Notes from a Neon field technician
May in Delta Junction, Alaska:
I went to sleep hearing sandhill cranes, like bubbling frogs, out my window from the field housing in Delta Junction. All day murmurs of cranes shifted and floated away in the sky above us while we worked. The solid permafrost rested underneath a lush mat of color and texture - lichens, mosses, and dwarfed evergreen plants. Pedicularis labradorica was still just an old brown flower stalk preserved by the snow over winter. The Picea mariana trees stand only a few meters tall at most and the light blue/green of lichens made the landscape surprisingly colorful. In the beginning of May no vegetative plants had started growing yet and the air still smelled of snow and ice. The rumblings of sandhill cranes reminded me that it was indeed spring. As May opened up, buds started breaking and new plants began emerging. Arctostaphylos alpina, a dwarf shrub with textured green leaves and black berries, flowers before its vegetative buds break, but Arctostaphylos rubra, another dwarf shrub that produces red berries, yields leaves before flowers. Especially in the spring, untangling these two species requires knowledge of their phenology.
