Plants On The Edge

 Tonight I found my self in a classroom in the Humanities building at the University of MN in Duluth. A professor, Sarah Johnson, of botany at Northland college was speaking about her research on rare plants on Isle Royale and the 22 islands of the Apostle Islands. According to her, Devil's Island, one of the Apostle Islands, has the only boreal forest in the state of Wisconsin. I would love a job taking a boat to islands in Lake Superior and counting the rare plants. Her work was started by a different professor so she has data from 3 surveys since 2000 showing how the plants fared when the level of lake Superior was very low and also when very high. She plans to monitor the plants as Lake Superior gets warmer, has lower ice coverage, higher winds and more storms. She focused on some carnivorous plants such as English sundew and butterwort. She also talked about encrusted saxifrage which is a plant that grows on the rocky shores of islands. The encrusted saxifrage forms a rosette of leaves. Each leaf is encrusted with lime because the plant actually eats the rock which blows my mind. I have a lot to learn about botany.