{"id":5624,"date":"2015-02-18T08:20:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-18T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=5624"},"modified":"2015-02-18T08:20:55","modified_gmt":"2015-02-18T15:20:55","slug":"rare-plants-often-overlooked-among-parks-wonders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/02\/rare-plants-often-overlooked-among-parks-wonders\/","title":{"rendered":"Rare plants often overlooked among park’s wonders"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Verbana\"<\/a>

National Park Service photo<\/p>

Yellowstone sand verbana is found only along the shores of Yellowstone Lake.<\/p><\/div>\n

Gift shops in and around Yellowstone National Park are filed with postcards, videos and guidebooks featuring grizzly bears and gray wolves. But you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a photograph\u2014or even a passing mention\u2014of three much rarer species found only in Yellowstone.<\/p>\n

Thanks in part to unique microclimates created by the park\u2019s hot springs, fumaroles and other thermal features, Yellowstone is the only place on earth where you\u2019ll find Ross\u2019s bentgrass, Yellowstone sand verbena and Yellowstone sulfur wild buckwheat.<\/p>\n

But most visitors to the park will never see these obscure plants.<\/p>\n

Roy Renkin, Yellowstone\u2019s vegetation management specialist, said that \u201cplants are taken for granted here, mostly because they\u2019re not as showy\u201d as a baby bison, bugling elk or even a leaping trout.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut they\u2019re important,\u201d Renkin said, describing not just the three species that grow only in relatively small sections of the park, but more widespread flora like whitebark pine.<\/p>\n

According to Yellowstone Resources and Issues Handbook, Yellowstone is home to more than 1,300 species of vegetation\u2014an amazingly diverse array of hardy plants that were able to repopulate the park after glaciers, lava flows and other cataclysmic changes.<\/p>\n

That includes hundreds of different wildflowers, but also seven species of conifers and 218 non-native species.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a history why they\u2019re here, and trying to understand them opens a wealth of information,\u201d Renkin said of Yellowstone\u2019s many plant species. \u201cSo it behooves us to pay attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike prowling animals, vegetation stays put, making rare plants easier to find and photograph. But most visitors aren\u2019t interested in taking even a short hike to view, for instance, Yellowstone sand verbena<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Endemic to Yellowstone, the nondescript plant has sticky green leaves and small white flowers that rarely extend beyond three inches above the sandy soils where it is found.<\/p>\n

Yellowstone sand verbena grows only on a 1.5-acre spot along the shore of Yellowstone Lake, not too far from a popular hiking trail, Renkin said. The plant thrives in warm soil, which may mean that it is aided by the park\u2019s peculiar thermal environment.<\/p>\n

Ross\u2019s bentgrass<\/a>, which grows just a few inches tall and flowers in early spring, is found only around geysers and thermal features in the Shoshone Geyser Basin and along the Firehole River drainage.<\/p>\n

The plant grows only at \u201cvapor dominated sites\u201d like cracks in thermal areas or the walls of hot springs. Ross\u2019s bentgrass requires just the right combination of warmth and moisture, conditions described by botanists as a \u201cnatural greenhouse.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yellowstone sulfur buckwheat<\/a> grows only in the geyser basins along the west side of the park. Most of the more than 250 wild buckwheat varieties grow in dry areas of the Rocky Mountains. Taxonomists are still debating how different Yellowstone\u2019s specific variety is from other wild sulfur buckwheats, Renkin said.<\/p>\n

Renkin said none of Yellowstone\u2019s vegetation is listed as a threatened or endangered species, but managers have the option to close trails or curtail human activities that might be detrimental to endemic plants.<\/p>\n

In 2011, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service determined<\/a> that protection under the Endangered Species Act was warranted for the whitebark pine, found above 7,000 feet across much of Yellowstone and in other areas across the Rocky Mountains. But the species was precluded from listing \u201cby the need to address other listing actions of a higher priority,\u201d the agency said.<\/p>\n

Important as a food source for grizzly bears and in controlling erosion by slowing runoff from melting snow, whitebark pine faces threats from fire, climate change, the mountain pine beetle and white pine blister rust, a fungus that reduces the tree\u2019s resistance to beetles.<\/p>\n

Despite its importance across the region, more research is needed to determine how whitebark pine trees are established among rival lodgepole pines, particularly after wildland fires, Renkin said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are some real information gaps relative to whitebark pine here in the Yellowstone ecosystem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

After decades working in Yellowstone, Renkin said he is always impressed<\/a> with how the landscapes recovers after fires, changes in waterways and reclamation from past development.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s really dramatic what happens when you let Mother Nature express herself,\u201d Renkin said. \u201cIt\u2019s amazing how resilient she can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Contact Ruffin Prevost at 307-213-9818 or ruffin@yellowstonegate.com.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gift shops in and around Yellowstone National Park are filed with postcards, videos and guidebooks featuring grizzly bears and gray wolves. But you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a photograph\u2014or even a passing mention\u2014of three much rarer species found only in Yellowstone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":5625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[2121,2119,2120,2118,119],"class_list":["post-5624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-firehole-river","tag-roy-renkin","tag-shoshone-geyser-basin","tag-u-s-fish-and-wildlife-service","tag-yellowstone-national-park","prominence-category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}