tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403025007552597654.post2599360372847874432..comments2024-02-21T22:09:14.356-05:00Comments on Karstad Biodiversity Paintings: adventures in the colour of Canada: Leitrim Roots (oil on canvas 5 x 7 in.)Aleta Karstadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15900113759159760493noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403025007552597654.post-6770881444780618832010-06-14T16:34:29.730-04:002010-06-14T16:34:29.730-04:00While Aleta was painting, I spent most of my time ...While Aleta was painting, I spent most of my time on "Aliens Way" or Albion Road, as it's also called. This artery of incessant noisy traffic runs through a groove in the woods that's walled with the greyish billows of 4-5m tall Frangulous Buckthorn (<i>Rhamnus frangula</i>) which is now in bloom with tiny flowers, and at their feet the spear-tipped half-grown metre-&-a-half-high legions of the invasive Sowthistle, <i>Sonchus palustris</i>, which is not found elsewhere in Canada, and about which governments aren't doing anything. The ditches right along the roads are full of Cattails, some of them the native <i>Typha latifolia</i>, but the majority the European <i>Typha angustifolia</i>, which is so widespread that until recently it was considered a native species. These alien species are like a malignant scar tissue along the gash of the road through the wetland forest, and now that the jurisdictional disputes have come to a resolution, the battle for Leitrim will be with the alien invasive plants.Fred Schuelerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02413290982310369659noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3403025007552597654.post-41844649811813053372010-06-14T16:21:27.334-04:002010-06-14T16:21:27.334-04:00While these woods and wetlands are famous for thei...While these woods and wetlands are famous for their botanical diversity, they are shockingly depauperate herpetologically. When I was looking under logs for <i>Neohelix dentifera</i>, I was also looking for Salamanders, which have never been found here, and it was Salamanders that Seburns, Jennifer, Albert Dugal and I were looking for in 1997 when the <i>Neohelix</i> (the 5th locality for Ontario) was found in 1997. There's not a single species of rare, distinctive, or unusual Amphibian, Turtle, or Snake known from here -- this is presumeably a tribute to the way the site was hemmed in by agriculture in the 19th Century, since the herpetological diversity of wetlands is very largely a function of the area of surrounding uplands that support the populations' activities away from the water.Fred Schuelerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02413290982310369659noreply@blogger.com