we are accustomed to think. Nuts are actually a type of fruit with a hard shell to protect the baby from hungry animals, kind of like a tank. Grasses give their babies clothing that sticks to their bodies and won’t come off. Maple trees give their kids hang gliders to help them soar away from their parent on the wind!

There are a variety of fleshy fruits as well. A berry is a multi-seeded fruit that includes some plants that we call berries, like blueberries and Saskatoon berries, but also some that we don’t think of as berries, like grapes and tomatoes. Raspberries and blackberries on the other hand, are not true berries, they are aggregate fruits: basically a bunch of tiny fruits clustered together on the enlarged tip of the flower stalk. Stone fruits have a single, hard seed (=drupe) inside; they include peaches, plums, and cherries. Citrus fruits are berries with a tough, leathery rind called a hesperidium. These fruits, according to Sheldon are “true” fruits.