Eastern mountain avens: The sentinel flower
A third of the Nova Scotian population grows on NCC’s Brier Island Nature Reserve (Photo by Brainworks)
A small yellow flower grows on the very edge of Nova Scotia. You can find it on the edges of bogs on Brier Island, the westernmost point of the province, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean. A member of the rose family, this flower grows up to 40 centimetres tall and blossoms from June to September. Its name is eastern mountain avens, and it is one of the most endangered plants in Canada.
Eastern mountain avens grow in only two locations in the entire world. Two thirds of the global population can be found in the alpine meadows of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The final third grows along the perimeters of wetlands in southwest Nova Scotia, on Brier Island and in Digby Neck. The flower likely spread to Nova Scotia after the last ice age, before the sea level rose, travelling northeast along the Appalachian Mountains as the ice melted. When the Bay of Fundy filled with water, the two populations became separated.
Collecting seeds from diverse locations around Brier Island (Photo by Alain Belliveau, Acadia University)
A third of the Nova Scotian population grows on the Nature Conservancy of Canada’s (NCC’s) Brier Island Nature Reserve. Unfortunately, the largest habitat for eastern mountain avens, at Big Meadow Bog, was disturbed in the 1950s. Decades ago, the landowners attempted to drain the area for agricultural purposes. They were not successful, but the bog lost much of its original wetness in the process.
“The bog became drier and the conditions weren’t favourable to the avens,” explains Doug van Hemessen, NCC stewardship manager for Nova Scotia. NCC acquired the Brier Island Nature Reserve in 1988 and has since been part of efforts to restore the bog’s hydrology. Various organizations have partnered for this cause, including Environment and Climate Change Canada, Mersey Tobeatic Research Institute, Fern Hill Institute for Plant Conservation, Acadia University, St. Francis Xavier University and members of the local community.
In addition to the habitat restoration projects, researchers from Acadia University have become very familiar with the plant. Eastern mountain avens is one of the many species that is kept by the Acadia Seed Bank, which is one of two seed banks in the Maritimes.
Lab-grown flowers were planted in a new location on Long Island near Brier Island (Photo by Robin Browne, Acadia University)
The Acadia Seed Bank is located at the K.C. Irving Environmental Science Centre at Acadia University, along with the E.C. Smith Herbarium and the Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens. It holds over 350 different species and millions of individual seeds. As explained by Alain Belliveau, Irving Biodiversity collection manager, the seed bank has three interconnecting purposes: rescue, research and restoration. They collect seeds from plants that are at risk of extinction, hoping to, if necessary, have the means to rescue them and restore their numbers across the region. All of this can only be done with research.
“There’s so much that we don’t know,” says Alain, “so the more research we do, the better we can understand those species and the better chance we have at protecting them out in the wild.”
Researchers at the Acadia Seed Bank began to examine eastern mountain avens in 2012. Seeds were collected from various locations around Brier Island over a number of years to ensure the plant’s diversity was reflected in the samples. Like most species in the seed bank, the seeds were cleaned by student volunteers and carefully stored in a freezer, where they can survive for hundreds of years.
Sarah Hines first worked with eastern mountain avens as a student volunteer, and later returned to the Acadia Seed Bank as the K.C. Irving Centre research manager and Irving Scholar coordinator. She helped grow and propagate the collected seeds inside Acadia’s research facility. After proving that they could survive for a few years, matching the plant’s perennial nature, the lab-grown flowers were planted on Brier Island’s neighbour, Long Island. The conditions on Long Island are similar to Brier Island, though eastern mountain avens have never grown there naturally. Twelve years after their research began, eastern mountain avens became the first endangered plant species in Nova Scotia to survive in the wild after being grown from seeds in long-term storage.
Eastern mountain avens is one of the most endangered plants in Canada (Photo by Alain Belliveau, Acadia University)
“What we did is quite unique because we proved that we could have a ‘disaster plan’ to preserve genetic diversity,” says Sarah. If eastern mountain avens were to disappear due to climate change, habitat loss or other reasons, the Acadia Seed Bank would likely be able to restore its population and prevent its extinction.
Eastern mountain avens is not the only species that thrives in the harsh conditions of Nova Scotia’s islands. Brier Island in particular is also a hot spot for migratory birds and provides habitat for the federally and provincially endangered monarch butterfly. Alain says that part of eastern mountain avens’ value comes from its relationship to its environment. He compares it to a sentinel, keeping watch over the other species and the general health of the bogs on Brier Island.
“They’re the first thing we’ll notice if something is wrong,” he says.
While Acadia researchers learn all they can about this little yellow flower, NCC and many partners continue to monitor their habitat on Brier Island. The projects are very different, but they strengthen and support one another. Eastern mountain avens show us that there are a multitude of ways that we can care for nature.
