Wild grasses near KAIRA

Today we just have a nice photograph. This one was taken on the artificial mound atop which lies the Low-Band Antenna (LBA) array. Although there is not much vegetation here, the occasional patch of grass or the odd mushroom can be found amongst the gravel. Of course, one day this land will be reclaimed by nature. Until then, we're enjoying our "visit".

Of course, this was before the snow started falling!

Arctic mushrooms

Today we have some more photographs from our recent trek through the forest. This time it is the mushrooms! Fort the trip, I went with a local expert, who could recognise the safe from the dangerous ones. The only thing is... I don't know (or don't remember) what any of them were called.

Cottongrass

Today we're back to the flora that surrounds the Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory (SGO) area. Across the road from the SGO entrance, there is a large swamp area, where the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI, also based at Tähtelä) have a number of measurement instruments. And, during our recent walk through the area, we took a few photographs of some of the flora in this swamp region. The photographs shown here are of cottongrass.

Cottongrass (Finnish = Tupasvilla, Latin = Eriophorum vaginatum)

A close-up of the wispy cotton at the head of the stem.

Reindeer lichen

Continuing with our Arctic botany theme this week, today's photograph is of "reindeer lichen" (also known as "reindeer moss"). This lichen is a pale whitish-grey and covers huge areas of the forest with a ghostly, spongy carpet.

Reindeer lichen (Finnish = Poronjäkälä, Latin = Cladonia rangiferina)

It is a source of food for the reindeer and this is clearly seen by the fact that it is prominent in the areas that are fenced off to stop the reindeer from getting in. In fact, it is just as well there are some protected areas around the observatory (although our motivation is to protect the equipment), as the reindeer would otherwise totally overgraze the lichen (which is very slow growing and takes many years to establish tick ground cover like that shown here.

This reindeer fence marks the edge of the lichen carpet

PS:  Oh, and we should point out that all the photographs this week are from around the area near Sodankylä Geophysical Observatory (SGO, Tähtelä) which is where the researchers work. This is an Arctic boreal climate, which is somewhat different from the area where KAIRA itself is.

The berries of Arctic summer

As we mentioned in yesterday's post, we'll be reporting on our forest expedition in the area around the Tähtelä area. Today, there are some of the edible berries that we found on the expedition.

Crowberry (Finnish = Variksenmarja, Latin = Empetrum nigrum)

Bilberry (Finnish = mustikka, Latin = Vaccinium myrtillus)

Cloudberry (Finnish = lakka, Latin = Rubus chamaemorus)