A Summer Day In The Gardens

 It is my habit each season to photograph the Landscapes Of Canada Gardens at the Canadian Museum of Nature. This area, on the west side of the property, features trees, bushes, plants, grasses, and flowers from four distinct ecosystems across the country. We begin with Boreal Forest, where trees and plants of that vast swath of the country are found.

They include, at centre, the tamarack or larch tree, which looks like a coniferous tree but is not. These drop their needles in the fall after they've become a golden colour.

Information panels provide details on the ecosystems, including Prairie Grassland, which includes long grasses and flowers growing thickly. They do well in the Ottawa summer.

The path goes beneath this sculpture of an iceberg.

Arctic Tundra is the next ecosystem, and in this shot taken from the west edge of the property, some of the shrubs and plants of that region do very well here, growing amid rocks.

More of the grasslands.

The last of these areas is the Mammoth Steppe, where plants that grew in the time of the last ice age and are still around have been planted around the north line of the pathway.

Imagine this as a ten thousand piece jigsaw puzzle.

The path leads towards the Museum, where a model of the Moon hangs in the Queens Lantern. A family of mammoth are seen along the path, with the plants the real ones would have been familiar with behind them.