Calypso bulbosa and associates, Banff National Park, mid-June

Some other plants we enjoyed seeing, these from the boggy shores of Hector Lake...
1) Rubus arcticus ssp. acaulis - one rose-coloured flower is just starting to open amidst the beautiful fresh foliage.
2 - 5) Thought they were violets at first glance... but with a closer look, we realized there were nice little colonies of one of our common insectivorous plants, butterwort, Pinguicula vulgaris, in bloom there too.  The last photo shows the little pale green rosettes that are often the most noticeable feature of this little plant.
6) Pedicularis groenlandica is very attractive even before the charming elephant-head flowers emerge!

A few more to follow tomorrow...

I have always wished to find Calypso bulbosa in the woods here. It is though very uncommon and you have to go far east in Norway (or to Sweden and Russia) to find them. The Norwegian name is "Norne".

Rubus arcticus (Åkerbær) too is a native plant but in the north of Norway. I have never seen this one wild either. A cross between R. arcticus and R. stellatus (R. x stellarcticus) is grown as a garden berry.

The "Tettegras" Pinguicula vulgaris is a common plant here particularly in the mountains. The leaves have been used in milk to "tette melka"  = to make the milk sour and cheese-like (do not know the English term here!).               

Pedicularis is a genus  we often encounter here but not P. groenlandica! A pretty plant!                       

Some scenery and more plants...
1, 2) The highway view of Crowfoot Glacier with Bow Lake in the foreground, and a zoom-in to show small avalanches/sloughs on Crowfoot Glacier
3) Snow at highway elevation at Bow Summit, ~2070m.
4 - 8 ) Just south of Bow Summit, a broad glacial valley - the headwaters of the Bow River, which is just a narrow creek at this point - that contains a rich subalpine meadow with dense growths of Trollius albiflorus, Claytonia lanceolata, and various knee-high Salix (which I am hopeless at identifying!) that were in bloom and just starting to leaf out.
9 - 10) Trollius albiflorus

1 - 3) Claytonia lanceolata
4) Scenery
5 - 8 ) Beautiful Salix catkins - densely white until the colourful stamens/pistils(?) emerge
9-10) These shots show the terrific density of flowers - wonderful!

Great show Lori!  It has been so long since I've been to Calgary in June.  However, I will be there in mid-July!  I am hoping to make a trip to Glacier and the Highway to the Sun (or whatever name it goes by)...should be peak of alpine season then.  Hopefully we will get a chance to meet and have an extended coffee!

Lori... thanks for sharing these super plants with us.
I am greatly enamoured of Calypso bulbosa and the thought of them in any quantity is causing hyperventilation!  :)

M.Y.

You're welcome.  A few last photos...
1) Orchis rotundifolia
2, 3) Petasites spp., just in flower at the boggy edge of Bow Lake
4, 5) Dryas drummondii just starting to flower, in the usual roadside mats
6) Also, the earliest Dryas octopetala...
7) Dodecatheon pulchellum(?) - the only photo of many that turned out!  
8  ) And a final Calypso bulbosa

Lots of nice pictures, Lori! You have once more convinced me that I have to take a long holiday in Canada and look for myself!

Lori, do you grow Dryas drummondii in the garden?  The close-up views of the yellow flowers with red hairs sure look attractive.  have you ever found natural hybrids between it and octopetala?

McDonough wrote:

 The close-up views of the yellow flowers with red hairs sure look attractive.  have you ever found natural hybrids between it and octopetala?

The natural hybrid between D. drummondii and D. octopetala is, of course,
called Dryas x suendermannii and there is a super photo of it here in the NARGS wiki by Todd Boland...
 http://www.nargs.org/nargswiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=453

IMYoung wrote:

McDonough wrote:

 The close-up views of the yellow flowers with red hairs sure look attractive.  have you ever found natural hybrids between it and octopetala?

The natural hybrid between D. drummondii and D. octopetala is, of course,
called Dryas x suendermannii and there is a super photo of it here in the NARGS wiki by Todd Boland...
 http://www.nargs.org/nargswiki/tiki-browse_image.php?imageId=453

That is a super photo that Todd took and posted to the NARGS photo galleries (reminds me, I should be doing the same, posting to the gallery).  Maggi, thanks for jogging my memory, it was easier to say drummondii and octopetala hybrid as I was drawing a blank on the natural hybrid name... been sniffing too many alliums ;D 

Mark, I only grow D. octopetala in the garden at present.  I've never seen anything in the wild that I suspected to a be hybrid between the two... but, heck, I only just noticed D. integrifolia last summer (I think!?), so there's no telling whether I'd even recognize a hybrid between the other species!  ???  In the areas where we hike, the two species usually seem to be separated by a considerable elevation range... though I suppose if bees travel miles, it's certainly possible for hybrids to occur.  Roadsides, into the higher elevations, seem to bring the two species into proximity, though.
At any rate, hybrids between D. octopetala and D. drummondii aren't noted in Flora of Alberta, for whatever reason.  It is noted that hybridization occurs between D. octopetala and D. integrifolia here, though.

Back tracking a bit but wanted to say how much I enjoyed seeing your pictures of Calypso bulbosa, Lori.  Coming from Victoria, BC, have wanted to grow some of the plants from out that way for quite a while - such as C. bulbosa and the native Dogwood (different from the eastern Cornus florida).  Did bring home the little orchid in a pot one time (a cousin owned a woodlot where it grew) and almost got it flowering until the emerging bud was cruelly cut down by a miserable cutworm.  However, I'm on my way out to Victoria next week and am still looking??  Another cousin told me of a Calypso bulbosa website in Mendocino county, California.  They export the seed ($20 including shipping and handling for 300 seeds) - no phyto required.  There are instructions about its propogation.  Also remember bringing home some of the very special Dias orchids in agar, bought quite cheaply from Kirstenbosch Garden in Capetown.  But, unfortunately, no luck.  I think they are "fire friendly" plants.  The people at Fraser's Thimble Farm on Saltspring Island told my cousin they don't carry it as it is too difficult to propagate.  Fran

I know that Calypso bulbosa would be very difficult to grow from seed unless you have the mycorrhizal fungi and sometimes multiple types that it has to have in the protocorm tissue for the seed to sprout.
Most Calypso bulbosa are wild dug and will perish unless you can keep the Mycorrhiza alive. They grow in the Pacific Coast mountains all over and flower from March-June depending on elevation.

Mark: don't know if you will check this stale thread or not...but I noticed you asking about Dryas drummondii: Laporte Avenue Nursery sells this, and I have grown it for years. It has produced its nodding yellow flowers for me. I don't think it's much harder to grow than typical D. octopetala.

I have also grown the hybrid, although I don't have it currently. I'm surprised both of these aren't grown more often. I suspect they aren't better known because they need to grow in the ground (they have massive roots) rather than pots, ergo: absent from alpine houses...

Kelaidis wrote:

Mark: don't know if you will check this stale thread or not...but I noticed you asking about Dryas drummondii: Laporte Avenue Nursery sells this, and I have grown it for years. It has produced its nodding yellow flowers for me. I don't think it's much harder to grow than typical D. octopetala.

Thanks Panayoti, whenever I get back into a plant buying mode, I'll check it out at Laporte, along with a bushel load of other plants on my growing want list. :D

Nice outing, Lori, and nice to be able to share it with your sister :)
Calypso is not rare here, but not common either, though not forming large patches generally, probably since it favours semi damp mixed wood spots which are unstable (growing over and becoming too shady, short lived trees falling, etc)..
So I was very impressed to see this clump (Many of you have seen this, but I thought I'd post it here for anyone who hasn't) , also in Banff National Park, close to Lake Louise, just off the road (visible from a roadside pullout); May 30, 2009; unlike plants here, this was growing at the edge of Pine woods (if I am remembering correctly! coniferous trees, at any rate..) with almost no undergrowth to compete with.. It would seem like  a dry place (under the conifers), except for probably heavy snowfall and generally higher precip than here..

Cohan, a gorgeous clump of Calypso bulbosa, something I hope to encounter in the wild some day.  Looks like there are two varieties in North America, and var. americana comes very close to the little State of Massachusetts based on the USDA plant profile page and distribution map.
http://plants.usda.gov/java/profile?symbol=CABU

A very nice one to see by the roadside, Cohan, and a spectacular clump!

The montane forest around Lake Louise is truly full of them and at incredible density... imagine a density like the clump you show but going for kilometers along the trails!! 
We were a little too early when my sister and I visited (as I realized later, it was a verrrrry late spring in most of the mountain areas that we visit)... I may try to time it a little better this year.

Wow, Cohan. 

That is amazing.  I always wonder how they'd do here, given our Pterostylis and other terrestrial orchids.  Few of ours ever put up a show nearly as impressive as that. :o

Thanks for showing us.

I have a dream - or rather two (at least): 1) to find a clump of Calypso bulbosa in the woods (it is extremely rare in Norway, a little commoner in Sweden); and 2) establish a little clump in my own woodland!

Thanks, all--this was a very short and impromptu stop-there was road work going on nearby, and so the little booth to check park passes (of drivers heading from Lake Louise along the Icefields parkway toward Jasper)was temporarily ( I think) stuck at this little roadside pullout, so we drove along this very short road, which we might not otherwise have done; driving in, I saw some pinky purple something on the edge of the gravel at the mouth of the road (turned out to be a great little pea--Astragalus or similar), and then farther on, I saw flashes of such bright pink in the edge of the woods that my first thought was that there was some plastic garbage blown in there!
Needless to say I requested a stop, ran back to see the pea and the pink turned out to be this fantastic orchid!
Lori, this was just the end of May, but I imagine there could be a couple weeks variation in bloom time depending on snow melt, plus this was likely an extra sunny/early spot. We didn't get any farther off the  road there, but did go in a bit at Hector Lake not too far away, and I did see some tantalising things in bud, seemed early there to see much...
Trond--I've been hoping for a seedpod on this one plant I have found near my house (historically, I knew several small patches on the farm, but have not been able to find any plants in any of them on moving back here), but I think it may be too far from any other flowering plants--no seeds in the last few years..
here's an album from that day in the woods on the farm behind my house:
https://picasaweb.google.com/cactuscactus/May262010NorthernSpringCalypso#
Its very funny, this album from May 26 shows spring flowers, as does May 30, and May 28 shows gree trees along the road-- May 29 shows a snowstorm, and everything is white!