Another couple photographs I had considered for a "plants and mammals" series, these are from mid-July of 2008 in southern Yukon. On the topic of BPotD series, I need a couple more entries for a "distilled spirits" series, so if you have photographs you might be willing to share via email or Flickr, please send me a note to let me know.
Taraxacum officinale (the common dandelion) and Ursus americanus (the American black bear) are commonly associated. About half of my black bear observations in the past decade are instances where the bear was enjoying a dandelion salad; not a coincidence, perhaps, as dandelions are a common roadside weed and most of my observations have been from a vehicle. Others have noted the same: a search via Google for black bears and dandelions. The combination can result in bear jams and habituation.
Like yesterday's Morchella esculenta, the taxonomy of Taraxacum officinale is complicated. In this instance, the difficulty arises with polyploid and apomictic lineages, such that some floras recognize over 70 microspecies. To quote Wikipedia, "As apomictic plants are genetically identical from one generation to the next, each has the characters of a true species, maintaining distinctions from other congeneric apomicts, while having much smaller differences than is normal between species of most genera. They are therefore often called microspecies". More on this phenomenon will be discussed in a future entry, possibly during the next UBC Research Week series, as the University of British Columbia has a number of botanists who investigate apomixis.
Taraxacum officinale is native to Eurasia, but is naturalized widely in temperate parts of the world. The Plants for a Future database references many economic uses for the species, both traditional and modern.
For some reason, I expect the next picture in this sequence to show the bear lying on its back amongst the dandelions, staring upward and trying to decide what the clouds resemble.-) (Kind of like Binkley in his dandelion patch in Bloom County.)
The one time I had an extended sighting of a bear, it was a black bear in Redwood National Park along the Skunk Cabbage Trail, and it was making its way though the "bog" (not sure that's the right technical term for the mudflats there), ripping apart skunk cabbages to get to the tender parts. Of course, I had left my camera in my daypack a mile down the trail with the others in my research team.
Coincidentally, the last few times I have seen black bears were in potential bog turtle wetlands in northern NJ, one was observed munching away on skunk cabbage along the road no more than 50' from where we pulled up to park.
If the dandelion had been a very scarce plant we would all marvel at this fascinating plant both as a flowering plant as well in seed. To take a seedball and lightly blow on the seeds to see them float away as small parachutes is a true pleasure on a late summer's day.
A weed is a plant that is not only in the wrong place but intends to stay.
"such that some floras recognize over 70 microspecies"
The Flora of the British Isles recognises 233 species of Taraxacum
my grandparents in indiana made dandelion wine
thats just one happy bear among all flower heads
i blew on the flower heads when i was a little girl
then when older i was given a metal garden tool to remove
the dandelions from the lawn but not to eat or wine and dine
great picture daniel just a delight thank you
Beautiful photo of the bear and the dandelions. I, too, almost expected a third photo of a contented bear philosophically contemplating the pleasant nature of a dandelion patch.
And much like Elizabeth I remember as a child blowing the seed pods to watch them sail and as an adult futilely digging them from the lawn. What changes time makes. I don't worry about them anymore, I just enjoy their existence.
Never thought of the Yukon as being a temperate zone. Suppose that comes from all those tales of the Cold North. Wonderful pictures of the bear in his natural habitat. The second one looks like he or she is trying to decide what dandelion to munch on next.
Please do a "plants and mammals" series sometime in the future, even if you repeat bears and red squirrels.
My parents-in-law lived in an urban area in a ticky-tacky all-built-alike neighborhood. He (the tyrant) despised weeds but would never deign to pull one. She (the handmaiden) would go to the front yard every morning before he arose and would pluck off any offending dandelion heads that were about to bloom. And pulled off the deception for as long as they were married, as far as I can tell. This was years ago before weed and feed.
I used to live in Vancouver where black bears were a nuisance to gardners who couldn't have a compost for fear of attracting the beasts. I now live in Lyon (France) and my chances of encountering a bear a lower than those of meeting an alien from Mars...we have the dendelion though!
OK - magnificent - but how close were you? . . . or how strong was the telephoto lens?
That was a surprise, pity we don't have anything more ferocious than red deer in the UK!
For distilled spirits you could try Prunus spinosa, we call Blackthorn.
People raid the bushes for the sloes to soak in gin with sugar to make -- sloe gin.
No photos to send you I am afraid, maybe I could get some of drinking the product laying on my back in the dandelions next to a bear watching the stars?
@Eric Ack! Thbbft!
As an aside, Eric and Autumn are mentioning two different species commonly called skunk cabbage, I'm guessing: the western North American Lysichiton americanus and the eastern North American Symplocarpus foetidus (though both are in the same family).
Irma, I very much agree.
Harry, I was using the terminology from USDA GRIN. They probably should have included subarctic as well, as that would be the climate regime where this was taken.
Diana, this is about a 50% crop of an image taken with a 70-200 and 1.4x extender at maximum focal length -- and from the vehicle. My distance from the bear would have been about 30m, maybe a touch longer. Could have spent a lot of time enjoying watching the bear, as he/she was mostly ignoring our presence, but then someone pulled up behind and started whistling & clapping from outside their vehicle in order to get its attention for a photo. That clearly disturbed the bear, as he/she stood up on his/her back legs and started to huff; human behaviour that definitely crossed the line.
This was the second closest encounter with a bear on that trip, closest was seeing a mother and two cubs cross the road in front of us earlier in the day. And, saw a few grizzlies, but all from a great distance (200m+).
Jan, we are going to be acquiring a Prunus spinosa for our food garden here at UBC, after a discussion we had on sloe gin a couple weeks ago around the lunchroom table. It'll be a couple years before I get to photograph it, though -- a bit late for this series.
@Daniel, thanks for the lol! Man, do I miss Bloom County. And yes, I was referring to Lysichiton americanus (I keep forgetting there's different "skunk cabbage" in the east).
@Michael F, Daniel's comment about "70 microspecies" was about Taraxacum officinale, not the entire Taraxacum genus.
(Sorry, I don't know to "use HTML tags for style" to make italics.)