When you walk through the mountain treelands, the ground welcomes your booted feet with a sinuous strand of plant and rock material, both reduced into a debris that renders them unrecognizable. This is the path that makes your walking simpler, more agreeable.
But everything gets more interesting at the edge of the path.
Out there to the side is where the story waits to be told. Waits to be heard, to be understood, to be accepted. It is the story. The story of survival. Survival against all odds.
In their own voiceless whispers the wildflowers tell us the story. In their presence and in their absence, they tell us.
Out there, off the paths and the trails, last year's leaves and stems, flowers and fruits, lie atop the same plant material from the year before. And the year before that. And the year before that. The deeper you look, the more the plant parts loose their identity and the more they creep downward into the mineral grit where together plant and rock form soil.
In this gradation of duff and soil, the plants ready themselves to grow or not to grow depending on the conditions of the season. Different plants meet the need to grow or to wait in different ways.
- Bulbs are specialized underground buds that store food in thickened leaves. Our wild onions and the ever-lovely wood lily survive as adult plants and grow anew each year from bulbs.
- Caudices are thickened stems at or below the soil surface. Each caudex is tough and fibrous giving the impression of being woody, but a caudex is an indicator of a nonwoody perennial such as the larger penstemons.
- Corms are flattened, disklike stems that store food. The gladiolus is the common corm-bearing garden plant; mariposa lily, avalanche lily and the calypso orchid -- often called "fairy slipper" -- are all wildflowers that survive as and grow from corms.
- Rhizomes are food-storing stems that grow at or below ground surface and specifically in a horizontal orientation. Irises are the best-known rhizomatous plants, but many grasses and the dainty bistort that graces mountain meadows also grow from rhizomes.
- Tubers are enlarged shoot tips found on rhizomes; their swollen form derives from their capacity to store food. Potatoes usually come to mind as tubers, but many wildflowers are also tuberous including the ladies tresses orchids that grow in mountain wetlands.
- Seeds are embryonic plants that grow to a certain stage complete with tiny root, stem and leaf before development halts and the plant goes dormant. Some plants -- cottonwoods -- bear seeds that must germinate within a few days or else they perish; some plants -- bindweed and tamarisk -- bear seeds that may survive for decades.
These specialized body parts serve plants well. When snow fails to pile up in winter and when rain fails to trickle down in spring, the plants can sense the less than favorable growing conditions. Some will put up a 3-inch shoot instead of a 3-foot shoot; some will send up three shoots instead of three dozen shoots; some will wait and send up no shoots at all.
When this growing season passes through winter into next growing season, the plants will take measure once again. And if the water is there, they will spring back to life.
If your paths through the woods seem a bit colorless, be of good cheer. The plants know what they are doing. In their presence or their absence you can know their story.
Kevin J. Cook is a freelance writer and naturalist based in Fort Collins. His Wildlife Window column appears in the Reporter-Herald every Thursday.