Glacier's summer promises to be a blooming affair

Hungry Horse News

Take a month's worth of rain, sprinkle in some nice sunny days, and mound it on six years of drought.

The result in Glacier National Park has been a spectacular show of wildflowers. A show that promises to get even better as the summer goes on.

Many flowering plants in Glacier have been holed up, so to speak, because of droughty conditions over the past six years.

But this spring, particularly this month, has seen above average rainfall. While it hasn't busted the back of the long-term drought, it has brought precipitation levels back to near normal. Now that there's moisture and warm summer temperatures, Glacier has been busting loose with seas of Camas flowers and gardens of beard's tongue.

"It's going to be gorgeous from now on," said Park restoration biologist Joyce Lapp.

Lapp said based on blooms she's seeing, the berry crop should do well as well. Bears rely on a host of different berry crops to build fat reserves for the winter, from huckleberries to serviceberries.

The best shows may be yet to come. When the snows leave the high country, expect blooms of paintbrush, purple aster and bear grass among others.

Last year there was virtually no bear grass. This year there have been great blooms of it already near Park headquarters. Bear grass bloom on a cycle that averages about every four years.

The best could come in Glacier's burned areas. Both the Robert and Wedge Canyon fires are showing a tremendous growth of fireweed. The weed grows up to six feet tall and comes alive with purple flowers.

When the plant dies, the leaves and stem turn a bright red, thus the name. The burns are already showing blooms of arnica, a bright yellow flower, and they're springing up pine grass.

Pine grass is a long, elegant grass that turns a golden brown in fall.

Lapp theorized that the plants have been building up root reserves through the droughty years and then when precipitation and warm unite to make ideal growing conditions, they bloom to life.

Mass flowering then creates, in some cases, literally millions of seeds that are spread in a variety of ways.

Fireweed, for example, spreads its seeds in fluffy white strands, like milkweed, which are carried on the wind.