Мать Россия

Paeonia tenuifolia

Mother Russia, if you have problem with the Cyrillic above. She is often conceived as something along the lines of the monumental  «Родина-мать зовёт!» - "The Motherland Calls!", the Soviet Realistic sculpture at Volgagrad, which I admit I rather admire (blush). But may I suggest a more appropriate symbol may be this most ethereal and evocative of peonies...or click on the video below,

 

Or how about Stipa ucrainica (a video made in the Rock Alpine Garden of Denver Botanic Gardens a few years ago) which may be even more appropriate...but I digress.

 

The real impetus for this blog post is this book. I have been plodding, or I should say, browsing through this contemporary Anthropological/Linguistic/Archeological/Historical classic by David Anthony: an astonishing tour-de-force filled with exhaustive data compiled through a suite of sciences that traces the parameters of the prehistoric Indo-European people and language in time and space. There was a pretty precise historical moment and spot (I shall not reveal when or where, however) when a rag tag tribe of steppe wanderers tamed the horse, invented the wheel and wagon and proceeded to explode their population astronomically, and expand their homeland from a few hundred miles of the Ukraine and neighboring Russia to much of Eurasia--all within a matter of centuries. What a story!



Fernleaf peony is almost more lovely in bud than in flagrant bloom

I was astonished to learn that horses that were the predominant ungulate prey of those ancestral Indo-Europeans. I don't think horses were terribly fond of eating peonies for fodder--which may explain while these are still relatively common on the pastures around the Caucasus where they occur. Of course, this is just one of hundreds of spectacular wildflowers that were trod upon and enjoyed by these ancestors of nearly three billion contemporary human beings. Is it perhaps not an accident that this exquisite gem that accompanied their wanderings strikes us as now as iconic?



Double flowered fernleaf peony and Paeonia ostii in Plantasia DBG

I have been fantasizing about these distant ancestors of half of humanity--the original Russians, on the vast Eastern European prairies so similar to our Midwest and Great Plains visually and ecologically. How ironic that our American steppes were settled and colonized (in large part) by Volga Germans who came from much the same climate in Eurasia. These brought with them from Russia the durum wheat which is the mainstay of our "Breadbasket" and many of the same weeds and even wildflowers (like this peony, an old passalong plant among them) from their ancestral homeland--a highly significant waypoint for our species.

Yes..half the world are Russians and don't even know it! Viva Мать Россия! The land of fernleaf peonies and so many of my favorite authors, painters and composers...

Altai dreaming

What this picture doesn't show is one of the few disappointments of an otherwise stellar trip (so to speak...pun not intended as you will see): it was taken in the foothills of the Altai, near the farm Maymir where I stayed in June, 2009 and just this past August for several luminous days. From Maymir one day last June we wandered up the valley (glimpsed between the tiny, yellow aconites in the picture) maybe a mile or so: lots of roses and giant aconites in blue and purple, not to mention Dictamnus angustifolius and Paeonia anomala in glorious bloom alongside a hundred or so other gorgeous things (Lilium martagon)...but I digress....

Within a few paces of these Aconites the hill was bristling last June with hundreds of Stelleropsis altaica, an unspeakably lovely daphnoid far from its other known occurences further northward. Late August is probably at least a month late to find a single berry on the little daphnoid, but this picture (and lots of other things too) was compensation of a sort. Perhaps some day I might return in July? Probably not. But visiting this magical valley twice in a lifetime is pretty damn good: something I wouldn't have dreamed of a decade or two ago. Thank you Plant Select!

What exactly is this tiny yellow Aconite? I am not sure. I can assure you, however, that it is amazingly common everywhere in the Altai and that I did get a pretty good pinch of its seed...considering it grows on a very dry, hot slope it bodes well for Colorado rock gardens.

I have left little pieces of my heart here and there on the steppe of Kazakhstan, on the feathery vale of Maymir, on the Larch-clad slopes above Markakol lake (with its endemic salmon I never had the chance to try)...on the fabulous ridge on Berkhat pass where we could see so clearly Mt. Belukha (highest peak in Siberia and the Altai) with its resident cloud some forty miles away. The picture below of Aquilegia glandulosa is a memento from that pass (and that was all just in the first few days of my momentous visit to Central Asia): turn up the Borodin, please! And waft along with me on a trip of a lifetime...

P.S. Why did not post a single blog post in Kazakhstan? Get real, buddy: Maymir and Berkhat pass have many things, but internet access is not one of them. And when you are hiking and seeing things like this, who has time to post? Can't believe that luminous month slipped by so quickly...