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Cairn on the way to the summit of Mt. Washington, NH. July 2023.
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Mount Washington is the highest mountain in New England, and infamous for the "worst weather in the world," including the highest wind speed ever recorded outside of a tornado or tropical cyclone. The strange, vast landscape of broken rocks on top of Washington and its neighboring peaks and ridges is home to a unique flora, with a mix of widespread north-temperate woodland plants, as well as rare stragglers from the last ice age, which are mostly confined to the arctic today.
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Maianthemum canadense
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Maianthemum canadense, the ubiquitous Canada Mayflower, grows in my lawn back in Connecticut, literally a few feet from my door, and is also common in the shelter of rocks quite near the summit of Mt. Washington. On the mountain, the plants were in bloom not in May, but in the middle of July.
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Trientalis borealis
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Starflower (Trientalis) is a common spring wildflower in my
area. As with Canada Mayflower, its blooming season was delayed by about
two months at high altitude in the Presidentials. I think that the chartreuse-and-black lichen on the rocks in most of these photos is Rhizocarpon geographicum, Yellow Map Lichen.
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Maianthemum, with Clintonia brorealis and Chamaepericlymenum (Cornus) canadense
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Shaded, sheltered slopes above treeline on Mt. Washington are also home to Clintonia and Bunchberry, two typical woodland wildflowers of northern New England. These occur south into Connecticut, but aren't common in my area. In the lowlands, these bloom a month or so later than Canada Mayflower, but their flowering seasons were all crammed together into mid-July on the mountaintop.
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Phegopteris connectilis
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The fern that grows closest to the summit of Mt. Washington (that I saw) was Narrow Beech Fern, Phegopteris connectilis. In southern New England, N.B.F. is a delicate little fern of cool, shady ravines and streamsides, and it was a bit of a surprise to see it near the wind-blasted peak of Washington. It was confined to seepy crevices and the shelter of overhanging rocks. Dryopteris species (Wood Ferns) started to appear at lower altitude, near tree line and in stunted alpine Balsam Fir forest, or Krummholz.
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Diapensia lapponica and Sibbaldiopsis tridentata
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Diapensia or Cushion-plant is one of the relictual arctic plants of Mt. Washington, growing as tight mats and mounds of leafy rosettes on fully exposed ridgelines. It is one of only two representatives of the minor family Diapensiaceae (order Ericales) that I have ever seen in person, the other being Galax, a beloved high-altitude wildflower of Appalachian peaks. Diapensia is in fruit in the photo; the white flowers are Three-toothed Cinquefoil (Sibbaldiopsis, or formerly Potentilla tridentata), which was growing squeezed in between the Diapensia rosettes. Diapensia is rare in New England, growing on only the highest peaks in the far north, whereas Sibbaldiopsis is a widespread inhabitant of rocky, open hill and mountain tops.
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Rhododendron groenlandicum with Vaccinium uliginosum
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Labrador Tea, formerly genus Ledum but now classified as Rhododendron groenlandicum, is a shrub of the arctic tundra and wet boreal forest, that gets down into New England as a resident of alpine habitats and sphagnum bogs. The leaves have a pleasant wintergreen scent, and can indeed be used to brew an herbal tea. The photo of Labrador Tea in flower also includes a small, round-leaved blueberry relative, Alpine Bilberry (Vaccinium uliginosum), which is another arctic shrub that persists as an alpine plant in temperate climates. Bilberry seems to be the woody plant that grows at the highest altitudes on Mt. Washington, almost all the way up to the summit.
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Minuartia groenlandica
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Greenland Stitchwort (Minuartia groenlandica, formerly genus Arenaria) is a tiny clumping plant that grows very close to the summit area, often in disturbed gravelly areas. Weirdly, this alpine/arctic species also apparently occurs in a few low-altitude coastal populations in Maine.
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| Salix argyrocarpa |
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Mt. Washington is home to several species of low-growing arctic willows, at the southern limits of their distributions, as well as some hybrids among them. I'm not sure that I can identify the ones that I saw from my photos, but this one is possibly Salix argyrocarpa, Labrador Willow.
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Tuckerman Ravine, with one patch of snow left on July 12, 2023.
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Mt. Washington is cold enough that there is some permafrost at the top. A bit of snow remained in Tuckerman Ravine when I visited in July this year; it's difficult to get a sense of scale from the photos, but that little white spot is as big as a house. The weather was relatively mild and pleasant for the start of my hike, but the clouds closed in and the weather took a turn for the worse in the afternoon. My group, some of whom had climbed from the base at the AMC center at Pinkham Notch, got to experience a taste of the worst weather on Earth, but were very glad that I had driven my car to the summit. After taking some pics with the summit sign, with fog all around and about 20 feet visability, we crammed into the car and had an easy drive out of the arctic tundra, back down to the familiar New England woods.
