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MONTANA Naturalist Spring/Summer 2018 Inside Features 4 ALPINE LARCH Exploring the Ecology of Montana’S Unique High-Elevation Deciduous Conifer by STEVE SHELLY

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MONTANA Naturalist Spring/Summer 2018 Inside Features 4 ALPINE LARCH Exploring the Ecology of Montana’S Unique High-Elevation Deciduous Conifer by STEVE SHELLY Spring/Summer 2018 MONTANA NTO PROMOTE ANDa CULTIVATE THEt APPRECIATION,u UNDERSTANDINGr AND STEWARDSHIPa OFli NATURE THROUGHs EDUCATIONt Pollinators & Wildfire: Fire-Adaptive, Pollinator-Friendly Plants All About Alpine Larch | Raptor Research & Conservation | Homesteader Phenology | Life, Underneath MONTANA Naturalist Spring/Summer 2018 inside Features 4 ALPINE LARCH Exploring the ecology of Montana’s unique high-elevation deciduous conifer BY STEVE SHELLY 7 POLLINATORS AND FIRE 4 7 Fire-adaptive plants for Montana’s pollinators Departments BY DANIELLE LATTUGA 3 TIDINGS 10 NATURALIST NOTES Hawks and Dippers and Kestrels, Oh My! BY JENAH MEAD 11 GET OUTSIDE GUIDE Kids’ Corner: water poetry and 11 Paxson student nature observations; family-friendly camping spots in western Montana 15 COMMUNITY FOCUS Raptor View Research Institute 15 BY ALLISON DE JONG 19 16 VOLUNTEER SPOTLIGHT IMPRINTS Stephanie Fisher 20 Summer camps; spotlight on new staff Alyssa Cornell and Nikola Davis; Cover – Honey bee (Apis mellifera) on a 20 thimbleberry blossom. Honey bees are a save the date for the MNHC auction!; FAR AFIELD domesticated animal with worldwide distribution, remembering Sherri Lierman; As To Blackboard Mortar Chronicles and can outcompete our native North American The Mission; new exhibits update; BY KENNETH WALCHECK bees (including bumble bees) in natural Museums for All; Hunting & Gathering environments, though they do provide an important lecture series 22 agricultural service. If you look closely you can see MAGPIE MARKET the hairs in its compound eyes. Also take note of the large pollen packet on its leg! Photo by Eugene 23 Beckes, flickr.com/photos/121795831@N02/. REFLECTIONS Life, Underneath No material appearing in Montana Naturalist BY ELLERY GERMER MILLS may be reproduced in part or in whole without the 10 written consent of the publisher. All contents © 2018 The Montana Natural History Center. 2 MONTANA NATURALIST ~ SPRING/SUMMER 2018 Connecting People with Nature 120 Hickory Street, Suite A tidings Missoula, MT 59801 406.327.0405 MontanaNaturalist.org Spring seems slow to come this year. In past years, Organizational Support & Outreach: Executive Director the forsythia and daffodils have Thurston Elfstrom bloomed in my yard at the end of Development Director March. This year, we’re halfway Ramey Kodadek through April and there are no Communications Coordinator Allison De Jong flowery pops of color to be seen Development & Marketing Coordinator when I gaze around my backyard. Sarah Millar And even though I love winter and Front Desk Associates Alyssa Cornell snow and cold, I find myself ready Nikola Davis for sunshine and warmer days. Educational Programming: At the same time, there are Education Director Lisa Bickell reminders of the changing season, Pasqueflowers bloom in late afternoon spring sunlight Community Programs Coordinator if only I take the time to look. I saw on Mount Sentinel. Christine Morris my first buttercups of the year on a Youth Programs Coordinator hike last week, a few scattered bits of yellow glimmering on the brown forest floor. The Stephanie Laporte Potts Clark Fork River is running faster and higher, and the Osprey have returned to their Teaching Naturalist & Volunteer Coordinator Drew Lefebvre nests. Spring may be coming slowly, but it is coming. PHOTO BY ALLISON DE JONG Teaching Naturalists This spring I have a particularly tangible reminder of change and a new season that Christine Wren has nothing to do with the weather. As I write this, I feel my son turning and shifting Bailey Zook Research Specialist & Wings Over Water beneath my ribs, forcing me to lean back a little as he pushes a foot (or maybe two) Program Coordinator against a space that will soon be too small for him. Jenélle Dowling Change is on the horizon. ID Nature Coordinator Kelli Van Noppen And change, constant change, is one of the beauties of this world we live in. The Wings Over Water Program Assistant seasons shift. Flowers bloom, send out their seeds, die. Snow covers the landscape, then Heather McKee melts away. Fire sweeps through forests, leaving charred blackness, but soon enough Native Plant Garden Manager come the fireweed, the Black-backed Woodpeckers, the morels. Life and death are all Casey Valencia Intern tangled up together in the natural world. Stephanie Fisher And so they are in this issue. Botanist Steve Shelly explores the ecology of that Visiting Naturalist Field Instructors amazingly-adapted high-altitude deciduous conifer, the alpine larch, reveling in its Alyssa Cornell Courtney Jaynes uniqueness while hoping that some of them survived last year’s Lolo Peak Fire (page 4). Aubree Powers Naturalist Danielle Lattuga ponders fire, too, and how it affects our native pollinators— Nicole Sedgeley Kelly Yarns and what we can do to help them (page 7). Fourth graders from Paxson Elementary Summer Camp Instructors spent time this school year learning about what Montana’s animals and plants do in Addy Flegel the winter, and how much life and activity happens under the snow (pages 11 and 23). Cara Grula Nicki Jimenez Researcher Kenneth Walcheck shares the story of a homesteader who recorded decades Aubree Powers of phenological data on the chinking of his log cabin, providing a vivid window into the Nicole Sedgeley past (page 20). Volunteer Visiting Naturalist Instructor Rod Snyder It’s good to be reminded of the necessity—and beauty—of change. And of the Board of Directors richness of a world where the hard things and the delightful things are inextricably Ian Foster, President connected. Perhaps, this spring and summer, we can let the natural world inspire us to Kelley Willett, Vice President Stephanie Lambert, Secretary accept the challenges as well as the delights, to accept that experiencing both simply Wayne Chamberlain, Treasurer means that we are alive in this world. Peggy Christian Hank Fischer Katie Guffin Marcia Kircher Sarah Megyesi Edward Monnig Rick Oncken Tom Roy Stephen Speckart Allison De Jong Allison Young EDITOR Montana Naturalist Art Director [email protected] Eileen Chontos SPRING/SUMMER 2018 ~ MONTANA NATURALIST 3 ALPINEMontana’s unique high-elevation LARCH deciduous conifer BY STEVE SHELLY THE FIRST TIME I EXPERIENCED AN ALPINE LARCH occupies in the Bitterroot Mountains. This unique tree is one of FOREST, WHEN I MOVED TO WESTERN MONTANA MANY only four deciduous conifers, in addition to baldcypress (Taxodium YEARS AGO, I WAS AWESTRUCK. A friend and I had hiked up distichum), tamarack (Larix laricina), and western larch (Larix to Carlton Ridge, high on the horizon southwest of Missoula near occidentalis), that are native to North America. Alpine larch is Lolo Peak, during early fall. Snow was already starting to blanket the also unusual in being the only erect deciduous tree that inhabits mountains, and I was not really anticipating that we would soon be the alpine timberline. In the Bitterroot Mountains, the species is hiking through a forest of fall color. As we steadily made our way abundant above 7,500 feet on north-facing slopes, and rarely occurs up into the larches that cover the top of the ridge, though, it was below 6,500 feet. like entering a golden tunnel. The combination of brilliant yellow needles on the larch trees, the white mantle of snow, and the blue Distribution of sky was breathtaking, unlike any other forest I had ever visited. alpine larch in the As these trees change color during the last half of September, Pacific Northwest. the appearance of the golden-yellow “cap” on Carlton Ridge marks the onset of fall, and is readily visible from Missoula. This colorful stand of alpine larch (Larix lyallii) is one of the most unique forests in the northern Rocky Mountains. The ridgeline in this high- elevation area above the Mormon Creek drainage escaped past glaciation, and as a result there is an unusual layer of deeper soil that is much unlike the very rocky sites that alpine larch typically DERICKSON MAP: EVAN 4 MONTANA NATURALIST ~ SPRING/SUMMER 2018 Both alpine and western larch are tree growth rates. In the case of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), endemic to a relatively small geographic tree growth rates have been increasing since the 1950s, especially area in the Pacific Northwest. Alpine in older trees on drier sites. The increase in carbon dioxide in larch is confined to the higher, cooler the atmosphere may be having a “fertilizer effect” on the trees, environment of the upper subalpine as such change can cause the trees to use water more efficiently. and lower alpine zones in the inland On Carlton Ridge, the growth rings in alpine larches have been northwest. It occupies limited areas studied to understand the historic extent of fire in the northern of southern British Columbia and Rocky Mountains. That study revealed an average tree age of southwestern Alberta, and extends approximately 350 years, a remarkable number considering that the southward into Washington, northern average diameter of the trees is only about 17 inches! Idaho, and western To the south, alpine larch stands Montana. Western [A recent] study revealed an average near Trapper Peak in the southern larch occupies lower Bitterroot Mountains occupy sites on and middle elevations tree age of approximately 350 years, both north- and south-facing slopes, over roughly the same a remarkable number considering that with the former having higher soil geographic area, although the average diameter of the trees is moisture and cooler temperatures on its range extends into average. Recent tree ring studies there central Idaho and Oregon only about 17 inches! have revealed that growth rates between as well. Another area these two microsites have diverged as where their ranges differ is in Montana the prevailing climate conditions of the region have changed. Since and Alberta, where alpine larch extends 1993, which was an abnormally cool, wet summer in Montana, east of the Continental Divide to the the alpine larch trees found on the north-facing slope have been Front Ranges of the Rocky Mountains.
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