Mountain Sunflowers

Each spring, the slopes of the East Kootenays are carpeted with a stunning display of flowering sunflowers. The East Kootenays region is located in south-eastern British Columbia, Canada, which includes the valleys of the Columbia and Kootenay Rivers south of Golden to the USA border. These valleys are bordered to the east by the Rocky Mountains and to the west by the Purcell Mountains. The sunflowers are the Arrowleaf Balsamroot, which has a wide range across western North America. They can be found from Arizona north to B.C.’s Cariboo region and California east to Colorado, and also in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The stunning vistas can be short-lived as just a few days of unseasonably warm weather are enough to wilt the flowers. On the other hand, the plant is unique in that it has a long taproot that allows it to survive low-intensity fires, which can be common in grasslands. After such events, the plant can be seen rapidly sprouting from the charred surface of otherwise undamaged soil as the vast majority of balsamroot is underground.

I often visit the area between the towns of Cranbrook and Kimberley in the East Kootenays and have seen large open fields blanketed with these sunflowers. But I have always been on the lookout for a large quantity of blooming flowers within an open ponderosa pine forest. That search was rewarded this past spring when I discovered this wonderful slope within a wooded area that was completely covered with blooming sunflowers.

Photo Information: A very high-resolution photograph taken in the hills near the Cranbrook/Canadian Rockies International Airport, an airport located 5 nautical miles north of Cranbrook and 20 km south-east of Kimberley, British Columbia, in the Canadian Rockies.

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