Some views of the Alpine Garden of the UBC Botanical Garden Thanks to Ola Rogulska, who kindly provided these images.

Some views of the Alpine Garden of the UBC Botanical

GardenThanks to Ola Rogulska, who kindly

provided these images.

What this slide show is for:

• To show you something of the “lay of the land” at the Alpine garden

• To give you an idea of what features can be observed

• To at least begin to suggest what sorts of questions could be worth asking

• And the pictures are very nice - enjoy!

In this view, we are standing at the top of the North end of the Alpine garden, looking roughly southwest. Most of the area around the camera contains South American plants, and the right-hand half of the image is the Australia/New Zealand zone.

Note the many flower-colours: pink and red in the centre, white in the shrubs at the right, and orange in the wide shrub visible beyond the big flat rock, below – and the brown/orange clumps of grass really are that colour, and healthy – why?

Here we see the cones (fruiting structures) of a blue spruce in the North American zone of the Garden. Note the waxy greyish colour of the needles on this plant – why should they look like this and not simply green? And why are the cones this odd purplish colour? It can’t be to attract insects, this is a wind-pollinated plant!

Real height of a cone is about 10cm.

A part of the Mediterranean/southern European zone of the Garden. Many alpine plants flower in late spring and early summer in Vancouver’s climate, though this may not coincide with the flowering-time in the native habitats. The pink flowers of Dianthus (carnations) are borne singly but those of the flowering onion occur in clusters… why should this be the case? (What else would you want to know to address this question?) And what purpose might colour serve?

Dianthus flowers are about 2-2.5cm across.

Another view of the South America zone. In the foreground and running over the rocks all the way down the slope are tightly ground-hugging plants of several species… but mostly they are just resting on, rather than rooted in, the ground (i.e. they are very low shrubs, not groundcovers). Each mat has a single woody trunk, and the mat can be peeled back at the edge. Why should plants grow this way?

The square stones are about 50cm wide, and the gravel path below is 1.5-2m wide.

This photo is looking back up the hill down which we looked in slide 5. The purple-flowered plants in the foreground are orchids. Notice the wide range of foliage-colours visible in this view: dark and light greens, grey (between the orchid-flowers), purplish, yellowish – why should plants have so many different colours, given that all leaves have broadly similar functions?

The purple flower-spike measures about 10cm tall, and the purple shrub in the middle-distance is 2m tall.

Here we see a small representation of the variety of plants which may be viewed at the Alpine garden, in this case around the pond located at the foot of the Asian section, near the south end. The photo emphasizes the difficulty of extracting patterns from the diversity of nature; elements of dozens of patterns can be seen in just this one view.

Don’t be upset by the variety of organisms! Once you have a plan, and can see things in person and receive advice about what you see, everything will make more sense. Make sure you read the Field Paper document thoroughly, and follow all instructions!