These trees are Populus tremuloides, also known as Quaking Aspen. Aspens are a favorite tree to me. Growing up in deserts of New Mexico, aspens have always represented being in the mountains. Now I live in a place where I have aspens in the yard of my house!
Aspens are really interesting. In the dry western US, aspens propagate mainly by clonal root suckers. That is, new trees pop up from the root system of existing trees. That means that the forest pictured here may be made up of clones from a single tree. Go to wikipedia to read about Pando, a truly huge clonal colony.
The photo was taken during my recent trip to Crested Butte, near Ruby peak along the Kebler pass trail.
T is for Tremuloides. Click over to ABC Wednesday for more T-theme photos.
Aspens are really interesting. In the dry western US, aspens propagate mainly by clonal root suckers. That is, new trees pop up from the root system of existing trees. That means that the forest pictured here may be made up of clones from a single tree. Go to wikipedia to read about Pando, a truly huge clonal colony.
The photo was taken during my recent trip to Crested Butte, near Ruby peak along the Kebler pass trail.
T is for Tremuloides. Click over to ABC Wednesday for more T-theme photos.
13 comments:
Hi!
Great "T" post! I didn't know Aspen trees make colonies from roots. I thought they just dropped seeds someway. Thanks for the info! Have a great day!
Sherrie
Sherrie's Stuff
http://sherrie-plummer.blogspot.com/2009/06/abc-wednesday-t.html
My husband was born and raised in Utah. He loves the "quakies", the rustling of the leaves brings him back to childhood. We planted four in our old yard, the roots were so invasive they went after our main pipe and broke it. So we had to get rid of them and it broke our hearts. The nursery didn't explain that you shouldn't plant them on a city lot. Great shot.
I love the look of this photo...it seems to have 'lines' in it...aspens are my fave tree although we don't have them in this part of the country...I often go to CO and try to visit in the fall...
I guess propagating by root would be a good way to creep along and find new sources of water! Also seedlings may wither and die before their roots go deep enough. Nature is a wonderful thing.
On behalf of the team, thanks for taking part in ABC Wednesday this week! :)
my dad was a wildlife biologist so as a family we spent our summers camping in the mountains. The sound of a breeze rustling the leaves of the aspen just about brings me to tears, I equate that with yearnings for home. The scent of the bark is particularly appealing to me as well. loved your post and your picture.
Spectacular! Thanks!
Fascinating shot!
Aspens always make me think of the mountains, also. This is a beautiful photo & I heard in a movie - Phenomenon w/ John Travolta - that aspens have the larges root system in the world - I think that's what he said. LoL!
BTW - how did you get the slideshow on your sidebar?
Thanks everyone!
Tricia - For the slideshow on the sidebar, I used the Slideshow widget from Blogger. You can use Picasa, Flickr, Photobucket, or Other as a source.
I used Other, for other which you need to give it the URL to an RSS feed. In my case, that was on SmugMug...
Does that help? Let me know if not.
There are lots of aspens in Finland, very common in cities and countryside. But I haven't ever heard that they could spawn from the roots. Usually it is enough water for them, so maybe that's the difference here.
I enjoyed this one - a very neat abstraction on the theme TREES.
Beautiful informative post, Russ! Now I can happily say I too have seen aspen trees.:-)The sight of the golden aspens in Estes Park blew me away - I will NEVER forget what I felt looking & admiring the colours and listening to the rustling of the leaves. I love your blog because you bring it all back with your stories and pictures :-) Have a good sunday.
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