Published by Daniel Mosquin on April 18, 2019
Flowers get most of the attention at this time of the year in northern temperate areas, but emerging foliage deserves some as well. The tactile experience of brushing one’s fingers along the needles of a branch of Larix laricina is another delight of spring.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on July 4, 2018
One of the deciduous genera of conifers, the ten or eleven species of Larix are native to the temperate-cold zones of the northern hemisphere. Larix decidua, in its autumn foliage in these photographs, is native to higher elevations of southern Europe in a range spanning from France to Ukraine.
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on April 20, 2018
The recent entry on Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir reminded me that we had yet to feature its iconic relative, coast Douglas-fir. What better tree to represent the taxon than Canada’s second-largest coast Douglas-fir, Big Lonely Doug?
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on April 13, 2018
Your reaction to the first photograph may be that this is a strange rose blossom. But, this is not a rose flower–nor is it any flower, for that matter. It’s actually an immature seed cone of a conifer species from southeastern Asia: Keteleeria evelyniana. And no, it doesn’t make a habit of tricking people, this […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on February 27, 2018
One of the characters that most helps in identifying a Douglas-fir is the set of long, three-pointed bracts on the cones. While the distinct flexing in the bracts could have been enough for me to identify this particularly as Rocky Mountain Douglas-fir, the fact that it was located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains […]
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Published by Daniel Mosquin on February 5, 2018
Pinus banksiana, commonly known as jack pine, has the widest distribution of all pines in Canada. Its ecology provides insight into the interconnectivity that exists within ecosystems; since its success as a species is disturbance-driven, you could say that what kills it (or burns it) makes it stronger.
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