July 2013 in Svalbard

[Hoy]

I have made this Svalbard thread in  'Flowers and Foliage now'.

Thanks, Maggi.

Great pictures, Trond....

It's the Taraxacum that does it for me...love to be able to grow that...and the Mertensia too...

Thanks Stephen.

Awesome

Usually too cold for open shoes!  ;-)

Trond, have you grown the Sax. caespitosa?

Anne, I have one in my garden (on the shed roof) collected on the mainland. It is alive and flowering but I think it is a bit too dry(or maybe too warm?) in summer.

[Maggi Young]

Thanks Stephen.

Usually too cold for open shoes!  ;-)

Just as well since  I'm pretty sure it is well nigh impossible to out run a polar bear - never mind  while wearing such shoes 

[Knud]

Knud, do you grow the Parochetus in the garden?

Hi Trond, I guess you are back on the mainland again. Sorry for this late response.

Yes, I do grow it in the garden. I must admit I was wondering what to do with the three plants that sprouted. I put two in a pot that I brought inside the first winter, and they promptly died, kept them too dry I suspect.

About the same time Magnar Aspaker posted pictures on this forum of a Parochetus from his garden in Harstad. If it goes in Harstad it should certainly go here in Stavanger, so I planted the third plant in the garden, and in its third year it is stronger than ever. I put it in well drained, gravelly soil in a slightly raised bed, in full sun.

I just planted up two rooted side shoots from the main plant. If they both take, you are welcome to have one if you like.

Knud

[Hoy]

Knud, thanks for the info and I say yes please to the offer! I have thought of trying Parochetus in the garden have but not had the chance yet.

[Stephenb]

Parochetus was at one time quite common here in Trøndelag, spread from the botanical gardens in Trondheim I think. I grew it for a few years, but it died. I wonder if it has survived anywhere in the recent series of cold winters... Winters are colder here than Harstad...

[Maggi Young]

Parochetus  communis comes in two forms  - one from Africa,  now called Parochetus africanus is, as might be imagined, much less hardy than the Asian/Himalayan form.

We have had the Himalayan form survive nearly forty years so far in our Aberdeen garden - this has included the coldest periods we have experienced when temperatures went down to minus 19 degrees C and stayed there for too long!!

[Hoy]

That clearly shows that the provenance is very important!

[Hoy]

Parochetus do not grow on Svalbard.
These do:
Draba alpina
Coptidium lapponicum x2
Coptidium x spitsbergense x2 (= Coptidium lapponicum x pallasii)

[Hoy]

I know it is September but these pictures were taken in August!

I visited Svalbard once more last week in August, not for flowers but for work. (I met my daughter and she told she had to bring a gun when going to the toilet while she was out in the field.)

The summer was over (the midnight sun went down Friday 23 August) and the colours had turned yellow. Not many plants were still in flower.
Here are a Saxifraga cespitosa in seed
Eriophorum scheuchzerii
Flavocetraria nivalis(?)
a red moss
Adventdalen seen from the radar ICECAT

[Hoy]

This time we didn't go as far away as in July, but stayed in the Longyeardalen and Adventdalen (-dal/dalen = (the) valley).

The river Adventelva terminates in Adventfjorden.
Scott Turner breen (bre/breen = (the)glacier) in Bolterdalen, a side valley to Adventdalen.
Breinosa is covered in a block field. This field stems maybe from before the last ice age. About 600m a.s.l.

Several places you can find fossils. This is about 50 million years old. The conifer is Metasequoia occidentalis (a close but extinct relative to M. glyptostroboides). Other conifers you can find include Taxodium spp and Larix spp. Experiments show that all these conifers tolerate midnight sun in summer and no sun in winter (they shed their leaves). These early Tertiary woods on Svalbard also contained a huge amount of broad leaved trees although at that time Svalbard was at 70^oN.

[Hoy]

Although it still was reasonably mild (we had up to 13^oC) the leaves of Salix polaris had gotten fall colour.
At the foot of Longyearbreen. As recent as 1936 this moraine was covered by the glacier which now has receded several hundred meters.
Operafjellet (right) and Hjortfjellet (left).

8000 years ago Adventdalen was an arm of the fjord and clams thrived in the shallow water. When a glacier had a surge many clams were covered by sand and ice and suffocated. The first picture shows a freeze-dried siphon of Mya truncata. The next picture shows the shell in the sand (this was undisturbed until a creek disturbed the deposits).

[Hoy]

Moraine at the foot of the glacier.
In the second picture the blue clad person to the right stands where the side of the glacier was in about 1990. The white clad person stands where the glacier was in 2004.
The glacier - melting down.
Meltwater pools and creeks.
View of Longyearbyen.

[David Nicholson]

Fascinating set of pictures Trond, many thanks.