Along Rallarvegen, Norway

[Hoy]

Wonderful pictures and plants Hoy, thank you.

My pleasure, thank you!

[Hoy]

It will take me a while to catch up with everything here Trond but I'm glad I've browsed your thread first - a bit of snow is not bad, especially when dressed well and keep moving, while when too hot there is nothing that can be done....I thought about this when hiking in Dobrogea (Romania) in late July under 40C. I definitely prefer the snowy option.
Very nice landscapes, as usual

Gabriela,

I am looking forward to your report! And I agree: Hot weather is more difficult to do anything about

[Hoy]

Hi Trond,

It looks like a very interesting journey.The treeline in southern New Zealand is about 1100 metres so is comparable to Norway. I think our mountains are more rugged on the whole so there a lack of railways through them.

I guess all plants are native to somewhere; I am very familiar with Ranunculus acris as a pasture weed so I hope it is appreciated in its native home. (the same might be said for dandelions). Apart from that a very interesting flora especially the dwarf willows.

David,

Ranunculus acris is also a weed!

The mountains of Norway is very variable. The Hardangervidda where these pictures are from is a plateau, once (600 mill years ago) a peneplane at sea level or below. The Caledonian Orogeny lifted the peneplane and tilted it also. The highest mountains are in west (and NW), and they are also more rugged and alpine. The 20km long Flåm railway goes through a very steep valley from sea level at Flåm and up to Myrdal at 867m where it connects to the Bergen-Oslo railway. I have no pictures of this valley but the neighbour valley Aurlandsdalen.


Aurlandsdalen. Not far from Flåm and the railway. Very similar landscape except that Aurlandsdalen has just a footpath, neither road (the road is in a tunnel) nor railway!








The valley, or canyon, gets deeper when you go west.




Flåm is located about at the blue mountain in the middle of the picture.

[Hoy]

The last picture from Myrdal: Cicerbita alpina

[Robert]

Trond,

The photographs of your county are so beautiful!

The glacial evidence is very obvious. How glaciers can sculpture the land can be very dramatic. I wonder how this concept can be incorporated into our rock garden landscapes? I think that a waterfall would look out-of-place in our flat Sacramento garden, however the suggestion in a tough or large slab garden could be quite intriguing.

Compared to California it seems Norway has fewer species. Do you see much variation within the species? or maybe things are quite uniform?  Here in California, there can even be tremendous variation within a species.

[Alan_b]

I am very familiar with Ranunculus acris as a pasture weed ...

I wondered what harm this buttercup could do.  There are some reports that when fresh it is poisonous to cattle but I found a note of a scientific test that did not support this http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/pdf/10.4141/cjas62-021 .  Poisonous or not, a problem seems to be that cattle, at least some cattle, do not like the taste so avoid eating it and this reduces the productivity of the pasture.  This is regarded as a serious problem in New Zealand yet do UK farmers think the same? 

There are several cultivated forms of ranunculus acris including a flore pleno form and a lemon yellow form.  I have tried to grow them but my garden is too dry for them to survive as they seem to need soil that is more moist than our other native buttercups require.