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Alpine Flora Below Treeline Over four days in July 2003, our class from Antioch New England Graduate School commandeered the Gray Knob Shelter. Our aim, under the leadership of Dick Fortin: to study plants of the alpine zone. We had read and researched, brought charts, maps, field guides, calculators, rulers, and sampling equipment - all geared around “Alpine Flora,” the title of our course. The plant that captivated me most, however, thrives not in the alpine, but in forests below the alpine. I actually stumbled across it a fir-cone’s throw from Gray Knob. For the first sunrise, I wobbled towards the rocky overlook called The Quay. Along the trail, beneath spruce and Douglas-fir, my eyes detected something popping out of the mat of green: tiny pairs of pink flowers. Bending down, I instantly recognized the plant, even though I had only seen it in drawings and photographs. It was Linnaea borealis, the Twinflower. Perhaps you have seen it? Twinflower is an evergreen, perennial member of the Honeysuckle family. In the White Mountains, this plant inhabits the cool Spruce-Fir forests (where I found it), but apparently reaches into the krummholz (where I did not). Twinflower hugs the ground, a growth form called “trailing” or “creeping.” The trailing stems are the source for another, much older, name: K’ela H’lia, which to the Dena’ina people of present-day Alaska means “mouse’s rope.”
From June through August, Twinflower blooms by sending up flower stalks from the stem. Termed “peduncles,” these stalks split in two near the top, resembling uppercase Y’s. From each tip of the Y dangles a bell-like flower colored pink and white. This pair of flowers reminds us of the plant’s common name. Look closely: the five petals sparkle as if dusted with fine glitter. The inside of the flower features pink venation and a yellow patch, perhaps a landmark to aid pollinators. Under magnification, the inside reveals itself as a tangled mess of cottony hairs, like an unravelled cotton swab or the fuzzy seed-head of thistle. Twinflower fruit emerges as a sticky nutlet with hooked bristles: a perfect parcel for grabbing hold of birds and mammals. Through feather and fur, Twinflower has managed to spread throughout the entire boreal region of the North. Essentially, Twinflower ranges across North America, including boreal forests and bogs of Canada, the Sierra Nevada, Rockies, and Appalachian Mountains; across the Atlantic with landings in Greenland and Iceland; through the arctic region of Europe, including northern Norway, Sweden, and Finland; across the former Soviet Union; and back over the Bering Strait to Alaska. This expansive geographical range is called “circumpolar” or “circumboreal.” Twinflower’s aptly chosen species-name, borealis, means “northern” or “of the north,” which in turn descends from Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind. Twinflower’s genus-name, Linnaea, pays tribute to the Swedish botanist Linnaeus (1707-1778), who created the modern system of scientific classification. Among all the plants he knew, Linnaeus had a special fondness for Twinflower. The cover of his book Flora Lapponica includes the plant in bloom. One portrait presents Linnaeus dressed in traditional Lapland tunic, holding Twinflower in his right hand. Linnaeus’s teacher, Jan Frederik Gronovius, took notice and named Linnaea borealis in his student’s honor. Linnaeus himself self-humorously reveals the story: “Linnaea was named by the celebrated Gronovius and is a plant of Lapland, lowly, insignificant and disregarded, flowering but a brief space - from Linnaeus who resembles it.” The story of Twinflower goes on and on. The first to discover the plant in California was none other than John Muir. The Algonquins made Twinflower tea for pain relief during pregnancy. Twinflower, being a Honeysuckle, is fragrant beyond belief; people claim to locate it by scent alone. As for me, even though I fell in love with a sub-alpine plant, I passed my Alpine Flora class. (Dick, thanks for your understanding and patience!) I just hope to return someday soon to where the Twinflower grows. Tim Stetter recently
earned his masters degree in Environmental Studies from Antioch
New England Graduate School. A writer and environmental educator,
Tim lives with his wife on the shoreline of Oneida Lake in upstate
New York, where they race to keep up with an overly ambitious
heirloom-vegetable garden.
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These
stems sport opposite leaves, a reliable characteristic of the
Honeysuckle family. Twinflower’s leaves measure one to three
centimeters long, are short-stalked, and marked by a few shallow
teeth at their tips. The green of its leaves matches those of
associated plants, including Starflower (Trientalis borealis),
Goldthread (Coptis groenlandica), and Canada Mayflower
(Maianthemum canadense).