People most often climb New England’s high mountains seeking grand views from their treeless summits. But even on the cloudiest days, when the big views are obscured, there are exquisite sights to be seen there.
They are close at hand; all you have to do is look down.
At your feet above timberline on New England’s highest mountains are alpine meadows, a botanical realm similar to the vast areas of tundra that normally exist hundreds of miles to the north – in the area of Hudson’s Bay and northern Labrador.
On a recent summer day, Dave Hardy, Field Operations Director for the Green Mountain Club, and two botanists led a group of students to the summit of Mount Mansfield in Vermont for a day of getting acquainted with the plants of the alpine meadows. The students were being trained as summit caretakers, and part of their job will be protecting the alpine plants and helping hikers understand them.
Bob Popp, Vermont state botanist, stood in front of a low-lying, green hummock about a foot across. “This is the quintessential alpine plant in Vermont – diapensia,” he said. “You can see alpine bilberry is competing with it here.”
Sure enough, a closer look showed that small sprigs of bilberry were poking up through the mat of heavy diapensia leaves. But there were also tiny new patches of diapensia nearby – probably young plants seeded by the older ones.
“That’s great to see,” Popp said.
Technically referred to by botanists as alpine flora, diapensia and other small plants that inhabit the harsh world above timberline are remnants of the years following the ice age. When the last glaciers melted away from northern New England, life returned to the ice-scoured landscape, carpeting our region with tundra – a complex of small, low-lying plants adapted to chilly temperatures and frozen ground. Even as New England warmed and trees returned, descendants of those earlier tundra plants remained on the highest mountain tops, where weather conditions still resemble those of the far north.
The largest alpine meadow in New England is the huge expanse of treeless territory above timberline in the Presidential Range of the White Mountains. Katahdin in northern Maine also has a large alpine meadow surrounding its summit, and there are smaller alpine meadows on other peaks in the White Mountains, Green Mountains, and Adirondacks.
We normally associate meadows with grass. But what appear to be meadows of waving grass high on the peaks of the Presidentials, Mount Mansfield, and elsewhere are actually stands of Bigelow’s sedge or highland rush. Summit caretaker Annie Bellerose has to keep a sharp eye on one particular sedge meadow near the summit of Mount Mansfield, which she said is so tempting that hikers and tourists regularly decide to go running through it.
“I call it the ‘Sound of Music’ meadow,” she said, laughing.
Her job is to keep people off the delicate sedges and other alpine plants, which can be easily damaged by wandering hikers or dogs.
Like plants everywhere, the plants of the alpine zone group together in communities that are defined by conditions of weather and terrain – diapensia communities, for example, are usually located high up in the most exposed and windswept areas, while snowbank communities, which have a taller and more vulnerable set of plants, are usually located in slight depressions protected by long-lasting snowbanks.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the plants of the alpine meadows is their striking adaptations for surviving in the harsh environment in which they live. The small leaves of Labrador tea, for example, are thick, pliant, and equipped with wooly hairs on their underside – adaptations that protect the leaves and allow them to soak up and retain as much moisture from the atmosphere as possible.
Also, the small size and low-growing shape of many alpine plants helps shield them from wind and weather. Some can even begin the necessary work of growth and photosynthesis at temperatures barely above freezing, much cooler than temperatures required by lowland plants.
Botanists fear that global warming is already changing these high-altitude communities and could eliminate them altogether, as trees and other competing plants move up the mountain’s slopes, aided by warming temperatures.
If that should happen, we would lose not only the large views and fascinating small plants above treeline but also spots of delicate beauty as well. Toward the end of their Mansfield trip, the group of young summit caretakers gathered around a small bog on the summit ridgeline. Bog cranberry happened to be in bloom that day, and the tiny, pink blossoms of the plant were scattered like pink confetti across the dark green moss of the little bog. Above them the white wispy blossoms of cottongrass bobbed and waved in the wind.
It was yet another reminder of how lovely – and how fragile – these high-altitude alpine meadows actually are.