Plants of Michigan Gallery

IMPORTANT NOTICE: All photos are copyrighted by Raymond Wiggers. If you are an educator or student and would to like to use any of these images, e-mail me and let me know how the images will be used. Please also credit me as the photographer. I ask that all companies, organizations, and government agencies contact me about my fees for the use of my photos, and about obtaining higher-quality versions on CD-ROM. Thanks for your understanding and compliance with the law.

Click on the locales you'd like to see:

- Esrey Park (Upper Peninsula: Keweenaw County)

- Lake Superior State Forest (Upper Peninsula: Alger County)

- Loda Lake Wildflower Sanctuary (Lower Peninsula: Newaygo County)

- Marquette County (Upper Peninsula)

- Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (Upper Peninsula: Alger County)

- Tahquamenon Falls State Park (Upper Peninsula:

Chippewa & Luce Counties)

- Warren Dunes State Park (Lower Peninsula: Berrien County)

5. Another common tansy? Not quite. Living on the fringe of a large community of marram grass (Ammophila breviligulata) is one of the holy grails of Great Lakes botanists: the native Huron tansy, Tanacetum huronense. Blooming around the first of July, it differs from its introduced relative by having more finely cut leaves and a different habitat.

2. A fern glade on a sand flat along Road H58, south of the Upper Peninsula's Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore. In this locale colonies of bracken (Pteridium aquilinum var. latiusculum) form meadow openings between the conifers and broadleaf trees. Paleobotanists speculate that, in the age of dinosaurs, "fern prairies" were the ecological analogs of modern grasslands. If so, the plant community shown here might give us the best surviving analogy of an ancient ecosystem.

1. A few white pines (Pinus strobus) stand like sentinels along the Keweenaw Peninsula's Lake Superior shore. Once the undisputed lords of the northern Great Lakes, with some trees standing over 200 feet (60 meters) tall, white pines were a primary target of a devastating, century-and-a-half program of logging that has transformed the North Woods from one of the most majestic ecosystems on Earth to disconnected patches of scrubby vegetation, locked in perpetual adolescence by periodic "harvesting." For a discussion of the geology here, see Photo 2 in my Michigan Geology Gallery.

3. Detail of withe-rod, Viburnum nudum var. cassinoides. This shrub, shown with both immature and fully ripened, dark-blue fruit, inhabits the lake's wetland fringe, along the short boardwalk. The sanctuary is located in the Lower Peninsula's Manistee National Forest

4. One definition of a weed is that it's a plant that out of place by human standards. Yet it is humankind irtself that caused the migration of weeds in the first place. This introduced wildflower, now a familiar inhabitant of Upper Peninsula roadsides, is common tansy (Tanacetum vulgare). Here it adds a splash of color to an outcrop of ancient Ajibik Quartzite, on the north side of the iron-mining-district town of Negaunee. Common tansy is a native of Europe that has a long history of use in medicinal preparations.

6. And here's a scene typical of the Huron's tansy's habitat, the dunes and beaches of upper Lake Huron, upper Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior. This and and the preceding photo were taken on the National Lakeshore's Grand Sable Dunes.

7. This associate of the Huron tansy, shown at the same locale, is beach pea (Lathyrus japonicus var glaber). Its keeled, elongated flowers and podlike fruit indicate that it is a member of the bean family. As its taxonomic name suggests, the species is also native to Japan. In fact, its distribution, termed "circumpolar," is truly far-flung. For example, a beachcomber exploring the sandy shores of New England will find it growing there, too.

9. A view of the park's Lower Falls. In this wet, cool, and short-summered locale, as in many places in the Upper Peninsula, the taiga or boreal forest still reigns. This great plant community is dominated by spruces (Picea spp.), balsam fir (Abies balsamea), tamarack (Larix laricina) , and other conifers. In fact, the taiga is the most extensive biome in North America north of Mexico, covering over one-quarter of its land surface.

10. A closeup of the park's Upper Falls that shows the extent to which the fallen, tanin-rich foliage of the conifers helps to turn the local streams into a weak, brown acid. For more discussion of this aspect of taiga hydrology, see my Michigan Geology Gallery.

11. The Lower Peninsula's southwesternmost county is a botanical treasure chest. Besides the awe-inspiring, first-growth forest of Warren Woods preserve a few miles away, there is this magnificent collection of giant dunes. Here, fronting the blustery Lake Michigan shore, white pine (Pinus strobus) and other hardy species form the most cold-tolerant plant community. A little farther inland, on the older dunes, the woods contain such notable deciduous trees and shrubs as American beech (Fagus grandidentata) and pawpaw (Asimina triloba).

Would you like to learn more about the plant communities and ecology of this diverse and fascinating state? Check out my Courses, Tours, and Lectures Pages for educational events focused on the botany of Michigan.