What plants grow on the Rockies?

Question

I am doing a project in science and i need the answer and its adaptations

Answer 1

Diverse plant-life grows in various Rocky Mountain terrain, from forests to meadows, grasslands to wetlands. . . and montane zones. All are found in the Canadian Rockies and concentrated in the Bow Valley. Environments transform dramatically with changes in elevation and latitude. These variations are reflected in the vegetation growing in any given region. Although there are no clear demarcation lines drawn in the dirt, plant communities generally grow according to elevation. Forests in the foothills zone contain mainly lodgepole pine and trembling aspen, with buffaloberry, prickly rose, wild red raspberry and common bearberry growing in their understories. In the central and northern Rockies, where Douglas fir is widespread, the montane zone is typically a cool, damp, continuous forest where lodgepole pine, trembling aspen and balsam poplar flourish.

Lodgepole pine is a fire tree depending on forest fires to reproduce in large numbers. Its cones require heat to melt resin sealing its scales shut. Trembling aspen are sun-loving deciduous trees (shedding leaves annually) with greenish-white smooth bark, marked with rough blackened spots and lines. Balsam poplar or black cottonwoods are also deciduous and have greenish-grey smooth bark marked with blackened spots and lines when young, becoming deeply furrowed and dark grey with age.

Ending around treeline, the subalpine zone includes limber pine, whitebark pine and twisted stunted krummholz stands, extending into alpine meadows at high elevations. In the subalpine, you’ll find dense, almost continuous fir and Engelmann spruce stands with forest floors containing low shrubs such as grouseberry, black elderberry, squashberry, buffaloberry – take care, where there is buffaloberry there is bear – crowberry and Labrador tea and delicate flowers such as one-flowered wintergreen and prince’s pine. Moist sheltered meadows and scattered tree stands in this zone are where you’ll find delicate yellow columbine, cut-leaved anemone, fairy-like yellow glacier lilies, cow parsnip, tall Jacob’s ladder, arrow-leaved groundsel and subalpine fleabane.

The alpine zone or tundra extends from treeline to the point where all plant life ends at exposed rocky slopes and permanent snowfields. Surprisingly, this cold, harsh, windswept environment is where you’ll find alpine treasure in low growing flowers such as fuscia-coloured moss, campion cushions, soft purple arctic harebell, bright blue alpine forget-me-nots, alpine avens, yellow paintbrush, one-flowered cinquefoil and cut-leaved fleabane. Sure, identifying Canadian Rockies flora can be tongue twisting but you don’t have to be a botanist to appreciate it. A good field guide helps, though.

http://www.zeelinx.com/MultiDetail2C4L11...

Answer 2

Here are a couple of websites with examples:

http://www.nps.gov/romo/naturescience/pl...

http://www.nps.gov/glac/naturescience/pl...