PLANTS IN ARCTIC-ALPINE ENVIRONMENT — SHETLER 475 



When a botanist sets foot anywhere in the Arctic, he notices first 

 and foremost the complete absence of ortliodox trees. If any woody 

 plants are present, they are nothing more than shrubs, usually very low 

 and hugging the ground. There is the occasional patch of tall wil- 

 lows and alders, possibly achieving twice the height of a man, in 

 sheltered gulches or on river bars and banks, but only in the lower 

 parts of the Arctic. In the High Arctic even shrubs are scarce, and 

 those present rarely exceed a few inches. Throughout the vast 

 reaches of the Arctic as a whole, however, the botanist comes to ex- 

 pect very low shrubs (less than 18 in.), if any. The herbaceous vege- 

 tation may form a rather continuous mat or heath, or in the High 

 Arctic it may be confined to scattered patches on barren rock and 

 gravel slopes and plains. This treeless vegetation type is what the 

 botanist calls "tundra," from the Finnish word "tundren," meaning 

 treeless rolling plain; and the vast circumpolar zone without per- 

 manent tree growth, sandwiched between the boreal coniferous forest 

 and the polar icecap, may be designated by the proper name, the 

 "Tundra." In fact, to the botanist the Arctic is the Tundra. 



"WHiile botanically the word timdra may connote primarily a type 

 of vegetation, the Finnish word suggests also a type of landform, 

 which is perhaps equally as important in giving us a concept of tundra 

 as is the vegetation. This is a landform of flat or rolling plains under- 

 lain by frozen ground, dominated by bog soils or lithsols, dotted by 

 numerous lakes and meandering rivers, and tending in many places to 

 be quite wet and almost spongy at the surface. Patterned ground and, 

 close up, tussocky or hummocky microrelief are characteristic. In 

 some respects, the Tundra, in its vegetational and geological features is 

 like a gargantuan bog, only the water beneath is permanently frozen. 

 Above all, the Tundra always strikes me, wherever I see it, as incom- 

 parably vast and bleak — bleak, that is, until I am able to get my feet 

 down among the tussocks and to see the many microcosms that compose 

 the whole. 



The Tundra I have depicted is of course a stereotype, which is well 

 illustrated by the pictures in plate 3. These photographs, taken near 

 Point Barrow, Alaska, aptly convey a characteristic expanse of tundra 

 on Alaska's Arctic Coastal Plain. This is textbook tundra where the 

 vegetation forms an almost continuous heath cover, but it is not char- 

 acteristic of large parts within the Arctic. As already mentioned, the 

 higher one goes into the Arctic the sparser becomes the vegetation, and 

 the land might more properly be termed "rock desert." This is true 

 in general of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, which has been the 

 subject of some very interesting papers by the distinguished Canadian 

 botanist A. E. Porsild (1951, 1955, 1957). Some would restrict the 

 term "tundra" entirely to the continuously vegetated portions of the 



