This female Bebb’s willow lives in Teegatha'OH Zheh Park. To me, she is the most beautiful tree in Whitehorse.

Small glossy leaves reflect sunlight like silver daggers and the transmitted light is a wash-glow of uplifting jade.

#sciart #mishfish #botany #botanicalart

This Bebbs willow lives in Teegatha'OH Zheh Park at the end of Main St. To me, this female willow tree is the most beautiful tree in Whitehorse.

By mid-summer, long, flexible branchlets cascade like a waterfall from several central grooved trunks.

Salix bebbiana
#mishfish #sciart #botany

These are the flowers of Bebb’s willow.

Visible here are 8mm male and 7mm female apetalous flowers with tawny floral bracts. Female flowers of this species are characterized by very long stipes and the nectaries of both sexes are about 1/10 that height.

Salix bebbiana
#mishfish #sciart #botany

Female Bebb’s willow flowers emerge soon after the males begin their yellow floral display. As females mature, the yellow stigma becomes more prominent and receives pollen. Once fertilized, each ovary swells as the style elongates, rendering the fruits quite recognizable.

#mishfish #sciart #botany

As the vibrant green of early spring sweeps up from valley bottoms, eruptions of yellow anthers from male Bebb’s willow flowers bring a welcome wash of colour.

Unlike precocious willows, the flowers of Salix bebbiana emerge with or just after the leaves.

Salix bebbiana
#mishfish #sciart #botany

Every year, I head to #SwanHaven at Marsh Lake, Yukon in April to see the tundra swans arriving. In September we see them heading South. I love hearing news of their arrival in different places throughout the year.

This piece is beautiful!
Nasturtiums are notoriously difficult to capture; the long trumpet shape of the flower and the flat disc of the leaves present completely different challenges and require a range of techniques to render well.

Here’s a small study I created last summer :)

This is a female Alaska willow. On occasion, small evolutionary marvels transform her leaves. Chemical secretions of midges, mites and wasps merge with plant tissue, encoding a different blueprint: “swell and make a nursery chamber”. The plant yields and galls form in leaves, petioles, stems or buds

This Alaska willow lives in Puckett’s gulch near the Black St stairs in Whitehorse. Floral bracts with thick bundles of glossy hairs protect minute flowers forming within as the glaucous branchlets become luminous with returning sap and photosynthetic pigments.

Salix alaxensis var. longistylis

This female Alaska willow lives just behind the outdoor gym at the bottom of the Black St stairs in Whitehorse.

Visible here are 10mm male and 6mm female apetalous flowers, along with their respective nectary and hair-laden floral bract.

Salix alaxensis var. longistylis
#sciart 🐡#botanicalart

This Alaska willow lives in Puckett’s gulch near the Black St stairs in Whitehorse. It was one of the first willows I learned to ID back in 2021 when I first learned to tag trees and track their phenology.

Salix alaxensis var. longistylis
🧪 🎨 🌿🖼️ #Yukon

Do you know the purple prairie crocus, or pasqueflower? This flower was in the running for Yukon’s territorial flower but Manitoba got there first.

If you know which flower became Yukon’s territorial flower in 1957, post it here.

#mishfish #botanicalart #watercolour #watercolor #art #sciart #yukon

It is officially winter in the Yukon and I can confirm: no matter how much snow arrives, there is *always* someone to paint. Take this luminous Rosa acicularis, for instance.
#rosehip #botanicalillustration #botanicalart #botany #mishfish #watercolour #painting