Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Nature Gallery Great Basin National Park

This is the largest Limber Pine that Trailblazer had ever seen. He posed by it so you could get the scale. It was at least 5 feet in diameter.
The next three images are of a "root ball". The tree has long disintegrated. The root cluster remains along with soil and other debris forming an interesting object. This was one of the objects on my GPS hunt that Trailblazer plotted out for me.


I think this is a baby spruce or a limber pine. (Help me out on this one, Wildman) It is about 5 inches high.
I think this is a baby bristlecone pine, about 2 feet high. Growing in all that quartzite. Wheeler Peak is mostly quartzite.
Bristlecone pine....you have to admire a tree that can live up to 5,000 years in the most adverse conditions...wind, altitude, rock.


Limber Pine. We camped in a limber pine forest. They were all over. Even growing up with the Bristlecones.
This next photo is not at GB, but taken at a museum in Delta, Utah. I noticed a variety of clary sage in their garden. It is a little different than mine. It has more lavender and slightly different shaped leaves. I asked the museum attendant. She said she didn't know what it was, it had volunteered. She offered to dig one up and send it with me. The museum was very interesting. We saw a mineral display of all the stones and gems from the area, such as topaz, red emerald, obsidian, garnet. We saw a different mineral display glow with different kinds of ultra-violet light. We visited a rock shop where they make bears and buffalo out of Utah picasso jasper, calcite and septarian nodules. I wished I would have taken my camera inside the museum!
We toured a "barracks" building of where over 6,000 Japanese were interred for 3 1/2 years during the 2nd world war. Amazing, poignant story.

1 comment:

WildBound said...

Still loving the pictures. Bristlecone Bob. That's AWESOME!