This is another "throughout a year" collection, this time showing mostly nature. Well, as a matter of fact, except for the first photo quartet there are only plants here. What about animal life? The island has a lot of it, but you know, plants don't move while you are fiddling with the camera settings a few feet away.
Many plants played a significant role in the old diet. Some of them had an economic value, too. A farm wwith great cloudberrcloudberry fields got a higher value for that reason. Experience had teached people that the delicious cloudberries kept certain illnesses away. Later the scientists discovered that this berry contains large amounts of vitamine C.
Skogsøya has a very varied flora. There are four reasons for this: A fairly long growth season, good soil, high air humidity, and sunshine 24 hours a day for two months each summer. And of course you'll find shore plants as well as mountain plants.
This little collection barely hints at the magnificent Skogsøya nature. If you want to see all of it you'll have to come and look for yourself!
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A lone boulder, left behind by a local glacier ten thousand years or more ago, balances nimbly on a stony ridge |
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| Black ice? Yes, because the water is very pure and the bottom of this little lake is made up of dark brown sand. |
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The winter is coming to an end. Snow and ice melt rapidly in the sun, and soon the spring will explode and change nature almost overnight. |
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| The seagulls need vast amounts of food in the egg-laying season. Here are the remnants of sea urchins they have consumated. |
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A cloud-berry flower. The insects carry the pollen between plants. A cloudy and rainy spring means no summer cloudberries. |
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| A here it is - the much coveted, very delicious and eagerly harvested cloudberry, the gold of the bogs and a heavenly taste for the tongue! |
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The small red droplets will turn into huckleberries later in the summer. They're still harvested and made into a delicious marmalade. |
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| And here the are a couple of months later, ready for harvesting. After some hours work you probably will have blue fingers and lips. |
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No, these are not eatable, but the birds like them. We call them "svinskrubb" (pig berries), a botanist will say Cornus suécica. |
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| Crowberries are everywhere. They're eatable, but with a flat taste. However, some people have discovered that they make a very fine wine. |
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Cotton? Sort of. It's bog cotton (or cotton grass), but I've never heard that this plant could be used to make textiles. However, they're pretty! |
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| May I present the ten feet tall "heracléum laciniátum". That's Latin, we call it "Tromsø-palme". It was imported from Russia a century ago. |
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Birches with light brown dried leaves. The bright red top leaves of grouseberry heather are dominating the foreground. |
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| Here is a close-up of the grouseberry leaves, and now you can see that the name is very apt: Two small grouse feathers cling to the leaves. |
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The leaves of the rowan trees may take all colors fram yellow to deep red in the autumn if no showers wash away the pigments. |
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| Another close-up. In bright sunshine the autumn colors of rowan tree leaves can feel almost painful to the eye. But they're a beautiful sight! |
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Some years you may find big mushrooms everywhere. We don't eat them, mostly because we're not sure which species are eatable and which are not. |
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| The last plant to blossom is the heather "røsslyng" (Callúna vulgáris). Then it is autumn, and the first snow may fall any day. |
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