#alberta native plants

[felidaefatigue]

First 15 of my series of linocuts of native plants in Alberta are now available for order in my shop! Letter Mail Option // Rigid Mailer Option

Each print is drawn, carved, and printed by myself on handmade paper, also made by me!

You can find some quick facts about each plant in my highlighted stories on insta if you wish! From top left in the first image we have: Pineapple weed, Jacob's ladder, Pussytoes, Goldenrod, Yarrow, Purple Coneflower, Mountain Hollyhock, Gumweed, Red Paintbrush, Prickly Rose, Rocky Mountain Bee Plant, Blue Beardtongue, aaaand Columbines! Let me know which ones your favourite so far- and which native plant I should carve next! (prairie smoke and strawberry spinach are already in the works!)

[flowerishness]

Erodium cicutarium (common stork's-bill)

Common stork's bill is another European wildflower branded a 'weed' outside it's native environment. This Mediterranean plant prefers warm, dry soils and is now found throughout Eurasia, North America, South America, central and southern Africa, New Zealand, Australia, and Tasmania. Common stork's bill has a deep taproot and is lush and green compared to the sundried grass that surrounds it.

As the French say, "La fleur, elle est très petite." (roughly translated: "The flower, she is very small.") Typically about a third of an inch wide (8.5 mm), these tiny pink flowers sure stir up a lot of resentment from people who prefer native wildflowers. The Alberta Native Plant Council even has a nice photo of Erodium cicutarium in it's 'Rouges' Gallery'.

[saritawolff]

A Patreon request for rome.and.stuff (Instagram) - Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum… that I went a bit overboard with lol. I’ve been waiting for an excuse to draw my favorite ceratopsian, and to digitally adapt my old Pachy marker drawing design.

So! Pachyrhinosaurus! As seen above, there were three known species of Pachyrhinosaurus, living in different locations and eras in Late Cretaceous North America.

The oldest, P. lakustai, was native to the Wapiti Formation of Alberta and British Columbia, Canada. It’s known for the extra spikes it has at the center of its frill.

The slightly younger P. canadensis was native to the lower Horseshoe Canyon Formation and the St. Mary River Formation of Alberta and northwestern Montana. It was the largest of the three.

The youngest, P. perotorum, was native to the Prince Creek Formation of Alaska. As this ceratopsid seemingly stayed put during the long, dark, cold Alaskan Winters, it likely had adaptations for keeping warm.

The depiction of a “woolly” Pachyrhinosaurus was first popularized by Mark Witton as a speculative work, but the trope has prevailed. While many paleontologists find a heavy feather covering on a centrosaurine to be highly unlikely, and maintain that the animal’s size and homeothermy would have kept it warm enough, we still have no skin impressions to suggest that P. perotorum was fully scaly. So a feather coating is not completely out of the question (though it is unlikely). Still, I love the look of a woolly Pachyrhinosaurus and how it challenges our previous conceptions of non-avian dinosaurs. Stranger things exist in nature. I had to include a “woolly” option, especially since I already use the guy as my avatar on my paleo Instagram account, SaritaPaleo.

Pachyrhinosaurus was particularly unique in that it seemingly traded off something that had previously worked for other ceratopsians, horns, for a large nasal boss instead. For Pachyrhinosaurus, a battering ram worked better than a sword.

It was herbivorous, using its strong cheek teeth to chew tough, fibrous plants. Perhaps during the dark and cold Winters, P. perotorum would have also dug for roots or even scavenged carcasses. At any rate, from observations of their unusually conspicuous growth banding, it appears growth for P. perotorum would have been stunted during the harsh Winter, but was extremely rapid in the warmer months, an adaptation for the Alaskan climate.

The tundra of the Prince Creek Formation housed a surprising amount of diversity. Pachyrhinosaurus perotorum would have lived alongside smaller ceratopsians like Leptoceratopsids, as well as other ornithischians like the pachycephalosaurine Alaskacephale and the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus. Theropods such as Dromaeosaurus and Saurornitholestes, as well as a yet unidentified giant Troodontid, lived here as well. P. perotorum’s main predator would have been the tyrannosaur Nanuqsaurus. Small mammals were also somewhat common here, such as Cimolodon, Gypsonictops, Sikuomys, Unnuakomys, and an indeterminate marsupial.

(Btw, the request tier for Patreon starts at only $5 a month. 😉 Link is pinned at the top of my blog.)

[mioritic]

Yiddish writers, Warsaw, 1922

From left to right, with short biographies:

Esther (Esye) Elkin (?–?) was the wife of Mendl Elkin.

Mendl Elkin (1874–1962) was born to a family of Jewish farmers in Belarus. Though working as a dentist for six years, he was more interested in arts and culture, and would spend his spare time writing for socialist newspapers and acting in an amateur Russian-Yiddish theatre group. He spent the 1910s–1920s between Bobruisk and Siberia before moving to Vilna and founding a theatre group, as well as editing literary journals and writing poetry. He would later move to New York, where he served as Chief Librarian for YIVO.

Peretz Hirschbein (1880–1948) was born near Grodno; his father operated a water mill. He studied at a yeshiva before becoming a Hebrew teacher. In his 20s he began to write poetry and plays in both Hebrew and Yiddish, and would soon move to Odessa to stage his plays. After his theatre troupe disbanded in 1910, he spent the remainder of his life travelling, finally moving with his wife Esther Shumiatcher to Los Angeles.

Uri Zvi Grinberg (1896–1981) was a Yiddish writer before moving into Hebrew. Born into a Hasidic family in what is today Ukraine, he served in the Austro-Hungarian army. Radicalized by the November 1918 pogrom in Lwów, he spent the interwar period between Palestine and Europe. He co-founded the self-proclaimed fascist group Brit HaBirionim and later served as a Member of Knesset for Herut. He was awarded the Bialik Prize three times, as well as the Israel Prize for his contributions to literature.

Khane Kacyzne (?–?) was the wife of Alter Kacyzne. Together they had a daughter, Shulamith, who survived the Holocaust by hiding as a non-Jew. Khane was murdered at Bełżec.

Alter Kacyzne (1885–1941) was a prolific photographer and writer, born to a bricklayer and a seamstress in Vilna. He took up photography early, at age 14, by which point he had also taught himself Hebrew, Polish, German, Russian, and French (alongside his native Yiddish) and had begun to write poetry. Through the interwar period he worked as a photojournalist, travelling extensively, as well as serving as editor for several literary magazines and writing for communist newspapers. He was beaten to death by Ukrainian fascists in 1941, and his wife Khane was murdered at Bełżec extermination camp.

Esther Shumiatcher (1896–1985) was born in Grodno, though her family emigrated to Alberta, Canada in 1911. Interested in poetry and screenwriting, she worked several jobs to make money: as a waitress, in a meat-packing plant, and helping her family run a boarding house out of their home. In the 1920s she went to Warsaw and worked extensively as a poet; her poem "Albatros" gave its name to a modernist Yiddish journal. She was married to Peretz Hirschbein, whom she met while he was taken ill in Calgary and nursed back to health in her family's home. After her husband's death in 1948, she moved to New York.

From the YIVO Archives.

[rjzimmerman]

Good story from Yale Environment 360, without a paywall (I think), about beavers, public land, wildfires, endangered species, the largest beaver dam in the world, the degradation of that land and the large pond behind the dam due to the tar sands mining activity in the vicinity. In other words, a microcosm of all the bad stuff and good stuff intersecting in one place in Canada. Excerpt from this story:

Wood Buffalo National Park, the largest national park in Canada, covers an area the size of Switzerland and stretches from Northern Alberta into the Northwest Territories. Only one road enters it from Alberta, and one from the NWT. If not for people observing it from airplanes and helicopters, and satellites photographing it, little would be known about big parts of it. The park is a variety of landscapes — boreal swamps, fens, bogs, black spruce forests, salt flats, gypsum karst, permafrost islands, and prairies that extend the continent’s central plains to their northern limit. The wood buffalo in the park’s name are bison related to the Great Plains bison. In this remoteness, the buffalo descend from the original population, and the wolves that prey on them are also the wild originals. Millions of birds summer and breed here. The park holds one of the last remaining breeding grounds of the whooping crane.

Other superlatives and near-superlatives: the delta in the park’s southeast where the Peace River and the Athabasca River come together is one of the largest freshwater deltas in the world; last summer, some of Canada’s largest forest fires burned in the park and around it; and — just inside the park’s southern border — is the largest beaver dam in the world.

The dam is about a half-mile long and in the shape of an arc made of connected arcs, like a recurve bow. The media has known about it for 16 years, and in that time no bigger beaver dam has come to light, so it’s still known as the biggest, and scientists believe it almost certainly is. Animal technology created it, but human technology revealed it.

Many of the beavers that have reestablished themselves globally are descended from beavers that were planted by wildlife biologists. The thriving beaver population of Tierra del Fuego (another place Thie has studied) is descended from beavers brought to Argentina from Canada’s Saskatchewan River, who are themselves scions of beavers transplanted from upstate New York. No reintroduction of beavers was done in Wood Buffalo Park. Thie believes that the beavers who built the dam are of original stock. Like the wood buffalo and the wolves, they were too remote to be wiped out.

The park is suffering the worst drought in its history. Flows are down by half in many places, owing to climate change, water diversion, poor seasonal snowpack, and dams on the Peace River, upstream in British Columbia. A danger that seems inescapable comes from the oil sands that are being mined for crude-oil-containing bitumen, and from tailing ponds that hold trillions of liters of mine-contaminated water. The ponds are near the banks of the Athabasca River, just upstream from the park boundary. They are fatal to birds that land on them. Given the direction that water flows, conservationists and native people fear the tailings will pollute the park eventually. Toxic chemicals have already been found in McClelland Lake, just southeast of the park. Locals stopped taking their drinking water from the lake years ago.

Gillian Chow-Fraser, the boreal program manager for the Northern Alberta chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society, in Edmonton, travels in the park often by helicopter, canoe, and foot. She has described the park’s environment as “super degraded.” When I spoke with her by phone not long ago, she talked about a recent tailing basin leak that was not reported to the First Nations downstream of it for nine months. In places that used to flood regularly but now don’t, the land is drying out and vegetation disappearing. Though she crisscrosses the park, she has never seen the world’s largest beaver dam, but she’s grateful that it’s there and bringing the park attention.

[fatehbaz]

Indigenous knowledge and food sovereignty on the prairies. Native plants and history of farming in the the northern Great Plains. Maskēko-sākahikanihk (Muskeg Lake Cree Nation), Wipazoka Wakpa Oyate (Sioux Valley Dakota Nation), and Piikani First Nation recent approaches to sustainable food production. Bison grazing and grassland health on Piikani land.

---

Indigenous peoples had lived and farmed the area centuries before European contact. [...]

Melissa Arcand is a soil scientist and associate professor at the University of Saskatchewan, and she grew up on a modern grain farm at Maskēko-sākahikanihk, or Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, north of Saskatoon. [...] Saskatchewan has more farmland than any other Canadian province. [...]

The yard is full of trees, including poplars, spruce and Manitoba maples — the fast-growing hardy species that form a protective wind-break around farm yards across the Prairies. Patricia shows me her vast garden on the south side of the yard. She has corn, squash, sunflowers, carrots, peas, flowers and shrubs of haskap and saskatoon berries. [...]

First Nation grain farmers are rare everywhere. In most cases, farmable land on the dozens of First Nation reserves across the plains of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta is rented out to non-Indigenous farmers who live nearby. That came up as a concern during a forum Arcand organized on Indigenous farming in Saskatchewan in 2018. In forum discussions, attendees resolved to take greater control over farming activities on their lands. [...]

---

Eugene Ross has a slow, soothing voice. [...] Ross is an Elder at Wipazoka Wakpa Oyate, literally “Saskatoon river people”, the Dakota name for Sioux Valley Dakota Nation. It lies at the forks of the Assiniboine and Oak Rivers, 50 kilometres west of Brandon, Manitoba [...].

Entering the plains from the rugged forest landscape of the Canadian Shield feels like dropping through a hatch in the back of a wardrobe. They are completely different worlds. West of the uber-flat Red River Valley, just beyond the town of Austin, the landscape begins to undulate, like a sloppily made bed. From there, the Prairies fold and flatten, roll and settle, in all directions, seemingly forever. Canada has 154 million acres of farmland, according to Statistics Canada’s 2021 census, and 126 million of those are in the Prairie provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba. [...]

“Our Tylenol back in the day,” he says, pointing to Seneca root. From a ceiling hook, Ross takes down a string of white tubers, each about the size of a big toe: wild turnips. [...]

Production of another oilseed relative, Brassica napus, now the most common species on the Prairies, began in the 1940s. [...] In 1978, this improved crop got a new name: canola. Western Canadian farmers now grow canola on more than 20 million acres [...].  Canola is a cool-season crop that thrives in Western Canadian growing conditions. Ross knows a long list of native plants traditionally used for food and medicine that also thrive in the region. While highly unlikely that any will become the next canola, they could underpin a more diverse farming future. [...]

---

You can see Piikani First Nation from the cliff’s edge at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump in southern Alberta. [...] Today that great green sea, whipped by winds from a cascade of buffalo ghosts and bisected by the Old Man River, is Piikani territory. Noreen Plain Eagle is the land manager for Piikani First Nation and its 106,000 acres. [...]

Food sovereignty is a priority. Piikani’s reliance on outside food became acutely clear in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic when food companies, overwhelmed by supply chain issues, could not deliver their usual supply. Piikani nearly ran out of fresh food. It was a call to action for Plain Eagle. “We don’t want to be at the mercy of someone else to provide food to our community,” she says. “We want food sovereignty.” [...]

The next phase is to build a greenhouse at the school to produce a wider variety of vegetables. “We will use it as a hands-on teaching tool for students,” Plain Eagle says. “Terminology will be in the Blackfoot language.” [...] Plain Eagle also has plans to grow corn and potatoes for the community, and to think more strategically about the nation’s small bison herd. “Bison have always been part of our history,” she says, “and we’re learning how they can contribute to our grassland health.” Grasslands need a keystone grazer, like bison or cattle, to keep the grass in check and maintain grassland biodiversity. [...]

---

Text by: Jay Whetter. “The true history of farming on the Prairies.” The Narwhal. 8 October 2022. [Bolded emphasis and italicized first paragraph added by me.]

[rockislandadultreads]

Native American History Month: Fiction Recommendations

And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott

On the surface, Alice is exactly where she thinks she should be: She’s just given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Dawn; her charming husband, Steve - a white academic whose area of study is conveniently her own Mohawk culture - is nothing but supportive; and they’ve moved into a new home in a posh Toronto neighborhood. But Alice could not feel like more of an impostor. She isn’t connecting with her daughter, a struggle made even more difficult by the recent loss of her own mother, and every waking moment is spent hiding her despair from Steve and their ever-watchful neighbors, among whom she’s the sole Indigenous resident. Even when she does have a minute to herself, her perpetual self-doubt hinders the one vestige of her old life she has left: her goal of writing a modern retelling of the Haudenosaunee creation story.

Then, as if all that wasn’t enough, strange things start to happen. She finds herself losing bits of time and hearing voices she can’t explain, all while her neighbors’ passive-aggressive behavior begins to morph into something far more threatening. Though Steve assures her this is all in her head, Alice cannot fight the feeling that something is very, very wrong, and that in her creation story lies the key to her and Dawn’s survival.... She just has to finish it before it’s too late.

Bad Cree by Jessica Johns

When Mackenzie wakes up with a severed crow's head in her hands, she panics. Only moments earlier she had been fending off masses of birds in a snow-covered forest. In bed, when she blinks, the head disappears.

Night after night, Mackenzie’s dreams return her to a memory from before her sister Sabrina’s untimely death: a weekend at the family’s lakefront campsite, long obscured by a fog of guilt. But when the waking world starts closing in, too - a murder of crows stalks her every move around the city, she wakes up from a dream of drowning throwing up water, and gets threatening text messages from someone claiming to be Sabrina - Mackenzie knows this is more than she can handle alone.

Traveling north to her rural hometown in Alberta, she finds her family still steeped in the same grief that she ran away to Vancouver to escape. They welcome her back, but their shaky reunion only seems to intensify her dreams - and make them more dangerous. What really happened that night at the lake, and what did it have to do with Sabrina’s death? Only a bad Cree would put their family at risk, but what if whatever has been calling Mackenzie home was already inside?

Empire of Wild by Cherie Dimaline

Joan has been searching for her missing husband, Victor, for nearly a year - ever since that terrible night they'd had their first serious argument hours before he mysteriously vanished. Her Métis family has lived in their tightly knit rural community for generations, but no one keeps the old ways... until they have to. That moment has arrived for Joan.

One morning, grieving and severely hungover, Joan hears a shocking sound coming from inside a revival tent in a gritty Walmart parking lot. It is the unmistakable voice of Victor. Drawn inside, she sees him. He has the same face, the same eyes, the same hands, though his hair is much shorter and he's wearing a suit. But he doesn't seem to recognize Joan at all. He insists his name is Eugene Wolff, and that he is a reverend whose mission is to spread the word of Jesus and grow His flock. Yet Joan suspects there is something dark and terrifying within this charismatic preacher who professes to be a man of God... something old and very dangerous.

The Seed Keeper by Diane Wilson

Rosalie Iron Wing has grown up in the woods with her father, Ray, a former science teacher who tells her stories of plants, of the stars, of the origins of the Dakhóta people. Until, one morning, Ray doesn't return from checking his traps. Told she has no family, Rosalie is sent to live with a foster family in nearby Mankato - where the reserved, bookish teenager meets rebellious Gaby Makespeace, in a friendship that transcends the damaged legacies they've inherited.

On a winter's day many years later, Rosalie returns to her childhood home. A widow and mother, she has spent the previous two decades on her white husband's farm, finding solace in her garden even as the farm is threatened first by drought and then by a predatory chemical company. Now, grieving, Rosalie begins to confront the past, on a search for family, identity, and a community where she can finally belong. In the process, she learns what it means to be descended from women with souls of iron - women who have protected their families, their traditions, and a precious cache of seeds through generations of hardship and loss, through war and the insidious trauma of boarding schools.

[horns-sheds-claws]

The prairies

the prairies have a huge image problem through no fault of their own. When talking about conservation it’s easy to sell people on preserving areas with mountains, the boreal forest, ocean, rainforests etc. But the prairies have been a tough sell. It’s not because the prairies aren’t beautiful and captivating and important. It’s because so many people don’t even know what an actual prairie is. There’s a good chance when you read prairie you pictures fields of wheat/barley/oats/canola/whatever crops are common to your area. But that’s not a prairie. A prairie is a thriving eco system with a shit ton of bio diversity. It may not look it but it has some of the most bio diversity of any land eco system. It is also one of the best eco systems for sequestering carbon. The absence of much bush should not make an eco system disposable.

This is one of my biggest issues with people advocating for less livestock production in favour of crops. Crops don’t sequester nearly as much as a native grass prairie. But a native grass prairie not only can support livestock but needs grazing animals to thrive. I know we’ve all heard about cows and emissions but what people don’t consider is the amount of emissions being sequestered by allowing these animals to graze an in tact prairie, while also allowing a bio diverse eco system to flourish. Yes there is bad cattlemen out there, just like there’s good ones who care a lot about conservation (despite your notions thay all ranchers/cowboys don’t give a shit about the land). I could continue on about this about how 99% of ranchers care a lot about the welfare of their livestock but that’s a different conversation.

my point is the preservation of prairies are not only an absolutely vital part of protecting bio diversity and in turn helping fight climate change but tue revitalization of these prairies needs to happen too. Currently only 6% of native prairie in North America is in tact (there is tame pasture and prairie which is better than crops but not as good as native plants). Some places are better than others (but nobody is great) like Alberta (26% left), Saskatchewan(21%). But some are absolutely terrible like Iowa and Texas.

prairies are not a barren wasteland waiting for humans to plant crops. They are an amazing and complex eco system just as deserving as the mountains and forests of our protection

[xtruss]

American Oz: The Lakota Ghost Dance and the Massacre at Wounded Knee

How the American drive to force Indian assimilation turned violent on the plains of South Dakota.

— April 16, 2021 | Louis S. Warren | From the Collection: Native Americans

Native Americans performing ritual Ghost Dance. One standing woman is wearing a white dress, a special costume for the ritual dance, 1890. Photo by James Mooney, an ethnologist with US Dept. of Interior. Alamy

Editor’s Note: When L. Frank Baum and other white settlers arrived in Aberdeen, South Dakota in the 1880s, they were entering land that had been part of the homeland of the Western Sioux or Lakota. On the Standing Rock and Pine Ridge reservations west of Aberdeen, conditions were dire for the over 10,000 Lakota living there. In the following excerpt from God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America, Louis S. Warren recounts the Lakota struggle to resist assimilation and survive in the face of violent suppression from the administration of President Benjamin Harrison.

In the west, drought had baked the earth bare. Indian reservations occupied poor land that had little game and few wild plants of any use. In the withering heat, what grass was left by cattle and sheep (most of them owned by white ranchers) quickly shriveled. Scarce game vanished. By 1885, many Indians had turned their hand to farming, but in 1890 their crops wilted. Starvation, that old monster, circled the camps.

It was thus not surprising that some Indians had turned to a new faith. In doing so, Indian believers unwittingly launched upon a collision course with the anxious American public. What swept the West that summer was an evangelical revival that synthesized ancient Indian beliefs with new millenarian teaching. Strange stories made their way from neighbor to neighbor, from one people to the next, stories of distant laughter on the breeze, dead loved ones brought back to life, and an earth again made green and bountiful.

Bison hunting had ceased by the early 1880s, for the animals were nearly extinct. The only survivors of the great herds were living in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, on a few private ranches far to the south or in Canada, and in zoos and traveling Wild West shows. But in 1890, in the midst of the drought, a few of the shaggy beasts appeared suddenly on one of the Sioux reservations in South Dakota. Had the spirits returned their favor? How else could one explain this miraculous event?

Stories like these spread among friends and acquaintances, raising unanswerable questions and inspiring new faith. And all that fall, Indians danced. They danced from the deep Southwest to the Canadian border and into Alberta. They danced from the Sierra Nevada to eastern Oklahoma. They danced in southern Utah, and in Idaho. They danced in Arizona.

In Nevada, a thousand Shoshones danced all night, and as the eastern sky turned pale shouts rang out that the spirits of deceased loved ones were appearing among the faithful. A thousand voices shouted in unison, “Christ has come!,” and they fell to the ground, or perhaps to their knees, weeping and singing and utterly exhausted. Although many had dismissed the springtime talk of a messiah somewhere in the mountains of western Montana, the rumor seemed only to grow over time. From the Southwest to the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming and on into the plains of South Dakota, Indians spoke of a redeemer to the north.

Ghost Dance Drum by George Beaver, wood, rawhide and pigment, late 1890s, Fenimore Art Museum. Public Domain

By the fall of 1890, authorities who read the telegrams and heard the reports had become uneasy. Thirty Indian reservations were transfixed by the prophecies of the Messiah, but the teachings had a particularly enthusiastic following among the Lakota Sioux, also known as the Western Sioux. Because of the relatively recent history of US hostilities with these people—the notorious Sitting Bull was learning the new faith—it was there that government agents soon focused their attentions.

It is almost impossible to overstate how vehement officials and other Americans eventually became over the need to break up the dances. Of all the features of the new ritual that garnered commentary, the physical excitement of the dancers received the most attention. The central feature of the Ghost Dance everywhere was a ring of people holding hands and turning in a clockwise direction—“men, women, and children; the strong and the robust, the weak consumptive, and those near to death’s door,” as one observer described them. Lakotas had grafted onto the Ghost Dance some symbols of their primary religious ritual, the Sun Dance. Thus, Sioux believers felled a tree, often a young cottonwood, and re-erected it at the center of their dance circle. On it they hung offerings to the spirits, including colored ribbons and sometimes an American flag. Near the tree stood the holy men, supervising the event and assembling the believers, who began by taking a seat in the circle around the tree. There was a prayer, and sometimes a sacred potion was passed for participants to drink. Then dancers might together utter “a sort of plaintive cry, which is pretty well calculated to arrest the ear of the sympathetic.” Once these preliminaries were completed, the dancers rose and started singing—unaccompanied, without drums or other instruments—and the circle began to turn.

Astonished and disturbed by the enthusiasms of the ritual, some American witnesses were moved to dire warnings. One agent reported that the Indians favored “disobedience to all orders, and war if necessary to carry out their dance craze.” “The Indians are dancing in the snow and are wild and crazy,” hyperventilated the agent at Pine Ridge. Another denounced the actual dance as “exceedingly prejudicial” to the “physical welfare” of the Indians, who became exhausted by it. “I think, “the agent went on, “steps should be taken to stop it.” Fearful that unconscious women might be molested, one white witness at Pine Ridge claimed that women “fall senseless to the ground, throwing their clothes over their heads, and laying bare the most prominent part of their bodies, viz., ‘their butts’ and ‘things.’” Concluded still another, “The dance is indecent, demoralizing, and disgusting.”

Bird's-eye view of a large Lakota camp of tipis, horses, and wagons--probably on or near Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. Photographer John C. H. Gabriel, 1891. Library of Congress

For these observers, the dance was a physical manifestation of irrationality, a refusal to be governed in body or in spirit by the codes of Victorian decorum handed down from missionaries. In one sense, at least, this view was substantially correct. For the Lakota and for other Indians, however, the Ghost Dance was both strikingly new—even radical—and reassuringly familiar. Ghost Dancers were searching for a new dispensation, seeking to restore an intimacy with the Creator that seemed to have vanished. And for followers, the religion’s key attractions included the chance to worship in a form that reconstituted Indians as a community and expressed their history, families, and identity—in a word, their Indianness. The Ghost Dance invited believers, as one Sioux evangelist put it, to “be Indians” again.

The real "messiah craze" of 1890 was the fixation of Americans on Indian dancing and their relentless compulsion to stop it, and the root of that craze was this American passion for assimilation, which was, after all, every bit as millennial a notion as the Second Coming itself. What more utopian a dream could there be for a rapidly globalizing society riven by fractures of race, culture and class than that a day would come when differences between people had simply disappeared? So it was that, in a show of hostility to physical exaltation reminiscent of the Puritans, policymakers waged war on Indian dances. In 1882 US Secretary of the Interior Henry M. Teller issued new orders to suppress “heathenish dances, such as the sun dance, scalp dance, &c.,” in order to bring Indians into line with conventional Christian practice.

The situation was all the more frustrating because it should have been easy. Indians had practically no power. They held no citizenship and remained federal subjects unable to vote. With no political representatives, they depended on appointed officials—reservation supervisors known as “Indian agents”—for their very survival. Dawes and others believed that education, example, and compulsion could turn Indians into good citizens. If Congress would mandate (and Indians agents would follow) a stern policy of assimilation, surely it would “kill the Indian and save the man,” as one prominent assimilationist put it. Thus would Indians enter the fold of the civilized, pointing the way for millions of immigrants and African Americans and preparing the ground for that glorious day when all dark skins would somehow whiten and racial strife would vanish.

The Ghost dance by the Ogallala [sic] Sioux at Pine Ridge Agency, Frederic Remington, Pine Ridge, S. Dakota, 1890. Library of Congress

For Americans, then, the challenge of assimilation was the great social question whirling at the center of the Ghost Dance of 1890. A millennial enthusiasm for assimilating others, as well as a deep anxiety that they might refuse to be assimilated, explains much of what made the Ghost Dance so troubling. To most white Americans, the dance itself was proof that assimilation had failed to dampen the savage impulse and that America’s irresistible conquest might prove resistible after all. In this light, the dances in South Dakota were more than just dances, and more than another Indian uprising. For Americans, something more, much more, was on the line.

Still, well into the fall of 1890, Ghost dances were nothing more than a curiosity, titillating fare for newspaper readers in distant cities. Although the dances had increased in intensity early in the fall, officials on the scene were mostly unconcerned. As late as the first week of November, only one Indian agent in South Dakota had requested military intervention; the others believed that the dance would die out of its own accord. Most local newspapers carried little to no news of the Ghost Dance.

But on November 13, President Harrison ordered the army into the Sioux reservations to shore up beleaguered officials and prevent “any outbreak that may put in peril the lives and homes of the settlers of the adjacent states.” With one-third of the entire US Army descending on some of the most remote and impoverished communities in the United States, the “Ghost Dance War” quickly became the largest military campaign since Lee’s surrender at Appomattox.

The arrival of columns of soldiers panicked the Indians and, in conjuring the possibility of war, terrified many settlers, who until that moment had not felt threatened. After treating the Ghost Dance mostly as a curiosity, the press now sank to new lows, riveting a considerable portion of the nation’s 63 million people with stories about imminent “outbreaks” by bloodthirsty savages—never mind that fewer than a quarter of a million Indians remained in the United States, and only 18,000 of these were Lakota Sioux. Never mind that there were only about 4,200 Ghost Dancers, and that most of them were children, their mothers, and the very old. The New York Times quoted estimates of 15,000 “fighting Sioux,” and others picked up rumors of an impending Sioux “outbreak.” Some even reported that thousands of armed Indians had surrounded the reservation and killed settlers and soldiers.

Sitting Bull by D F Barry, 1883 Dakota Territory, Public Domain

In mid-December, James McLaughlin, the agent at Standing Rock Reservation (some 275 miles north of Wounded Knee), sent the Indian police to arrest Sitting Bull, the most renowned Lakota chief still living. McLaughlin had long harbored a personal grudge against Sitting Bull. Now, since Sitting Bull had allowed Ghost Dances to take place at his camp, McLaughlin hoped to exploit the Ghost Dance tumult to have him removed from the reservation. When the detachment arrived at Sitting Bull’s home at dawn on December 15 and took him into custody, however, some of Sitting Bull’s enraged followers opened fire, and in the conflagration that followed the police shot the famed chief in the head and chest. The killing of Sitting Bull sent waves of panic and fear across the reservation, and when Lakota Indians there and at other reservations heard the news, they began to crisscross the countryside looking for refuge from the troops.

So it was that on December 28 a starving band of Ghost Dancers who had fled their homes on Cheyenne River Reservation surrendered to Colonel James Forsyth’s Seventh Cavalry at Wounded Knee Creek. The next morning troops upended Sioux lodges in a hunt for weapons. Two soldiers were attempting to seize a weapon from a Lakota man when it discharged. No one was hurt, but it did not matter. The ranks of soldiers opened fire. With four rapid-fire Hotchkiss guns on the edges of the ravine, Custer’s old regiment loosed an exploding shell nearly every second from each of the big guns—and a fusillade of rifle and pistol fire besides—into the mass of mostly unarmed villagers below. Indian men who were not instantly cut down did their best to fend off the troops with a few guns, some knives, rocks, and their bare hands as the ranks of women, children and old people fled up the creek.

Among the Sioux men at Wounded Knee were a handful of the continent’s most experienced close-range fighters, and when the conflict was over, the army did not emerge unscathed. The Seventh left the field with dozens of wounded, and thirty troopers died. The army took thirty-eight wounded Indians with them but left the Indian dead and more of their wounded to the mercy of the Dakota sky. As night fell, winter descended in all its high-country fury. Temperatures dropped far below freezing, and a fierce blizzard howled in from the north. Corpses turned to ice. When soldiers and a burial party returned three days later, they found several wounded Lakotas yet clinging to life and some surviving infants in the arms of their dead mothers. All but one of these babies and most of the others soon succumbed.

Soldiers heaped wagons with the Indian dead, who looked eerily like the haunting plaster casts of the Pompeii victims of Mount Vesuvius, some having frozen in the grotesque positions in which they had hit the ground. Others were curled up or horribly twisted, their hands clawing at the air and mouths agape, each a memorial to the agony of open wounds, smothering cold and the relentless triumph of death. A photographer arrived to take pictures (which immediately became a popular line of postcards).

Big Foot's camp three weeks after the Wounded Knee Massacre with bodies of several Lakota Sioux people wrapped in blankets in the foreground and U.S. soldiers in the background, Dec. 29, 1890. Library of Congress

The gravediggers lowered the bodies of 84 men, 44 women and 18 children into the ground. More had died, but many had been taken by kin or managed to leave the field before dying, perhaps in another camp, or alone on the darkling plain. We can look at old photographs, read crumpled letters and scan columns of crumbling newspaper, but death is final and pitiless, and its tracks soon vanish. We cannot account for all who were killed at Wounded Knee.

Religion is an affair of the heart, but it offers relief and guidance for people living in a hard-edged world. Indians became Ghost Dancers partly in response to changing material conditions that had created an existential crisis. Much of the religion’s allure came from how it addressed a radically shifting material world and helped Indians cope with the Industrial Revolution and its accompanying juggernaut of modernity, the rise of corporate structures to economic dominance in the United States, and the expanding bureaucracy of the state and modern education. The Ghost Dance served the needs of Indians hoping to adjust to life under industrial capitalism in a nation where literacy was key to negotiating courtrooms and the government offices that administered so much of Indian life.

In other words, in the aftermath of American invasion, the Ghost Dance helped believers find ways to negotiate and assert new dimensions of control not only over their own spiritual lives but also over their governance. In this sense, the massacre at Wounded Knee marks a brutal suppression not of naive, primitive Indians but of pragmatic people who sought a peaceful way forward into the twentieth century.

It is testament to its modernity that the religion was not so easily killed. The promise of the Ghost Dance was so great that Indian people carried on its devotions long after Wounded Knee. It survived on the Southern Plains and in Canada well into the twentieth century. In many places, it made lasting contributions to Indian ritual, some of which survive to the present day.

— Louis S. Warren is W. Turrentine Jackson Professor of Western U.S. History at the University of California, Davis, where he teaches the history of the American West, California history, environmental history, and U.S. history. His most recent book, God’s Red Son: The Ghost Dance Religion and the Making of Modern America. His other books include The Hunter’s Game: Poachers and Conservationists in Twentieth-Century America and Buffalo Bill’s America: William Cody and the Wild West Show.

[evergreen-restaurant-banff]

Unforgettable Sojourn at Royal Canadian Lodge with Culinary Delights at Evergreen Restaurant

Located in the center of Banff National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site, the Royal Canadian Lodge is a perfect mix of luxury and nature, rendering visitors a memorable experience. Either you are exploring the perfect splendour of the Canadian Rockies, adventuring into on outdoor sight-seeing or just relaxing, this classy lodge renders the ideal halt for every tourist. However, a paradise for foodies the restaurant assures not just a dining, but also a gastronomic trip that you will linger in mind for a long time.

In this blog post, looks at closely what makes a halt at this lodge so extraordinary, and how the culinary delight at Evergreen Restaurant banff enhances the experience to the higher level.

A Lavish Retreat in Banff At The Royal Canadian Lodge

This lodge is an epitome of countryside fascination and contemporary amenity. Positioned along Banff Avenue, the main road that passes through the town of Banff, the lodge is just at short distance from the town center and many natural charms. The lodge provides a perfect base for sightseeing Banff National Park, rendering convenient approach to legendary milestones like- Lake Louise, Moraine Lake the Banff Gondola etc.

Accommodation that Blends Luxury with Classiness

Visitors at the lodge can select from a range of rooms and suites, all planned with cosiness and unwinding in mind. Each room is stylishly equipped with modern amenities, like- luxury beds, firesides and large windows that makes you to immerse in the splendid sights of the nearby peaks. The warm, earthy hues decoration emanates a cozy, hilly lodge atmosphere, making it the perfect retreat after a day of exploring the great outdoors.

Furthermore, to the lavish rooms, the lodge provides a variety of facilities including an indoor mineral pool, a fully furnished wellness center and a spa that specializes in revitalising cures intended to unwind body and mind both.

But the highlight of your stay at this lodge may very well be the feasting experience at its signature restaurant- Evergreen Restaurant.

Gastronomic Delight at Evergreen Restaurant: A Feast for the Taste Buds

One of the foremost reasons guests speak out about the lodge is the food delight at Evergreen Restaurant. Famous for its novel approach to Canadian delicacy, the restaurant provides a menu that reflects the abundance of the native scenery, highlighting fresh, indigenously obtained materials.

A Celebration of Canadian Cuisines

Evergreen Restaurant is a festivity of the ironic and varied tastes which Canada has to render. The restaurant takes pride in providing delicacies which are not only exquisite to watch, but also choke block with taste. The chefs at Evergreen have prepared a menu that perfectly fuses conventional Canadian flavour with current techniques, creating a feasting experience that feels both familiar and thrilling.

Commence your food journey with a starter like- the Alberta Bison Tartare, a sign to the indigenous wildlife and culture. Skilfully seasoned with aromatic plant and spices, the Bison Trtare is a robust, yet sophisticated delicacy to what Evergreen has to provide. One more dish is the- Seared Quebec Foie Gras served with a seasonal fruit sweet course and artistic toast. The moderate balance of rich, spicy Foie Gras with the sweet and sour dessert of fruit cooked in syrup renders this delicacy a generous delight.

A Display of the Best Indigenous Materials The Main Course

For the main course, restaurant truly excels. The Grilled Alberta AAA Beef Tenderloin is a prominent dish, prepared to precision and served with roasted root vegetables and a decadent red wine sauce. The tenderloin, obtained from the finest farms in Alberta, illustrates the high-quality ingredients the restaurant is famous for.

For seafood fans, the Pan-Seared Atlantic Salmon is another must-try cuisine. Combined with a Lemon Beurre Blanc Sauce and fresh seasonal vegetables, the delicacy matches the seamless equilibrium between lightness and richness. The precision in preparation makes sure that each morsel is brimming with taste, while the stylish serving makes it a feast as a treat to watch.

Those looking for a vegetarian choice too won’t be disheartened either. The Wild Mushroom Risotto is a filling and nutritious dish, prepared with earthy mushrooms, creamy Arborio rice and a subtle flavour of truffle oil for that render additional touch of luxury. The risotto is a testimony to Evergreen Restaurant's promise of offering a different variety of choices for all dietary preferences, without conceding on flavour or quality.

Desserts and Fine Wines to Conclude the Experience

Dining experience at this restaurant would be incomplete without trying in one of their rich, lavish and delicious desserts. The Maple Crème Brûlée is a favourite delicacy of the guests, rendering a uniquely Canadian twist on the typical French sweet course. The browned sugar layer bangs open to expose a silky-smooth custard filled with the sweet and discrete taste of Canadian maple syrup.

The Baked Alaska, another flamboyant dessert, is perfect for those looking to conclude their meal with a touch of amusement. Flambéed Tableside, this dessert pools layers of cake and ice cream encased in a golden meringue, makes both- a delectable and amusing conclusion to your meal.

Couple your meal with a variety from Evergreen’s wide wine list, which features both Canadian and international brands. The restaurant's experienced staff is always there to serve the right wine to pair your meal, making sure that every aspect of your dining delight is perfectly served.

Evergreen Restaurant: More than Just a Meal

Here dining is about more than just eating- it’s about relishing every moment. Either you’re rejoicing a special occasion or simply looking for a unique meal during your stay at the Royal Canadian Lodge, the gastronomic delight at restaurant is certain to leave a long-lasting imprint. The precision, quality of constituents and assurance to offer the best of Canadian food make it a sought-after for any food lover.

Conclusion: A Stay Worth Remembering A stay at the lodge is more than just an escape-it’s an involvement into the natural splendour and food fullness of Banff. Whether you’re enjoying in the striking mountain sights, relishing the lodge's deluxe facilities, or involving in the food delight at Evergreen Restaurant, every moment at this lodge is intended to leave you with unforgettable memories. For those looking for the perfect balance of exploration, unwinding and top-notch dining, this lodge in Banff is the destination you’ve been fantasizing of.

[29goingon40]

I’m sorry that my adding that personal identifier to your feel good post because I personally am from the Canadian (not American) prairies has hurt your feelings. My comment wasn’t trying to take anything away from your thoughts on Kansas. The sentiment and spirit of the post made me nostalgic and I wanted to share your love and appreciation for the variety of prairie experiences. Perhaps I should have added “too” or something to my comment to be more clear, but it was the middle of the night, I was tired, and it never occurred to me that my words were offensive.

Waking up to this message was surprising, I’ll admit. I have a few thoughts in response, in no particular order:

- Are you bothered because I added to the body of the post not just putting it in the hashtags? Because I’m genuinely confused about why it’s upset you so much.

- Technically the “actual proper all-encompassing term for the continent” is North America, but the continent contains three distinctly different countries. (And there is also Central and South America to consider.) Colloquially the world has settled on using the terms “America” and “American” to apply specifically to the middle country of The United States of America and the people there, so using “American” does imply that you were referring just to the USA.

- Canadian and American prairies are not the same. Both physically and culturally. This continent is huge — so even one end of one Canadian prairie province can be noticeably different than the other end. Kansas and Alberta are approximately 2,300 km and more than 10 degrees latitude away from each other. (And I think a different time zone too.) They may look similar at a glance but they have different climates, weather, growing seasons, native plants, etc. (e.g. it is ~5-8C in AB as I write this, and 20C in Topeka). Implying that Alberta/Saskatchewan/Manitoba are the same prairies as Kansas/Oklahoma/Texas (and everything in between) is an inaccurate generalization.

I apologize again that I was unintentionally stepping on your toes (I was attempting brevity instead of over-explaining but that clearly backfired) with my reblog. I will do my best to be more careful with my words on here in the future. I’ll be honest though, your response felt a little out of proportion and kinda condescending — which I hope was not your intent.

If you’d like to compare notes (celebrate/commiserate) about prairie life, and all the differences and similarities between our two grasslands, I’d love that. (People where I live now just don’t understand what it’s like to have so much sky above you all the time.)

If not, I understand and hope your day gets better.

hey are you the american prairies the way that people who don't know you make uncharitable generalizations and assume there's nothing of interest but people who do know you think you're beautiful and unique and defend you fiercely and consider you a vital part of the world

[felidaefatigue]

Some native albertan plant drawins to be turned into lino cuts... this would make.. 17? I think? the alcla seed store where I’m pulling from has... 88...  hah

[granite-avenue]

Pinus Contorta

Pinus contorta, with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine,[2] and contorta pine,[2] is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests to the subalpine, but is rare in lowland rain forests. Like all pines (member species of the genus Pinus), it is an evergreen conifer. …

Uses Construction The common name "lodgepole pine" comes from the custom of Native Americans using the tall, straight trees to construct lodges (tepees) in the Rocky Mountain area.[7] Lodgepole pine was used by European settlers to build log cabins.[7] Logs are still used in rural areas as posts, fences, lumber, and firewood.[7] Shore pine pitch has historically been used as glue.[7]

Tree plantations of Pinus contorta have been planted extensively in Norway, Sweden, Ireland and the UK for forestry, such as timber uses. In Iceland it is used for reforestation and afforestation purposes.[36] It is also commonly used for pressure-treated lumber throughout North America. … Emblem

Lodgepole pine is the provincial tree of Alberta, Canada.[41] …

[kimberlyharrisus]

Countryside Tree Farms & Landscaping Aspen Trees Calgary

Countryside Garden Centre is locally owned and independent garden centre and landscaping company located in De Winton AB. We service Calgary and Okotoks area, plus southern Alberta.Along with our beautiful greenhouse plants, we propagate from seed, graft and grow softwood tissue, from plant material in the chinook zones from native and proven hardy sources. Our hardy plant material has been used in various projects throughout western and southern Alberta and Eastern British Columbia

[facesofcsl]

Bonita Bohnet- Bachelor of Arts, Faculty of Native Studies

Bonita Bohnet (she/her) is Métis and is completing her Bachelor of Arts in the Faculty of Native Studies. She is in her fifth year and final term at the University of Alberta. Bonita has been an intern in the Humanities 101 Program (HUM) within CSL for three years.

Can you trace your involvement with CSL?

When I first became involved with CSL, I participated in the Humanities 101 class in 2019. The Humanities 101 Program offers free, non-credit university education to people who face barriers to post-secondary education by valuing their lived experiences and knowledge. From there, I became a university student. After my first year of university, I interned for Humanities 101 and have been with the program for three years. So, it’s been wonderful being able to do that. Besides my involvement with HUM, I’ve also taken CSL courses within my studies. 

Why did you decide to take your first CSL course?

I took my first CSL course by accident! So, I’m also in the Indigenous Governance and Partnership Certificate, embedded in the Faculty of Native Studies. I took a mandatory course, Colonization and Decolonization, to fulfill the certificate requirements. I was informed that there was a CSL component only once I started the class. It was my first CSL class, and it was great! 

What CSL placements have you completed?

I completed my placement with Métis Crossing while I was enrolled in the Colonization and Decolonization course. We were placed in groups and tasked with creating an interactive activity that could teach people about the different aspects of the Métis Nation of Alberta Constitution. As part of my group, we developed a Geocaching activity, where people can learn about various aspects of the Constitution and Metis history while exploring. Geocaching is like a scavenger hunt. It’s a worldwide activity with an app attached to it. While people are out in nature, they can hide little notes or trinkets and upload the location coordinates to the free app. This included an official kit from Geocaching that included tags and other materials that Métis Crossing could put in their vicinity. People participating in Geocaching can go there and engage with it and feel like, “Oh, there’s something we can customize!” So, that was a fun one, and I enjoyed it. 

Last spring of 2023, I was in the course CSL 370: Special Topics and Community Engagement, Uprooting and Embedding Knowledge. This one was really great, too! We went to various community organizations, from Boyle Street to Kindred House. We also met with Elders, and a lot of our experience was outdoors. It was really about getting to know people and building relationships with those who access and are involved in the services, so it was more relational. We did a lot of gardening, which was related back to the land. For instance, we made seed bombs, planted seeds, walked in the forest, and explored urban gardens.

I am currently in my third CSL course, a capstone course for my certificate in Indigenous Governance in Partnership, and currently completing a placement with the Keewatin Tribal Council in Northern Manitoba. The Tribal Council represents multiple First Nations communities, and they are in the process of starting their land claims and negotiations with the government. We are working with them to form a partnership. They wanted to know about different First Nations governments, the scope of their law-making power, the kinds of government models used, and fiscal relationships. I’m analyzing the Tlicho Nation from the Northwest Territories, in which they are the first First Nations to have a land claim and government settlement. I analyze many documents and articles and prepare briefing notes for them, supporting them to know what other governments have done and what works and doesn’t so that they can better understand the next steps forward. 

What was your favorite CSL placement, and why?

My favorite placement was with the CSL 370 course. Even though we didn’t go to one specific place, I do a lot of relational work, so I liked how it was very community-engaged and outdoors, which recognizes the knowledge gained from working with the earth. I think relational work is significant because the knowledge and creation of collective and community engagement is often forgotten in traditional academia, which tends to focus more on just writing papers. So, I find myself doing a lot of relational work and enjoy it! We visited many places, met many people, and learned their stories. It was great to share knowledge. I really enjoyed this one! 

Did CSL change your ways of thinking about certain things, and how?

My first exposure to CSL, taking the Humanities 101 class in the community, was about the value of one’s lived experiences, collective and collaborative learning, and the opportunity to come and participate without specific prerequisites. That’s what really made me feel like, you know what, even though I don’t have a high school diploma, I do have a lot of knowledge, and I can attend university as well. So, coming to university and being in the Humanities 101 Program and seeing the diversity, lived experiences, and knowledge of so many people has taught me so much. People come to learn from what we facilitate, but I’ve learned so much from them because they have so much knowledge, which is great! That’s really changed how I think about academia. I’ve reflected on questions like whose knowledge is valued? Who is valued? What’s considered knowledge, and how do we get knowledge? 

What was the most important/memorable lesson you learned?

I learned a lot from the people who participated in the Humanities 101 program. They have a wealth of knowledge, and that’s the most memorable lesson I’ve learned. People participating in the Humanities 101 Program are often excluded, ignored, and dismissed by society. They have so much knowledge to offer, and it’s about relationship-building and learning from others. 

How has CSL impacted your academic and/or personal life?

CSL has impacted me academically in terms of what I see as valuable. It's not about being in class and having someone tell you things to memorize. It’s about learning and thinking critically, questioning and challenging things. How I see and engage with the university as a whole has changed. I’ve learned that it’s very exclusive and institutional, which I wasn’t aware of before. When I started working with the Humanities 101 Program and with communities, I got a voice to say that the exclusive nature of traditional academia isn’t serving people, and we need to work toward change. 

Within the Humanities 101 Program, is there an experience or story that stood out to you?

For someone who didn’t have a high school diploma and had barriers and challenges to getting a post-secondary education, going from a participant from HUM to becoming an intern at one level and then switching to a high-level intern, where my experiences and knowledge are valued, gave me a sense of self-worth and inspiration. Somebody once told me that a person from the class remembered me! I was like, what do you mean? They said I was remembered because I was a critical thinker and challenged people. Because of what I was questioning and engaging with people, I became memorable to them. 

 How would you sum up your experience with CSL in one sentence?

CSL has given me the opportunity to learn something new every day. 

[pansy-buttercups]

Western Red Columbines (Aquilegia Formosa)

West Coast Native Flora Wednesday #1

🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙

Western Red Columbines, scientifically known as Aquilegia Formosa (not to be confused with Aquilegia canadensis, which is the wild eastern Columbine), is a 1 meter tall, herbaceous, taprooted perennial that belongs in the family Ranunculaceae (The buttercup family!).These flowers bloom from June to August, so best get your outdoor gear ready for some Columbine photoshoots, but where are they?

Home is where the Red Columbines are (Habitat/Range & Ecology) :

Western Columbines exist ranging all the way from Alaska down the coast to California, and in Canada, it extends to Alberta. These Columbines primarily like their environments moist, beyond that they like a bit of openness and partial shade, but they will grow just about anywhere. In forests is where they seem to most enjoy being, but they also grow in sub-alpine (and alpine) meadows, roadsides, woodlands, beaches, and river banks, just about in damn near any environment.

Surprisingly, despite looking wildly similar and often being mixed up visually, Western Red Columbines and Eastern Wild Columbines have completely different ranges that haven't overlapped ever. So if you live on the west end, you definitely have an Aquilegia Formosa, and if you live on the other end, you've most certainly got an Aquilegia canadensis.

Link for range map of Western Red Columbines (Though its doesnt show the specific regions of each Province/State):

What's in the name? :

Birds play a big part for these plants. Firstly, both the common and scientific name make references to birds! Columbine comes from the Latin word for "dove." because of how the spurs look like a mass of doves gathering around in a circle. The spurs also coincidentally looking like talons led to the name Aquilegia derived from the Latin word for "Eagle." The second part of the scientific name (Formosa) rightfully dubs the plant as " Beautiful" once again in Latin.

(These look like chickens, but i swear they're doves. I just suck at drawing birds <//3 )

Exclusive Pollinators:

Names, however, are not where birds' involvement with these plants ends. In between the 5 brightly hued petals are 5 (Sometimes 4) long modified tubular petals that have become nectarine spurs (for Western columbine, these spurs are straight). Far back inside the spurs, they secrete sweet nectar, which is high in sugar and attractive to many pollinators. In the north, where the flower has slightly shorter spurs, this may be insects like butterflies and hawkmoths. However, in the southern regions, a major pollinator for the longer spurred flowers is hummingbirds! These flowers were believed to have gone through what's called 'Co-evolution' , however, for the columbine and many other long-spured flowers, this is more of a one-sided ordeal. Usually in a co-evolution relationships both parties (Columbine and Hummingbirds) would grow and adapt as a result of the other, Hummingbirds would evolve longer beaks to reach further in the nectar spurs, and the flowers would develop longer spurs. This was however discovered to be NOT what's happening instead it seems only the columbine had grown longer spurs to accommodate the pollinator shift from bees to hummingbirds, and after a while would no longer continue evolving longer spurs.

Regardless, when a hummingbird attempts to drink some nectar, they will end up also bumping their head on the extended stamen of the flower. This along with the jittery movements of the bird will result in pollen being deposited on top of their head and when they go to drink from another columbine they will end up bumping their pollen dusted head against the pistil of the flower effectively pollinating it.

🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙🙘✦🙙

Long story short, Columbines are pretty neat! And if you have any Hummingbird friends (or even some insect friends), you wanna take care of, grow some columbines for them! Instead of putting out those hummingbird feeders that can grow bacteria and ferment, making your buddies sick. I've heard they're quite easy to grow, too, so why not give a shot once the Autum rolls in?

Happy Native Flora Approcating!!!