More meadow madness (Mongolian in this case...)

Scutellaria orientalis

Why would I show a single plant in a blog about meadows? the same reason that Vogue, Vanity Fair, Elle, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Glamour and their ilk invariably depict drop dead gorgeous young women (generally WASP and blond) with one lock of hair askew, and their heads tilted just so: BECAUSE WE ARE PROGRAMMED! Even sophisticated folk to the specific, and eschew the general. That's a fantastic skullcap we saw several times on the steppes of Mongolia and Kazakhstan, btw! If I'd started with a meadow shot you wouldn't have lingered, would you!?

When I photographed this (not far from where the borders of China, Russia and Mongolia meet in far western Mongolia) I thought the colors were outrageously bright: I probably have twenty shots of this particular meadow--all of them rather amorphous. I've not shared these before--and thought with NARGS meadow webinar next week it would be fun to do so...  I am still reeling a bit from a comment made by a dear FB friend (you know who you are: "Meadow craze isn't for me. I like cozier environments") Which in his case is the Eastern woodland. Another close friend confided that he couldn't stand those eastern woodlands "So claustrophobic: you can't see where you are". I am a peculiar sort; I love woods, deserts, steppes--you name it: to play favorites with Nature's biomes strikes me as the height of human something: arrogance? folly? silliness! Although Julie Andrews almost spoiled it for me, careening down the Alpine meadows in those hills alive with the sound of that ear worm--a surprising number of my "peak" experiences have occurred in meadow environments. The day we descended from the Eagle mountains into pristine environments (too far from villages to be overgrazed) in far western Mongolia was such a day for me...twelve years ago and counting, but it feels like yesterday.

Every few miles a whole new palette of plants emerges and of course new views...

What are these two strange strips of bare earth? They look like a trail or road--there was none there...

Could it have been mining? Solifluction terraces? We never determined for sure... but the flowers loved to grow around in between them!

Yes, we were traveling with camels: not something I've done before or since!

Here you can see we're approaching "civilization": a patch of meadow has been protected: we asked why: "to have something for livestock to eat once they'd stripped the other areas down" they said...I've discovered again and again that the nature of grazing has an immense impact on wildflowers: it is essential to have grazing--otherwise coarse grasses dominate over wildflowers. But timing is an art.

And yes, grassland is often scenic!

More of that pea--a Lathyrus or Hedysarum I never keyed out, alas! have something almost identical all over the West.

Trollius altaicus galore...

More of the damn pea...

More views! (whence we came)

Dracocephalum grandiflorum: queen of its genus. This is everywhere in the Altai mountains. The constant shift from grandiloquent view, to specific plant--much like what happens in our gardens--this is a feature of hiking on meadows of any kind: you really can't get bored!

Notice how un-monotonous the endless sea of grasses and forbs is: it does help to dot about the occasional peak or glacier in the distance!

That's one of our camps down below...

Sanguisorba minor?

This looks suspiciously like salad burnet...

I mistook this for a plantain at first...

A bog along the way with Primula nivalis and a buttercup...

Meadows--be they alpine, or steppe or savannah--are the vast spaces where humanity is most vulnerable, and closest to the Heavens. You realize this is the sort of landscape is where not just Homo sapiens--but all the hominins leading to us evolved and made us what we are?  This is the environment that caused us to lift our stature to bolt upright, that exploded the size of our brain and molded every facet of what it is to be a human being. Come to think of it, this should be our favorite biome! The only places on earth that comes close to the feelings that wide open prairies inspire are oceans, seas, vast lakes and rivers where the clutter of cities, forests and humanity are out of sight, out of mind. I love them!