Grand Glacier Lilies

by Janis Connell

Title

Grand Glacier Lilies

Artist

Janis Connell

Medium

Photograph - Photography

Description

Glacier lilies can generate enough heat to melt their way up and bloom through the last few inches of snow. The seed pods are food for hoofed browsers, and the bulbs are “gardened” by grizzly bears, especially in Montana. The bears overturn great patches of sod and then nip off bulbs from the sod underside. (Meadow voles and insect larvae exposed in the process quickly become hors d’oeuvres.) For reasons not clear to scientists nor, presumably, to bears, this has a side effect of increasing soil nitrogen and thus the size, number, and nutritional value of future lily crops. The word “gardening” fits, as year after year the bears come back for the big, rich, bulbs in the loose soil. Montana meadows thick with glacier lilies are likely to have been grizzly bear gardens at some point.

Uploaded

July 26th, 2017

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