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| Fireweed beginning to bloom. |
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| Fireweed going to seed. |
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| No wonder it's so prolific. There are 80,000 seeds per plant! |
Fireweed. The metamorphosis from spring to autumn is cool to see. It doesn't just bloom then shrivel up, turn brown, wilt and die. It puts on quite a show as if to say "look what I can do".
These three foot to four foot tall plants carpet entire fields and hillsides in Alaska, especially in fire ravaged or clear-cut areas where they're one of the first plants to take up residence. The stems and leaves shoot out about six inches from the stalk. Each of those stems is tipped by a four-petal magenta flower; they blossom from the bottom of the plant to the top.
It morphs into an entirely different looking plant when fall arrives. Those stick straight stems become curly Q spirals covered in white fluffiness that from a distance look like cotton candy. Walk up closer though and you'll find the tiniest brown flecks of seeds interspersed in there. How many seeds? I wondered. 80,000 seeds per plant! Impressive. Those seeds apparently live in the soil seed bank for years. When a new fire or soil disturbance occurs to open up the ground to light again, the seeds germinate and POOF fireweed abounds once more. They also spread by root and quite often one plant becomes a large patch.
They, yes the same "they" whose names we never know, say fireweed is a good way to gauge the onset of winter. The closer to the top of the stalk the flowers bloom then the closer we are to winter. I've never remembered to check the correlation from year to year to test the theory.
So there you have it. Information you will never need. I can't help it. The little things in nature amaze me. Oh heck all of nature is downright amazing. And now....on to six months of winter.
