Ontario Field Biology: Saskatchewan Pt. III: Prairie Flora

The prairie flora of Southern Saskatchewan, what can I say? Like a kid in a candy shop...a kid that was regularly making reference to the Pot of Gold chocolate map in the form of Wildflowers Across the Prairies by Vance, Jowsey and McLean. I knew that making that purchase at a used book sale years back would pay off! The technical reference on hand was Budd's Flora of the Canadian Prairies, an authoritative guide to the flora of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. I get a kick out of the photo of Archibald Budd in the introduction and the line:

"A prize of 250 pounds for winning a limerick contest made it possible for Mr. Budd to emigrate to Canada in 1910 as a land seeker".

You can't make this stuff up! Also, on the topic of great botanist photos, I gotta get a copy of this.

If you click the Budd's Flora link, there's a download option to the left, yeah it's a 62.3MB file, but it's also $150 on Amazon. Anyways, these are the two resources I would recommend.

Here's a selection of photos I took, enjoy!

Hoary Sagebrush (Artemisia cana ssp. cana) and Prairie Cone-flower (Ratibida columnifera).

Laxmann's Milk-vetch (Astragalus laxmannii var. robustior)

Blue Grama (Bouteloua gracilis) alongside an unidentified Yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Saskatchewan Conservation Data Centre recognizes 4 varieties of A. millefolium.

White Prairie-clover (Dalea candida var. candida).

Purple Prairie-clover (Dalea purpurea var. purpurea).

Tufted Fleabane (Erigeron caespitosus).

Yellow Umbrella-plant (Eriogonum flavum var. flavum). The second photo shows the variation in bloom colour.

Great-flowered Gaillardia (Gaillardia aristata).

Prairie Smoke (Geum triflorum). Listed in the SCDC list as 'Old Man's Whiskers'.

Wild Licorice (Glycyrrhiza lepidota).

Here's Derek out standing in his field. This reminds me of a great story from the trip. Derek and I found ourselves 3 to 4km from a road at one point checking out a small lake I believe it was. The clouds on the horizon had made a quick turn from grey overcast to 'get the *#^@ out of here' dark. Feeling like our one-in-a-million odds of being hit by lightning might be a little closer to one-in-a-hundred, we walked among a bunch of grazing cattle to our rental Mitsubishi Outlander (yeah, you get looks driving one of those in rural Saskatchewan).

We get moving, albeit slowly to avoid the cattle which probably wanted to get out of that field too, only to hear a loud gushing PSSSSHHHHHHH!!! Flat tire. The front wheel is smack dab on a half-buried rusty farming implement. Gauging the skies we figure we can get the spare on in time. Backing off the rusty metal spike...PSSSSSSHHHHHH!!! Not the sound you want to hear. Two flat tires, middle of nowhere, surrounded by cattle peering in the window, skies looking kind of like that urban skyline scene in Ghostbusters when things really get bad.

So, we swap the front tire out for the spare to maintain the ability to steer, Derek drives slowly, and I walk alongside the vehicle minding the rocks (and cow patties) to ensure that our rim (which now has a shitty, blown out tire flopping around it) at least doesn't run up on a rock. Leaving our bovine friends behind we make it to the gravel road.

We call a farmer we had spoke with the day before in hopes that we can get a ride to the Co-op in Wood Mountain where we were staying (population 20, well 22 I guess). It turns out, the most-well known fellow in town had passed away a few days prior and in that town of about a hundred people, pretty much everyone was at the funeral including the farmer. He was however able to send a local guy out and told us to sit tight. We waited 20 minutes, found out that a new tire would have to be shipped down from Swift Current, 200km away, and watched as the raindrops fell steady on the windshied. We sat in our beat up Outlander until an old F-150 came up over the hill. It was our guy and he told us to hop in, he'd take us back into town. He was a friendly guy, was really interested in what we were doing and assured us that the Co-op could get a tire for us by that night and we'd be back in action the next morning. That is if we made it.

It was somewhere between the guy talking about smoking locoweed as a kid (a toxic prairie legume which occurs throughout the area), me noticing the cast on his right arm, him driving 130km/hr on soft, narrow, hilly, curving gravel roads, or the fact that he would look back to Derek in the back seat for 5 seconds at a time to maintain eye contact in conversation all the while maintaining his pace down the road....that my right hand clenched the door just a little bit.

Back into town in what should have taken a much longer amount of time, I could let go of the planning that I had done to ready myself for impact. Standing in the parking lot of the Co-op we thanked the guy as he sped away. We looked at each other wide-eyed, got our tire order settled and headed to Sherri's Whiskey Bar for a burger and a Pilsner, a deep breath, and to let our heart rates slow just a bit.

Silvery Lupine (Lupinus argenteus).