Flora at Union Pass

Flora at Union Pass. . Union Pass the cultural site must first have been Union Pass the natural site. As a natural site it commenced to produce vegetation and was afterwards inhabited by animals before it ever became attractive to man==for any purpose other than the thrill of exploration. , Development of present flora at Union Pass is an evolvement of recent time. The connection between conspicuous boulders and glaciers lately covering the area is mentioned elsewhere, but lichens still thriving grew on those boulders before all local ice had melted. Other flora, needing more favorable conditions, probably didn't attain a flourishing status until following the altithermal period causing cessation of glaciers--about 7,000 years ago. , The forest's development into a climax, a spruce-fir culmination, has been slowed by wildfires. But forest cover is now expanding through man's protective measures plus continuing evolution of soils as in the filling of ponds and marshes from sedimentation and organic matter. , Fortunately, Union Pass is in a park, not in the forest. From its view the foreground is covered on the drier, higher area by sagebrush, bunchgrasses, and forms favoring semiarid conditions; low grounds support grassland communities, patches of willows and sedge meadows bordering ponds. Common plants are big sagebrush, shrubby cinquefoil, Idaho fescue, slender wheat grass, Indian paintbrush and lupine; along the streams grow willows, sedges, rushes, little red elephant, marsh marigold and globe mallow. , Southeast--toward the Wind River Range--Engleman Spruce-subalpine fir growth is in wetter areas and whitebark pine along hilltops and ridges. To the west--forward--is a younger growth of Engleman Spruce and lodgepole pine fringing expanding forests while within older lodgepole stands are in various stages of transition to the spruce-fir climax. Understory plants are grouse whortleberry, lupine, sedges and grasses.