Arctic–alpine

Last updated March 10, 2019

Examples of Arctic–alpine plants

Oxyria digyna growing in the Svalbard archipelago (Arctic; 78° N; near sea level)

Oxyria digyna growing in the Californian Sierra Nevada (alpine; 38° N; 3300 m above sea level)

Silene acaulis growing in northern Norway (Arctic; 67° N; 100 m above sea level)

Silene acaulis growing in the Austrian Alps (Alpine; 47° N; 2200 m above sea level)

An Arctic–alpine taxon is one whose natural distribution includes the Arctic and more southerly mountain ranges, particularly the Alps.^[1] The presence of identical or similar taxa in both the tundra of the far north, and high mountain ranges much further south is testament to the similar environmental conditions found in the two locations. Arctic–alpine plants, for instance, must be adapted to the low temperatures, extremes of temperature, strong winds and short growing season; they are therefore typically low-growing and often form mats or cushions to reduce water loss through evapotranspiration.^[2]

In biology, a taxon is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and given a particular ranking, especially if and when it is accepted or becomes established. It is not uncommon, however, for taxonomists to remain at odds over what belongs to a taxon and the criteria used for inclusion. If a taxon is given a formal scientific name, its use is then governed by one of the nomenclature codes specifying which scientific name is correct for a particular grouping.

The Arctic is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Alaska, Finland, Greenland (Denmark), Iceland, Northern Canada, Norway, Russia and Sweden. Land within the Arctic region has seasonally varying snow and ice cover, with predominantly treeless permafrost -containing tundra. Arctic seas contain seasonal sea ice in many places.

It is often assumed that an organism which currently has an Arctic–alpine distribution was, during colder periods of the Earth's history (such as during the Pleistocene glaciations), widespread across the area between the Arctic and the Alps. This is known from pollen records to be true for Dryas octopetala , for instance. In other cases, the disjunct distribution may be the result of long-distance dispersal.

The history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by constant geological change and biological evolution.

The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's most recent period of repeated glaciations. The end of the Pleistocene corresponds with the end of the last glacial period and also with the end of the Paleolithic age used in archaeology.

Pollen is a fine to coarse powdery substance comprising pollen grains which are male microgametophytes of seed plants, which produce male gametes. Pollen grains have a hard coat made of sporopollenin that protects the gametophytes during the process of their movement from the stamens to the pistil of flowering plants, or from the male cone to the female cone of coniferous plants. If pollen lands on a compatible pistil or female cone, it germinates, producing a pollen tube that transfers the sperm to the ovule containing the female gametophyte. Individual pollen grains are small enough to require magnification to see detail. The study of pollen is called palynology and is highly useful in paleoecology, paleontology, archaeology, and forensics.

Examples of Arctic–alpine plants include:

Arabis alpina ^[1]
Betula nana ^[3]
Draba incana ^[3]
Dryas octopetala ^[3]^[4]
Gagea serotina (syn. Lloydia serotina)^[5]
Loiseleuria procumbens ^[6]
Micranthes stellaris ^[7]
Oxyria digyna ^[3]
Ranunculus glacialis ^[1]
Salix herbacea ^[3]
Saussurea alpina ^[3]
Saxifraga oppositifolia ^[3]
Silene acaulis ^[8]
Thalictrum alpinum ^[3]
Veronica alpina ^[1]

Arabis alpina is a flowering plant in the family Brassicaceae, native to mountainous areas of Europe, North and East Africa, Central and Eastern Asia and parts of North America. In the British Isles, it is only known to occur in a few locations in the Cuillin Ridge of the Isle of Skye. It inhabits damp gravels and screes, often over limestone.

Betula nana, the dwarf birch, is a species of birch in the family Betulaceae, found mainly in the tundra of the Arctic region.

Dryas octopetala is an Arctic–alpine flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is a small prostrate evergreen subshrub forming large colonies. The specific epithet octopetala derives from the Greek octo (eight) and petalon (petal), referring to the eight petals of the flower, an unusual number in the Rosaceae, where five is the normal number. However, flowers with up to 16 petals also occur naturally.

Related Research Articles

Dryas is a genus of perennial cushion-forming evergreen dwarf shrubs in the family Rosaceae, native to the arctic and alpine regions of Europe, Asia and North America. The genus is named after the dryads, the tree nymphs of ancient Greek mythology. The classification of Dryas within the Rosaceae has been unclear. The genus was formerly placed in the subfamily Rosoideae, but is now placed in subfamily Dryadoideae.

Silene acaulis, known as moss campion or cushion pink, is a small mountain-dwelling wildflower that is common all over the high arctic and tundra in the higher mountains of Eurasia and North America,. It is an evergreen perennial.

There are 164 vascular plant species on the Norwegian Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. This figure does not include algae, mosses, and lichens, which are non-vascular plants. For an island so far north, 164 species constitutes an astonishing variety of plant life. Because of the harsh climate and the short growing season, all the plants are slow growing. They seldom grow higher than 10 cm.

This article gives an overview of the calcicolous grassland communities in the British National Vegetation Classification system.

Saxifraga stellaris, the starry saxifrage or hairy kidney-wort, is an Arctic–alpine species of saxifrage. It produces panicles of 5–10 white flowers on a stem up to 20 cm (7.9 in) tall, rising from a basal leaf rosette. One subspecies is found from eastern Canada to Russia, including the British Isles, while another is found in the mountains of southern Europe.

Gagea serotina, synonym Lloydia serotina, is an Arctic–alpine flowering plant of the lily family. It is widespread across the mountainous parts of western North America, from Alaska to New Mexico, and in Europe is found in the Alps and Carpathians, as well as in Great Britain. It is also native to much of Central Asia, Siberia, China, Nepal, Mongolia, Korea and Japan.

The Oldest Dryas was a climatic period, which occurred during the coldest stadial after the Weichselian glaciation in north Europe. In the Alps, the Oldest Dryas corresponds to the Gschnitz stadial of the Würm glaciation. The three “Dryas” periods are named for a marker species, Dryas octopetala, detected in core samples of glacial ice and peat bogs. The Oldest Dryas corresponds to pollen zone Ia.

Stelvio National Park is a national park in the north-east of Italy, founded in 1935.

A cushion plant is a compact, low growing, mat forming plant that is found in alpine, subalpine, arctic, or subarctic environments around the world. The term "cushion" is usually applied to woody plants that grow as spreading mats, are limited in height above the ground, have relatively large and deep tap roots, and have life histories adapted to slow growth in a nutrient poor environment with delayed reproductivity and reproductive cycle adaptations. The plant form is an example of parallel or convergent evolution with species from many different plant families on different continents converging on the same evolutionary adaptations to endure the harsh environmental conditions.

Silene suecica is a species of plant in the Caryophyllaceae family. Its common name is Red Alpine catchfly and its natural habitat is the mountains of Norway and Sweden but it is sometimes found near the coasts and it is also found in the Alps and the Pyrenees, Greenland and North America.

Zygaena exulans, the mountain burnet or Scotch burnet, is a moth of the family Zygaenidae.

The Alpine grizzled skipper is a species of skipper. This species is found up to fairly high altitudes in the Alps and Pyrenees and also at lower elevations in northern Scandinavia, where its range extends well into the Arctic Circle. It prefers damp habitats and is often found near to water.

The Alps are one of the great mountain range systems of Europe stretching approximately 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) across eight Alpine countries from Austria and Slovenia in the east, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Germany, France to the west and Italy and Monaco to the south. The flora of the Alps are diverse. In the mountains, the vegetation gradually changes with altitude, sun exposure, and location on the mountain. There are five successive life zones, each with distinct landscapes and vegetation characteristics: premontane, montane, subalpine, alpine, and alvar.

Carex bigelowii is a species of sedge known by the common names Bigelow's sedge and stiff sedge. It has an Arctic–alpine distribution in Eurasia and North America, and grows up to 50 centimetres (20 in) tall in a variety of habitats.

Castilleja kerryana is a species of flowering plant in the broomrape family. It was formally described in 2013 and so far it is known only from a small population in the state of Montana, in the Northwestern United States.

According to the northern cryptic glacial refugial hypothesis, during the last ice age cold tolerant plant and animal species persisted in ice-free microrefugia north of the Alps in Europe. The alternative hypothesis of no persistence and postglacial immigration of plants and animals from southern refugia in Europe is sometimes also called the tabula rasa hypothesis.

Rhizomarasmius epidryas is one of a group of mushrooms formerly in the genus Marasmius. It grows amongst dwarf shrubs of the genus Dryas in arctic or high mountain environments.

References

1 2 3 4 Thomas Schmitt, Christoph Muster; Peter Schönswetter (2009). "Are disjunct alpine and arctic–alpine animal and plant species in the Western Palearctic really "relics of a cold past"?". In Jan Christian Habel, Thorsten Assmann. Relict Species: Phylogeography and Conservation Biology. Springer. pp. 239–252. ISBN 9783540921608.
↑ Heather Pardoe (1995). Mountain Plants of the British Isles. National Museums and Galleries of Wales. ISBN 0-7200-0423-3.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Harry Godwin (1956). The History of the British Flora: a Factual Basis for Phytogeography. Cambridge University Press. p. 444.
↑ Inger Skrede; Pernille Bronken Eidesen; Rosalía Piñeiro Portela; Christian Brochmann (2006). "Refugia, differentiation and postglacial migration in arctic-alpine Eurasia, exemplified by the mountain avens (Dryas octopetala L.)". Molecular Ecology . 15 (7): 1827–1840. doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2006.02908.x. PMID 16689901.
↑ Barbara Jones; C. Gliddon (1999). "Reproductive biology and genetic structure in Lloydia serotina". Plant Ecology . 141 (1–2): 151–161. doi:10.1023/A:1009805401483.
↑ Hajime Ikeda; Kei Denni; Noriyuki Fujii; Hiroaki Setoguchi (2009). "High mountains of the Japanese archipelago as refugia for arctic–alpine plants: phylogeography of Loiseleuria procumbens (L.) Desvaux (Ericaceae)". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society . 97 (2): 403–412. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2009.01177.x.
↑ Norman Dignard (2006). "Micranthes stellaris (Saxifragaceae), new to Québec". Rhodora . 108 (933): 72–75. doi:10.3119/05-13.1.
↑ S. R. Hagen; G. G. Spomer (1989). "Hormonal regulation of growth form in the Arctic–Alpine cushion plant, Silene acaulis". Arctic and Alpine Research . 21 (2): 163–168. JSTOR 1551628.

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[Schmitt-1] 1 2 3 4 Thomas Schmitt, Christoph Muster; Peter Schönswetter (2009). "Are disjunct alpine and arctic–alpine animal and plant species in the Western Palearctic really "relics of a cold past"?". In Jan Christian Habel, Thorsten Assmann. Relict Species: Phylogeography and Conservation Biology. Springer. pp. 239–252. ISBN 9783540921608.

[2] Heather Pardoe (1995). Mountain Plants of the British Isles. National Museums and Galleries of Wales. ISBN 0-7200-0423-3.

[Godwin-3] 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Harry Godwin (1956). The History of the British Flora: a Factual Basis for Phytogeography. Cambridge University Press. p. 444.

[4] Inger Skrede; Pernille Bronken Eidesen; Rosalía Piñeiro Portela; Christian Brochmann (2006). "Refugia, differentiation and postglacial migration in arctic-alpine Eurasia, exemplified by the mountain avens (Dryas octopetala L.)". Molecular Ecology . 15 (7): 1827–1840. doi:10.1111/j.1365-294X.2006.02908.x. PMID 16689901.

[5] Barbara Jones; C. Gliddon (1999). "Reproductive biology and genetic structure in Lloydia serotina". Plant Ecology . 141 (1–2): 151–161. doi:10.1023/A:1009805401483.

[6] Hajime Ikeda; Kei Denni; Noriyuki Fujii; Hiroaki Setoguchi (2009). "High mountains of the Japanese archipelago as refugia for arctic–alpine plants: phylogeography of Loiseleuria procumbens (L.) Desvaux (Ericaceae)". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society . 97 (2): 403–412. doi:10.1111/j.1095-8312.2009.01177.x.

[7] Norman Dignard (2006). "Micranthes stellaris (Saxifragaceae), new to Québec". Rhodora . 108 (933): 72–75. doi:10.3119/05-13.1.

[8] S. R. Hagen; G. G. Spomer (1989). "Hormonal regulation of growth form in the Arctic–Alpine cushion plant, Silene acaulis". Arctic and Alpine Research . 21 (2): 163–168. JSTOR 1551628.