Small Wonders in Missoula’s North Hills
By Beth Conway
It’s time for Field Notes, brought to you by the Montana Natural History Center.
On the well-trodden routes of Missoula’s North Hills, I often meet friends and familiar strangers who, like me, are welcomed into this landscape that showcases our Big Sky in the heart of the city; where meadowlarks distract visitors with their wistful words from the cover of ponderosas. Here, these giant pines are sparse and look lost, even as they stand sturdy peering over the valley.
But this hillside isn’t a place for commanding pines. The grassy windswept, rolling ridges are built for smaller wonders. Here, a unique and unexpected cushion plant community calls home.
Buckwheat, phlox, douglasia – short, stunted, low-profile – the pillow-like shape of these plants is designed for protection in harsh environments where few other species can thrive. Their taproots are sturdy in their conviction and designed for depth in search of water. Delicate flowers open for bees and flies, hoping to entice the pollinators who are brave enough to venture into the hillside’s frequent gusts. The plants’ stout shapes help to retain heat. While the leaves of this clustered community often look white or bleached, covered in small, soft hairs that hold fleeting moisture before the wind snatches it away.
It’s the winds, in fact, that give this unsuspecting hillside its distinct character. Acting as thieves, fierce winds tear through Hellgate Canyon along the Clark Fork River, picking up speed and exploding into the valley. In their path, the North Hills are robbed of moisture. Snow blows free before it has a chance to settle and rainwater is pulled from the surface, leaving the soil rocky, shallow, and – for many plants – unforgiving. Pebbles held together by more pebbles that take a pounding from the calculated gales. This hillside is cold and hot and extreme.
Exposure and this blustered besieging have invited an ecosystem that typically exists at an elevation of 6,000 feet, above the treeline, not in a rolling ridgeside in a mountain valley thousands of feet below. Like its landscape, the cushion community of plants that live here is an ecological anomaly.
Adding to its peculiarity is the community member Missoula phlox, or Phlox missoulensis; a species named after a town named after a beloved waterway the Salish call nmesuletkʷ, roughly translated to “cold water.” This rare local celebrity is isolated and adapted exclusively to the environment of this piece of western Montana. Its white or blueish-gray blossoms attract flies as their dominant pollinators. Blooms typically peak in May and adorn the North Hill’s Waterworks Trail that boasts one of the largest populations of Missoula phlox.
Protections for this special terrain and its native cushion plants are being spearheaded in partnerships with the University of Montana and Missoula Conservation Lands Program. Shiny metal flags dot the ground around the plants, helping scientists track the impacts of noxious weeds and climate change. On such sought-after trails the plants are also susceptible to trampling, vulnerable to foot traffic and paw traffic alike that ventures off designated paths.
Just days ago I was up there — again — on those rugged trails, diverted from my run by the busy work of a bumblebee bouncing between the researchers’ reflective tags and open blossoms of douglasia. A fellow trail-runner stopped to join me in my curiosity. We inspected early spring blooms and talked about snowpack. Like me, her skin was blushed by the breeze. She and I spoke of where we spotted other flowers, of the ridge and the wildlife and the lone ponderosa in the bend – like me, she is a frequent visitor to these hills.
“What a day,” I said. But what I meant was, what a place.
We took a breath and sighed in the sunshine before splitting in opposite directions down the trails wandered so many times before and so many times to come. Another ordinary afternoon in the North Hills enjoying the extraordinary – knowing without question we’ll be back for more of the ridge’s small and spectacular.
Today’s Field Note was written in the Field Notes Writing Workshop at the Montana Natural History Center. I’m Beth Conway for Field Notes, brought to you by the Montana Natural History Center, providing natural history education for schools and the public throughout Montana. For information on upcoming events and programs at the Center, call 406.327.0405 or visit our website at MontanaNaturalist.org.
