Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2015 13:02:00 GMT -8
Mountain Mahogany Shrub Forests in the Rockies
The species and variation in my area and much of Wyoming and Montana is:
Alderleaf Mountain Mahogany, a member of the Rose Family, Rosaceae[/ul]
You don't like the shrub forests of mountain mahogany. They were never your favorite. You'd rather see them from the road as you drive further up into the mountains. They are just a marginal zone you want to get past. You want the clear cold water and bare rock of the alpine — not this tangled up mess of the foothills. Any self-respecting trail would skirt them or cut through them. Better yet, the trailheads would simply be high above them. You want mountains over 10,000 feet, not their mere foothills at 5,000 or 6,000 feet.
In some locations, the mountain mahogany forms an occasional thicket. But in others, it forms a dense shrub forest that stretches for miles along the lower slopes of the mountain range. You see this dense shrubbery as a broad, inhospitable transition zone to more pleasant areas at higher elevation. Why mess with it? There's nothing to see. There's nothing to photograph. There's no glory to it at all.
Without an established trail or road, these shrub-lands can be a big problem to any sort of travel. It would take a bulldozer or army tank to get through them, and you're not so sure that would succeed. On foot they are just a tangled-up maze of intertwining branches that snag clothing with nearly every step. Maybe waist-high, maybe head-high, maybe taller than that. They are an endless challenge to even you, the off-trail bushwhacker.
Yes, you've done your share of bushwhacking. But in trying to penetrate these areas, you're less the one doing the whacking than the one being whacked. You can whack back in retaliation, but it is futile and frustrating. The mountain mahogany is a foe that is never discouraged and never defeated. It leaves you scratched and your clothes torn. Wearing like battle scars the tattered trademark of the shrubs, you've become the bushwhacker who finally met his match.
You're barely above the desert, hardly beyond the steppes. This is what roads and cars were made for — to get you past this mess. But it's a mess mixed with juniper and ponderosa pine, chaparral-like forests in a foothills transition zone progressing toward a conifer forest — progressing through a quagmire of snagging bushes.
That elevation is your goal, also. With a few hundred feet elevation rise the juniper and ponderosa pine begin to dominate, the hoard of mountain mahogany subsides, and small grassy clearings appear with the conifer forest. But not yet, not for you.
To make progress toward that elevation gain, you need to see where you are going. But you cannot even climb a hill to see over the bushes. That hill itself is too overgrown with the same shrubs to offer any help. You can't see forward up there any better than you can see forward down here. The bushes are ten feet high. So any view of a more simple route is blocked from sight. And you've been punished with a useless climb when you were merely trying to see a route through the maze of shrubbery.
So why hike here? There is rarely any water and route-finding is a big chore. And even if you find a more simple route, you'll never remember it for another time — even if you wanted to turn around and go back to where you started. Where are you, anyhow?
You're alone. The shrub forests have given you solitude — solitude in which to live or solitude in which to die. "No one goes here," you could say. Why would they? The mountain mahogany shrub forests have a wildness of their own — absent any trace of human activity, past or present. But for good or bad, the wildlife is there. Elk, mule deer, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, porcupine, rabbits, turkey and hawks — all seem right at home. But you are not. And with them are hosts of smaller mammals, reptiles, and birds. They live here. You don't, and your friends don't. Why would you? There's nothing here for you.
The soil is rocky, the grass grows tall in its allotted space. So too with many herbs. Blueberries carpet a box canyon, wild rose leaves its fruit, and junipers hold up abundant berries for the birds. So mule deer browse the lower elevations. Elk and whitetail roam a bit higher. And keeping both under watchful eye is the mountain lion finding ample cover for his stealthy ways or the coyote and bobcat choosing smaller fare from turkey to rabbits or other rodents. And somehow they are moving around this incorrigible shrub forest.
But how do those animals know where they are going? Deep into this mess of shrub-land you find a hundred feet of trail appearing out of nowhere. It passes through a gap in a heavily shrubbed series of mounds and disappears on each side. You find no route leading to the trail or away from it. But somehow there is an odd consensus among the animals that they follow the easiest route through. You find tracks of deer, elk, and mountain lion prints perhaps a day old. All pass through the gap. It's as if nature has funneled their movements through a gap in shrub-land hills and just as suddenly dispersed those animals on the other side.
But among that wildlife, there is rarely consensus strong enough to leave such a bare trail. You never see another. But that's just it: you have eyes, but they have noses. Perhaps their "trails" are the scents you cannot detect. Though the wildlife must be well-rehearsed at finding the easier route through the maze of shrubbery, they are often distracted to the side of that route by the garden of foods that populate their home.
Maybe along a ridge line, if you look carefully, the wildlife has favored a route, perhaps at the ridge crest, perhaps along a sun-ward slope where the snows melt first in winter. You know that in winter and early spring it does indeed snow here, leaving by March or April a snowpack perhaps two feet deep — wherein various resident species leave signature of their passing. That you can see — even when you cannot, like them, sniff a smell.
How poorly adapted to the wildlands is the small, human nose!
Mahogany from larger trees is a wood grain associated with fine furnishings, the careful work of a craftsman's hand. Even the word "mahogany" sounds elegant and expensive. But in the Western foothills, the mountain cousin seems a nuisance, an anarchist, an outlaw. Like the notorious black sheep of a distinguished family, it seems such a recurrent rabble-rouser — bearing a fine name.
But nature knows no such distinction. That which is wild and inhospitable also has a sophistication of its own. And you? Why would you ever hike such places?
USDA Plants Database
US Forest Service
Photo of Mountain Mahogany near Alpine
Photo
The species and variation in my area and much of Wyoming and Montana is:
Alderleaf Mountain Mahogany, a member of the Rose Family, Rosaceae[/ul]
You don't like the shrub forests of mountain mahogany. They were never your favorite. You'd rather see them from the road as you drive further up into the mountains. They are just a marginal zone you want to get past. You want the clear cold water and bare rock of the alpine — not this tangled up mess of the foothills. Any self-respecting trail would skirt them or cut through them. Better yet, the trailheads would simply be high above them. You want mountains over 10,000 feet, not their mere foothills at 5,000 or 6,000 feet.
In some locations, the mountain mahogany forms an occasional thicket. But in others, it forms a dense shrub forest that stretches for miles along the lower slopes of the mountain range. You see this dense shrubbery as a broad, inhospitable transition zone to more pleasant areas at higher elevation. Why mess with it? There's nothing to see. There's nothing to photograph. There's no glory to it at all.
Without an established trail or road, these shrub-lands can be a big problem to any sort of travel. It would take a bulldozer or army tank to get through them, and you're not so sure that would succeed. On foot they are just a tangled-up maze of intertwining branches that snag clothing with nearly every step. Maybe waist-high, maybe head-high, maybe taller than that. They are an endless challenge to even you, the off-trail bushwhacker.
Yes, you've done your share of bushwhacking. But in trying to penetrate these areas, you're less the one doing the whacking than the one being whacked. You can whack back in retaliation, but it is futile and frustrating. The mountain mahogany is a foe that is never discouraged and never defeated. It leaves you scratched and your clothes torn. Wearing like battle scars the tattered trademark of the shrubs, you've become the bushwhacker who finally met his match.
You're barely above the desert, hardly beyond the steppes. This is what roads and cars were made for — to get you past this mess. But it's a mess mixed with juniper and ponderosa pine, chaparral-like forests in a foothills transition zone progressing toward a conifer forest — progressing through a quagmire of snagging bushes.
That elevation is your goal, also. With a few hundred feet elevation rise the juniper and ponderosa pine begin to dominate, the hoard of mountain mahogany subsides, and small grassy clearings appear with the conifer forest. But not yet, not for you.
To make progress toward that elevation gain, you need to see where you are going. But you cannot even climb a hill to see over the bushes. That hill itself is too overgrown with the same shrubs to offer any help. You can't see forward up there any better than you can see forward down here. The bushes are ten feet high. So any view of a more simple route is blocked from sight. And you've been punished with a useless climb when you were merely trying to see a route through the maze of shrubbery.
So why hike here? There is rarely any water and route-finding is a big chore. And even if you find a more simple route, you'll never remember it for another time — even if you wanted to turn around and go back to where you started. Where are you, anyhow?
You're alone. The shrub forests have given you solitude — solitude in which to live or solitude in which to die. "No one goes here," you could say. Why would they? The mountain mahogany shrub forests have a wildness of their own — absent any trace of human activity, past or present. But for good or bad, the wildlife is there. Elk, mule deer, coyotes, mountain lions, bobcats, porcupine, rabbits, turkey and hawks — all seem right at home. But you are not. And with them are hosts of smaller mammals, reptiles, and birds. They live here. You don't, and your friends don't. Why would you? There's nothing here for you.
The soil is rocky, the grass grows tall in its allotted space. So too with many herbs. Blueberries carpet a box canyon, wild rose leaves its fruit, and junipers hold up abundant berries for the birds. So mule deer browse the lower elevations. Elk and whitetail roam a bit higher. And keeping both under watchful eye is the mountain lion finding ample cover for his stealthy ways or the coyote and bobcat choosing smaller fare from turkey to rabbits or other rodents. And somehow they are moving around this incorrigible shrub forest.
But how do those animals know where they are going? Deep into this mess of shrub-land you find a hundred feet of trail appearing out of nowhere. It passes through a gap in a heavily shrubbed series of mounds and disappears on each side. You find no route leading to the trail or away from it. But somehow there is an odd consensus among the animals that they follow the easiest route through. You find tracks of deer, elk, and mountain lion prints perhaps a day old. All pass through the gap. It's as if nature has funneled their movements through a gap in shrub-land hills and just as suddenly dispersed those animals on the other side.
But among that wildlife, there is rarely consensus strong enough to leave such a bare trail. You never see another. But that's just it: you have eyes, but they have noses. Perhaps their "trails" are the scents you cannot detect. Though the wildlife must be well-rehearsed at finding the easier route through the maze of shrubbery, they are often distracted to the side of that route by the garden of foods that populate their home.
Maybe along a ridge line, if you look carefully, the wildlife has favored a route, perhaps at the ridge crest, perhaps along a sun-ward slope where the snows melt first in winter. You know that in winter and early spring it does indeed snow here, leaving by March or April a snowpack perhaps two feet deep — wherein various resident species leave signature of their passing. That you can see — even when you cannot, like them, sniff a smell.
How poorly adapted to the wildlands is the small, human nose!
Mahogany from larger trees is a wood grain associated with fine furnishings, the careful work of a craftsman's hand. Even the word "mahogany" sounds elegant and expensive. But in the Western foothills, the mountain cousin seems a nuisance, an anarchist, an outlaw. Like the notorious black sheep of a distinguished family, it seems such a recurrent rabble-rouser — bearing a fine name.
But nature knows no such distinction. That which is wild and inhospitable also has a sophistication of its own. And you? Why would you ever hike such places?
USDA Plants Database
US Forest Service
Photo of Mountain Mahogany near Alpine
Photo
