Plants
There are 11 species of conifer trees and over 800 species of plants in Great Basin National Park and the neighboring valleys.
The area around the Visitor Center is dominated by plants such as sagebrush, saltbush, Single-leaf Pinyon, and Utah Juniper. Higher elevations are home to mountain meadows, White Fir, Quaking Aspen, Englemann Spruce, and large Ponderosa Pine. At treeline is an alpine area of low, delicate plants and rocky outcroppings.
The oldest non-clonal organism ever discovered, a Great Basin Bristlecone Pine tree at least 5000 years old, grew at the treeline near Wheeler Peak in the National Park. It was cut down in 1964 by a graduate student and U.S. Forest Service personnel for research purposes. It was given the nickname Prometheus, after the mythological figure who stole fire from the gods and gave it to man.
Read more about this topic: Great Basin National Park
Famous quotes containing the word plants:
“He who plants a tree
Plants a hope.”
—Lucy Larcom (1826–1893)
“What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“... feminism is a political term and it must be recognized as such: it is political in women’s terms. What are these terms? Essentially it means making connections: between personal power and economic power, between domestic oppression and labor exploitation, between plants and chemicals, feelings and theories; it means making connections between our inside worlds and the outside world.”
—Anica Vesel Mander, U.S. author and feminist, and Anne Kent Rush (b. 1945)