Readers’ wildlife photos

In June, physicist and origami master Robert Lang went on a Center for Inquiry cruise in the Arctic, visiting the isolated islands of that area as well as Iceland. The cruise headlined Richard Dawkins, and I was offered a last-minute berth, but it seemed too late to me, and now I much regret not going. But Robert has sent two batches of photos from tbe trip, and I’ll show the first one—the flowers of Iceland—this morning.

Robert’s narrative and captions are indented, and you can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

Iceland (and Elsewhere) Flowers

Living and working on the edge of the Southern California chaparral, I have a fondness for pretty wildflowers surviving in harsh places, and a recent shipboard trip from Ireland to Iceland provided a few nice examples of mostly unfamiliar blooms. (All IDs thanks to iNaturalist.)

After leaving Ireland and visiting Scotland, we visited islands with progressively harsher climate (though all are moderated by the Gulf Stream—at least, until the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation breaks down). On Shetland, we encountered Cuckooflower (Cardamine pratensis). It’s native throughout Europe and Western Asia:

Then on to the Faroe Islands. There we found Lawn daisy (Bellis perennis), another common European species of daisy:

From there, on to Iceland, the land of fire and ice! We saw plenty of the latter, but didn’t get close enough to see the former, though we did see plenty of its aftereffects in the geography and hot springs.

Near Höfn, we stopped at the base of one of the many glaciers draining the Vatnajokull ice cap; it ended in a small lake surrounded by scree and glacial till that was mostly bare but dotted here and there with lovely little clusters of flowers, starting with this Alpine cinquefoil (Potentilla crantzii):

Next is Sea thrift (Armeria maritima) (I think—iNat suggests this, but still waiting for human confirmation). It grows all over Europe and is also a popular garden or cut flower:

Moss campion (Silene acaulis) is another lovely cluster of tiny flowers that is common all over the high arctic and tundra:

Another campion, Sea campion (Silene uniflora) has larger flowers and interesting hollow vessels at the base of the flowers. (There was another variety of campion that looked similar in iNat; this one looked slightly closer):

From falling ice to falling water. Another stop was one of Iceland’s famous waterfalls, Goðafoss. There’s a lot of melting ice in Iceland, and it makes for many, many spectacular waterfalls (over 10,000 of them, according to Wikipedia). Here’s one of them:

The waterfall is vast and the vistas are sweeping, but there’s also beauty to be found at our very feet, including some of the biggest dandelion flowers I’ve ever seen. Dandelions (Taraxcum sp.) are found worldwide, but the ones in my yard are pretty tiny; this one and its brethren were something like 2” across:

One of the sights of Icelands is the Dimmuborgir lava field, a landscape of twisted spires of lava that originally formed underwater as upwelling lava tubes. There I saw this Eight-petal Mountain-Avens (Dryas octopetala), whose common and Latin names both make reference to its eight petals. An unusual thing, because it’s a member of the Rosaceae, whose petals usually come in five (unless they’ve been bred for more, like ornamental roses):

Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) is found all over temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. These were growing  near a different waterfall, Dynjandi, which is almost unreal: it pours off of the edge of a cliff some 30 meters wide:

Dynjandi:

Last, the Nootka lupine (Lupinus nootkatensis). It’s native to North America, but was introduced into Iceland where it has spread widely. It’s now considered something of a nuisance, but it sure is a pretty nuisance:

Next: Icelandic birds and other critters.