Mongolia revisited (part three) More than just posies as you will see...

I shan't be "yakking it up" as much in this blog as I usually do (you probably think this is just more of my "bull")...but all feeble humor aside, there shall be a different slant to this--because people (and animals of course) will be more of the focus than my usual obsession with plants.

Here is the merry company that spent the better part of the last week crossing the heights of Mongolia's highest peaks. I fear you can smell as well as see us in this picture. We hadn't had our salutary sauna in a while...

This is one of my favorite of many, many pictures I took of Mike Bone, Curator of Steppe Collections at Denver Botanic Gardens. There are few better companions one can have on a trip than this multifaceted and congenial gentleman. Doesn't he look happy in a sort of supine fashion? (I haven't used supine in much too long in a blog).

Wouldn't you know, a dang plant had to intrude: one of several Parnassia we found on the trip--I shall look up and add the name when I get a chance!

Rhodiola algida

Hereabouts we found a single patch of this fantastic mesic sedum. Obviously allied to the common R. rosea, the flower color is unique in the genus. Different pollinators I suspect!

Rhodiola algida

The Kazak help on this trip were consistently cheerful, helpful and gracious. Central Asia is renowned for hospitality.

What a place for a camp!

It is a little known phenomenon that Mediterranean pruning gangs spread across the globe, neatly meat-balling conifers. I always chuckle when old hippie horticulturists snort and complain about meatball shrubs--as if the Ungulates of the world hadn't co-evolved with shrubs and provided a perfect model for the topiary artists! I have seen so many out of control, hideous dryland shrubs growing in Xeriscapes that yearn for a herd of sheep or deer to rein them in. Or one pent up Italian gardener! I can hear Jim Borland sputtering as I type this...

AAAAAaaaaahh. Good times those. In both spellings!

And let me introduce you to Balbals (although it sounds like 'bulbul' when they say it there--an unfortunate homonym for a sub/tropical bird). They are everywhere, check this Google search that shows their fantastic forms. I dread to think how many are being lifted and sold to plutocrats. These sites ought to be land-mined.

No one knows for sure when many of these were erected or even by which of the hundreds of Central Asian peoples might have done them. But they are everywhere...

Mounds and piles of rocks in the middle of nowhere--some are graves, other the sites of religious practice--others perhaps remnants of ancient villages: the ancestry of a fairly large percentage of people on earth spent millennia on these steppes. If you're not 100% African in lineage, very likely some of your ancestors might have passed through this spot and moved some of these rocks.

This area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Concern--there are tens of thousands of petroglyphs on the hills hereabouts: the few I show below were all photographed on just this one hill below....



We zoom in on the hill...




And begin to notice the etched drawings on the rock...I show far too many of these here--but didn't have the heart to leave any out: you can't imagine how enchanted I was that day, climbing up the steep hill and admiring the petroglyphs mottled with gorgeous lichens on the glacial polished rock.

All manner of animals--some of them no longer wild here like the cattle.

A little palate cleanser--some wonderful fairy rings of juniper below...

The mountainous border with China in the distance...now back to more petroglyphs!

I love the way the lichen is in-filling this petroglyph with a realistic fur of gray-green!

I can imagine how many bones have lain around this hill over the millennia!

Another art shot of my companion--a pretty good one if I don't say so...

A few elaborate balbals: "outstanding in their field"...

This one has had some graffitti--at which point does it not matter? Like Byron's signature at Sounion.

What we might imagine Mongolia to look like!

In Colorado we would almost certainly call this Gentian fremontii (or Ciminalis or Chondrophylla fremontii if you are Heterodox). It was growing alongside the following--which was more common...

Gentiana prostrata

What a treat it was to find this growing on a grassy bank of a stream on the high, cold Mongolian steppe! Virtually the same plant is widespread in the high mountains of the American West, all the way to the Southern Andes. And it even has a cousin  on the tops of the highest mountains of New Guinea! It gets around!

Pedicularis cf. longiflora

Not sure if it's this species--but closely allied to the outrageous long tubed yellow pedicularis that's widespread in the Himalayas as well...

I can't believe I never took a closeup of Primula nutans: this stole this epithet from a sublime Himalayan species that must now be known as P. flaccida as a consequence. Ironically, THIS primrose is not nodding as the name implies--it's a fully upright Aleuritia section species...and it makes a spectacle.

Two local shepherds found us taking pictures and came to visit: they were anxious to have their pictures taken--although they forgot to inform their faces of that...

This fellow got the message!

He didn't. They were delightful company and a treat to get to meet some of the local population.

Witch's broom on Siberian larch

As we started back to Bayan Olgii in our vehicles we noticed an enormous witch's broom...

Alas, no chance to look for cones: the prospect of a compact Siberian larch for our gardens taunts one's memory...

A rainbow on the Mongolian steppe seems about as good a way to end this as one could conjure!