More than 135 years after she walked these trails, a group of young scientists return to retrace the footsteps of botany legend, Alice Eastwood. The purpose of the trip was to recreate the 1887 plant collecting expedition of botanists Alice Eastwood and Alfred Russel Wallace. Our horticulture team partnered with Amy Schneider, Assistant Curator and Horticulturist at Denver Botanic Gardens to survey and collect alpine plants on Grays Peak (pictured above). Fun botany fact: Grays peak and its neighbor, Torreys peak, are named for the botanists Asa Gray and John Torrey. The team hiked around Grays Peak and Grizzly Gulch to collect plants for herbarium vouchers.
Collection highlights:
- Rooted poppy (Papaver radicatum), first collection in this area since 1950.
- Alpine forget-me-not (Eritrichium nanum),
- Rocky Mountain Jacob’s ladder (Polemonium confertum)
- Moss campion (Silene acaulis)
These herbarium vouchers will be stored in the Kathryn Kalmbach Herbarium of Vascular Plants, the herbarium at Denver Botanic Gardens. DNA samples from the plants will be uploaded to a database to support further alpine plant conservation and research.
