List Members,
" The fact that these winds from the polar areas ... are warm is further evidence that the north wind originates in the earth's interior where the interior sun warms them.
Concerning this warm wind, explorer Peary writes on pages 214 and 215 of his
work:
'I expected to hear later of our February foehn in other parts of Greenland,
and I was not disappointed. Lieutenant Ryder was living for nine months at
Scoresby Sound, on the coast of East Greenland, while we were at McCormick
Bay. He was about four hundred and fifty geographical miles south of us. The
maximum temperatures he recorded occurred in February and May. He says
(Petermanns Mittheilungen, XI, 1892, p. 256) that these high temperatures
were due to severe foehn storms, one of which, in February suddenly, raised
the thermometer to 50 F, 8 degrees higher than my instruments had recorded.'
Foehn storms are warm winded storms which come out of the north (Arctic) in
winter.' "
APPENDIX V ( to Four Years in the White North by Admiral MacMIllan
THE VEGETATION ABOUT BORUP LODGE
By W. ELMER EKBLAW
That such a relatively luxurient vegetation as that which is found about our
headquarters in Northwest Greenland can grow so near the Pole surprises and
interests most people who learn of the green patches of dandelion, the
smiling fields of golden poppies, and the verdant slopes of lush blue grass,
flourishing almost a thousand miles within the Arctic Circle [ and only
about 700 from the pole ]. That mushrooms as wide as dinner plates and as
delicious as our meadow mushrooms; that ferns as dainty and as beautiful as
those of our mountain woods; that buttercups as bright and glistening as
those of our prairie stream-banks, that bluebells and rhodrodendon and
heather and many others- all find in the continuous sunshine of the Arctic
summer sufficient heat and light not only to grow but to thrive, and to
reproduce themselves, amazes almost everyone but the professional botanist.
True, it is only in favorable spots that all those plants grow, but even so,
there are few areas so rocky, or so cold, or so wind-swept that not any
plants can find a plane for themselves. If nothing else grows, the lichens,
at least. are sure to cover the rocks. But almost everywhere some of the
hardies flowers or grasses appear, sometimes dwarfed, it is true, but
vigorous, for all that.
Within the limits of Northwest Greenland- that is, between the great
glaciers of Melville Bay on the South and the Humboldt Glacier on the North-
I collected over one hundred and twentv-five species of vascular plants. A
number of these had before been recorded from this area, and one had not
before been found in Greenland. This last, Androsace Septentrionalis, a
deli-cate, inconspicuous little flower, I found growing on a gravel slope
within a hundred yards of Borup lodge. The mushrooms are not numerous, but
the lichens are legion.
The forests of that far Northland do not appreciably obstruct the view, nor
does the shrubbery afford much cover. The biggest rees do not rise more than
do not rise more than above the rocks on which they grow, even though their
branches may spread over a square yard of surface, and the biggest shrub
grows hardly so large as a croquet ball. The commoner trees are the Arctic
willow ( Salix Arctica ), the little two- or three-leaved wil[ow (Salix
Herbacea ), and the tiny dwarf Birch ( Betula Nana ). In fact, there are no
others. Some of the Arctic willow, though over fifty years old, have a stem
no thicker than my little finger. Salix Herbacea is tiny indeed, rarely
more than a half inch high.
Of shrubs, the most interesting is the Lapland Rhododenron. On a few
she!-tered slopes, where the sun shines warm and the snow does not lie too
long, this little bush blooms profusely, its tiny twngs set with numerous
little rose-purple blossoms scarcely a quarte of an inch wide. Two species
of cranberry ( Myrtillus Uliginosa and Vaccinium vitisidraea) neither
fruitIng except in unusually unusually favorable seasons, grow in the area,
though the latter is rare. The curlewberry ( Empetrum nigrum ) blooms on
sunny heaths in some deep fjords, but rarely sets fruit.
The trees and shrubs, if they may be called such, are generally found on the
Arctic heaths, where they asso-ciate with other plants partial to long,
sunny slopes. The golden northern arnica ( Arnien Cipina), so like a
diminuitive sunflower, in its habits and appearance; the wooly catspaw (
Antennaria alpine ), for all the world resembling its cousins in the
Southland, the tiny Arctic bluebell ( Campanula uniflora ), dainty and
gentian blue; the elicate pink and white shinleaf ( Pyrola rotundiflora );
and the pretty dark-purple grass ( Trisetum Spicatum ) are conspicuous
members of this heath-forming group, of which the creamv white
bell-flowered Andromeda ( Cassiope Tetragona ) is the characteristic
flower.
The cress family is represented by 16 species, ...
The dandelions about our lodge at Etah are note-worthy. In addition to
several species of the yellow, a delicate form, white with pink border,
known from no other place in the world, grows luxurient.
The brightest, bravest flower of all the Northland is the cheery Arctic
Poppy. Up to the fartherst North point of land yet attained, this sturdy
flower maintains itself against the snow and ice; no coast is too desolate,
no mountain too bleak, to sustain it; the coldest winds, the fiercest snows,
do not daunt it. It grows in profusion on the delta about our lodge, and on
the stream-side meadows back in the mountains, whole fields ablaze
throughout the summer. The poppy should be the national flower of Eskimo
Land, the land of Ultima Thule!
Grasses grow in abundance ... numerous blue grasses grow in Greenland ...
And besides these there are downy, white cotton grass ...
Four ferns grow on the rock ledges. Aspidian Fragans, a sweet-smelling fern
of drier ledges, is common on the sunny ledges just above Borup lodge.
Cystopteris fragilis is the commonest fern throughout Northwest Greenland.
It grows most abundant and luxuriently in moist crevices on steep cliffs.
Woodsiagabela is a Lilliputian fern, not more than an inch high, and
Woodsia ilvensis is not much larger.
As soon as the snow begins melt, the plants begin to bloosom. The first
flowers at Etah [ 79* North ] usually open a few days before the first of
June, a month and a half after the midnight sun has begun. Some species are
often retarded by the heavy summer snows, so that they hardly have time to
bloosom at all, for the killing frost begin to come about two weeks before
the last midnight sun. Even before the first of August the autumnal yellows
and tans and browns come, and growth is at an end. The season of life is
brief, indeeld, but under the daily bright twenty-four-hour sun the Arctic
plants, nearly all like those of our early Spring, come to rapid maturity.
Though all these plants grow rather luxuriently about our lodge, they
scarcely begin to hide the nakedness of the rugged slopes and rocky cliffs
and plateaus; yet to us who lived among them for four years, they are as
beautiful and dear as our trees and shrubs and grasses and flowers of the
Southland. They grow bravely in the face of almost impossible conditions,
courageous guradians of life in the cold, killing North.