Trees, Wildflowers, & Lichens
While the Rocky Mountains are known for their sharp spires and snowy crowns, it would be incorrect to say that the spirit of the place is only that: rocks, heights, and perspective. After all, anyone strolling along a mountain path is going to spend about half the time looking down, at the many amazing plants, flowers, and grasses that have decided to make a mountainside their home.
The North American Rocky Mountains feature some of the most unique and expansive collections of plant and animal life on the continent, no doubt due to the fact that the Rockies encompass a number of different climates and ecosystems. Still, it is possible to examine some of the species that make the Rocky Mountains what they are, from the heat of New Mexico to the height of Canada.
Trees
The forests of the Rocky Mountains can vary significantly with elevation, precipitation, and the steepness of the land around it. The foothills of the Rockies can be a patchwork of coniferous and deciduous forests, broken up with fields, meadows, and streams.
Massive forests of Lodgepole Pine coat the areas between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. In time, shade-tolerant Spruce or Douglas Fir will learn to grow in the shady space beneath the Lodge Pole, and they will take over. It’s a natural process called forest succession, and in the Rockies, it’s happening all the time.
In the high Rockies of Colorado, the largest aspen forests have become the destination for fall tourists from all over the world. Truly, seeing a green mountain turn brilliantly gold is a sight to see. Apparently, enough to slow down highway traffic for fifty miles in either direction.
Wildflowers
From early spring to late fall, a number of colorful wildflowers paint the Rocky Mountain landscape at nearly every elevation. From the flowering silver sagebrush of the New Mexican foothills and all the way up to the bright blue flowers of alpine forget-me-not, which can be found growing far above treeline and even at the tops of mountains.
Both Rocky Mountain National Park and Yellowstone National Park are known for their wildflowers. The nearby Bighorn Mountains is actually a destination for some rare alpine flower seekers, looking to catch a glimpse of flowers that don’t grow in any other conditions. The 3” high dwarf Columbine known as Aquilegia jonesii, for instance … a stunningly bright flower that refuses to bloom anywhere but in the limestone crags above treeline.
Try as they might, lowland gardeners have never been able to bring it down from the mountain without sadly reducing it’s color, vigor, and vibrancy.
Lichens
If it seems like even the bare rock of the Rocky Mountains is alive with color and texture, you would not be mistaken. The ability of lichens to colonize bare rock surfaces and newly-exposed surfaces has given them a true pioneer status among plant species. As they grow on rocks, trees, and logs, they can turn vibrant shades of green, yellow, and silver that add to the already rich color palate that is the average Rocky Mountain Forest.
To be precise, lichens are actually a combination of two different organisms working in symbiosis. The first is a fairly basic fungus. The fungi provide protection to a smaller, colorless organism that works to decompose other organic materials, like the decaying wood of a fallen tree. This process produces “food” for the fungi, creating an arrangement that works out well for both parties.
Like the Rocky Mountains themselves, lichens are incredibly slow growing, with some species only adding a few millimeters of growth in a single year. This means that the largest lichen patches that you find can be thousands of years old. In fact, some geologists have been able to use rock lichen to make hypotheses about glacial retreat, one of the forces that carved the Rockies into their current shape.
