Alpine Plants

Alpine Plants

From the Royal BC Museum

Curator emeritus Richard Hebda writes about this “delightful little mountain nibble” and one of the hardiest plants in the world, found in the mountains of North America, Asia and Europe.

Caught in the act: a bumblebee steals nectar from an alpine plant in the northern Rockies–but without pollinating its flower. This article comes from the Spring 2015 edition of What’s inSight.

On collecting trips in remote mountains in northern BC, Royal BC Museum researchers look for clues to understand why plants are found—or not found—in the alpine tundra. This article from the Summer 2015 edition of What’s inSight reveals more about these discoveries.

See the Winter 2014 edition of What’s inSight for an article about the origins of BC’s alpine flora after glacial retreat, by Curator of Botany Ken Marr and Richard Hebda, curator emeritus of botany and earth history.

Royal BC Museum curators and collection managers travel to remote mountains in northern BC to discover fossils and document alpine plant communities. From the Winter 2013 edition of What’s inSight.

What is the connection between alpine plants in Russia and in BC? Royal BC Museum curators went on a 2,400 km collecting road trip in Russia to find out.  From the Spring 2012 edition of What’s inSight.

Where to Begin Your Own Research

Search the botany collection for online records of plants at the Royal BC Museum.

Learn more about botany at the Royal BC Museum.

Outside Links

These links will take you away from the Learning Portal. Come back soon!

  • E-Flora BC (Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia)

This is an excellent plant database with images, identification guides and distribution maps, hosted by the University of British Columbia. It includes data from specimens at the Royal BC Museum herbarium—a place where dried research specimens are stored and filed according to a system of classification that makes it easy to search for a particular species.

A collection of data from 38 herbaria with collections from the Pacific Northwest, including the Royal BC Museum herbarium.

This is a great resource for information related to BC’s native plants.

This club promotes appreciation and conservation of BC’s native alpine plants in the wild and in cultivated rock gardens.

Explore this database hosted by the Conservation Data Centre (CDC) of the BC Ministry of Environment.  It is the CDC’s mandate to report on the status of rare species.