Alpine beauties thrive on Mt. Mansfield

Most people who visit the summit of Mt. Mansfield in the summer usually fix their gaze on the distant horizon. The 360-degree views inspire awe, with Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks to the west, Camel’s Hump to the south, and to the north you can just make out Jay Peak, with the plains of Quebec’s Eastern Townships behind it. The Worcester Range is to the east, and beyond it, on a clear day you can pick out the Franconia ridgeline in New Hampshire. That’s a tri-state, double-country view! 

But those who shift their gaze downward, not to the valley floor, rather to the vicinity of their very own feet, a whole other world comes into focus. What they will discover in the rocky crags of Mansfield’s barren, tree-less mountaintop is a delightful abundance of alpine wildflowers. 

All summer long, tiny wildflowers and stunted shrubs bloom on Vermont’s highest peaks. These small plants actually thrive in the harsh and punishing alpine environment. Among them is the endangered Diapensia lapponica, found in the U.S. only on the Northeast’s highest peaks: Mount Mansfield, Mount Marcy, Mount Washington, and Mount Katahdin. Diapensia is a classic circumboreal alpine plant, meaning it grows around the globe in northern latitudes. It is also chionophobic (snow avoiding), so it prefers windy, exposed rocks and cliffs. Mount Mansfield, as you can imagine, provides the perfect habitat. 

Diapensia is a low, mat-forming shrub that grows just a few inches high, but spreads many feet wide. The dark green linear leaves and reddish stems form cushion-like clumps. Tiny white flowers grow out of the cushions and have five rounded petals and five distinct stamens that form a bright yellow central cluster. Diapensia has a short bloom time—under 10 days in early June—so plan accordingly if you want to see it. The best time is June 5 to June 12.

Surprisingly, June is the jackpot month for alpine flowers, even though foot-deep patches of snow linger in shady areas. The heath family, a group of plants that is well represented on mountain peaks, has several shrubs that bloom in June at high elevation. Most have small white or pink flowers whose petals are fused into bell shapes that dangle along branches or hang in terminal clusters. The same plants are often found at low elevation, in bogs and places with acidic soil. Leatherleaf (Chamaedaphne calyculata) is a prolific heath with a wide-ranging habitat. 

At high elevation it looks like a bonsai version of the same shrub that blooms three weeks earlier on shorelines in the Northeast Kingdom. Its tiny white flowers hang from arching branches and it is often mistaken for another heath, common lowbush blueberry (Vaccinium angustifolium), which has similar-looking flowers, but often they are striped with pink. To see even greater differences, look at the leaves. Leatherleaf has small rounded leathery leaves, while lowbush blueberry’s leaves are pointed, soft and hairy. In July, lowbush blueberry has edible fruit—miniature versions of the popular cultivated blueberries—while leatherleaf has a tiny brown seed capsule.

Three more alpine heaths, all shrubs blooming in June, are bog bilberry (vaccinium uliginosum), mountain cranberry (vaccinium vitis-idaea), also known as lingonberry, and small cranberry (vaccinium oxycoccos). Bog bilberry’s white bell-shaped flowers are slightly pink-striped and they dangle in small end clusters. It has a small edible berry, much like a blueberry, which ripens in August. Mountain cranberry is not a cranberry at all, though its fruit resembles cranberries, thus its common name. It, too, has tiny bell-shaped flowers, but they are bright pink and slender, and its leaves are small, rounded and shiny, with one center vein. The true cranberry is small cranberry, a tiny, sprawling shrub with pale pink flowers that are not shaped like a bell at all. The petals curve back, revealing a beak-like cluster of stamens and a pistil. The flowers are so small, and the plant so low you’ll have to get down on your belly for a close inspection. Its berries look and taste like the commercial cranberry, but they are a bit smaller. They turn yellow, then bright red, and are easy to see when they ripen in August.

Mountain sandwort, Arenaria groen-landica, is one of the few herbaceous flowers that loves the alpine climate. Unlike shrubs, herbaceous plants die back every year and return each spring, growing from perennial rootstock or seeds, while shrubs bud out new growth from old woody stems. Only three or four inches tall, mountain sandwort grows in clumps and tucks itself into cracks and crevasses where it is protected from the wind and warmed by the surrounding rocks. It’s a member of the Dianthus, or pink family, and typical to that family it has five petals that are notched on the ends. At first glance, it looks a lot like Diapensia, with its five white petals and distinct yellow centers, but if you look closely you will see the leaves are completely different. They are tiny, frail and needle-like, as opposed to Diapensia’s round, succulent leaves. Mountain sandwort has a long bloom season, lasting from the end of June through mid-August.

In July, two more alpine heaths, both shrubs, put out showy blossoms—pale laurel, Kalmia polifolia, and Labrador tea, Ledum groenlandicum. Pale laurel is not as prolific as Labrador tea, but what it lacks in abundance it makes up in beauty. The rose-purple flowers are real attention-getters. Pale laurel grows to about two feet high and the inch-wide flowers grow in clusters at the top of the plant. Labrador tea, which literally dominates Mount Mansfield’s summit in July, grows to about three feet high and has half-inch white flowers that also bloom in terminal clusters. Labrador tea is found at lower elevations, too, where it grows in cold peat bogs.

Come August, most of the alpine plants have put out their fruit or gone to seed, but if you drop down to below the treeline there are still many flowers in bloom. In open areas, asters and goldenrods fill the landscape with whites, yellows and blues. In shaded damp areas you’ll see numerous white flowers: turtlehead, white snakeroot, and a small orchid called nodding ladies tresses. If you’re lucky, you’ll even spot a real surprise: closed gentian, a harbinger of winter, with its deep blue, upright flowers that resemble Christmas tree light bulbs. 

GETTING THERE

You can get to Mansfield’s summit by driving up the Toll Road ($23/vehicle up to 6 people), by riding the Gondola Skyride ($22 round trip per adult, followed by a rigorous climb up the Cliff Trail), or by hiking from the bottom to the top (free). Of course, those who chose to make the climb by foot also get to see all the lower-elevation flowers as they make their way to the summit. 

Once on the ridge, follow the Long Trail to the Chin. Along this trail is where Diapensia blooms. Ask a caretaker to show you its location. You can see it from the trail, but please stay on the marked path to avoid trampling the fragile alpine tundra. 

More info: For the Toll Road and Gondola Skyride go to www.stowe.com. For hiking trails, the following books are excellent resources: Long Trail Guide, published by the Green Mountain Club; Hiker’s Guide to the Mountains of Vermont by Jared Gange, published by Huntington Graphics. 

TALL PEAKS

Mt. Mansfield, Camel’s Hump, Mt. Hunger & Mt. Abraham

The rugged landscapes of Vermont’s treeless alpine summits are unique places to visit. The plants that call these mountains home can survive some of the harshest weather in our region, yet amazingly a single footstep can kill them. Hiking in the Green Mountains requires special care in order to protect these fragile environments. 

Matt Larson of the Green Mountain Club offers these additional facts about alpine tundra: The plant communities that make up the alpine zone are remnants of the last glacial age. After the ice sheets that covered the Green Mountains melted away about 10,000 or so years ago, the first plants to pioneer the rocky detritus left behind were dwarf trees, low-lying shrubs and miniscule flowering plants with an 

arctic heritage like those found today on Vermont’s highest summits: Mt. Mansfield, Camel’s Hump, Mt. Hunger and Mt. Abraham, in particular. As time passed and the climate warmed, first softwood trees (spruce and fir) and eventually hardwood trees (maple, beech, birch and their kin) moved in, and the prevalent arctic-alpine vegetation retreated to the cold and windy refuges atop the highest mountains.

The growing season in the alpine zone is less than 90 days. The treeless ridgelines are essentially “periglacial”: cold enough to allow ice to form in its soils in any month of the year, as well as to sustain seasonal ground-ice, but not so cold as to allow permanent snowfields or glaciers. Plants in the alpine zone are exposed throughout the year to high rates of precipitation, yet vegetation often has little or no access to water due to sub-freezing temperatures and lack of soil that can be used for moisture storage. Alpine vegetation must also cope with persistent high winds, heavy cloud and fog cover, and intense solar radiation.

—Green Mountain Club

www.greenmountainclub.org