March 23: Buds and Bugs Walk
On March 23, 2025, Betty and Sherrin led 7 participants on a KNP Buds and Bugs Walk from the Campground entrance to Jimmy Russell Road then up the Hoodoo View Trail.
Trip report by Betty Baker
One of the goals of this walk was to learn to identify shrubs in late winter, before the appearance of leaves and flowers. New bud formation is already apparent, as well as the clear effect of winter browsing by deer, elk and moose. A wide variety of native shrubs and plants are abundant in the park and an important aspect is to understand how they have been used by the Indigenous People in the area.
A short way up the trail towards Jimmy Russell Road junction, our first stop was to look at the common snowberry shrub. This shrub is easy to recognize by its very fine branches. The buds are opposite and white waxy berries often persist through winter. They are food for grouse and other birds but toxic for human consumption.
Heavily browsed saskatoon bushes are plentiful in this area, giving the shrub a gnarled appearance. These have alternate buds, and a few dried berries remain on the tallest branches. These are juicy and delicious in season, devoured by birds.
Turning left at the junction, we stopped to examine the soopalallie shrub, Chinook for “soapberry.” The bitter, soapy berries were whipped into foam and combined with other sweeter berries to make an ice cream-like dessert. The berries do not persist into winter. The rusty-coloured buds and bud scales are opposite and appear like praying hands. We examined them through a hand lens, which brings out the beauty of the small round flower buds that look like tiny grapes. This is one of the earliest flowering shrubs.
The prickly-stemmed wild rose has alternate buds. The red rose hips are high in vitamin C and may persist through winter, when they are eaten by coyotes, bears and other wildlife.
A tall willow shrub grove further along on the right displayed pussy willows on the branch tips. These are the catkins, dense flowers without petals. The leaf buds are alternate and closely pressed to the stems. Willow bark is a source of salicin, a compound used for pain relief with effects similar to aspirin. Willows are heavily browsed by moose.
Turning on to the Hoodoo View trail, we stopped at the little bridge going over a small creek. This is a riparian zone and perfect habitat for the red osier dogwood shrub. The bark is smooth and red; the buds are opposite and appear like dog’s ears at the tip. Also heavily browsed by moose. The inner bark was used as a poultice and branches supple for weaving and bending for various uses.
Dave Hale pointed out a very large aspen tree at this site; it is in the UBC Big Tree registry.
Further up the trail at the Hoodoo Viewpoint, a more open area provided for some large patches of Ceonothus, also called snowbrush or buckbrush because it is a favourite food of deer. It is an evergreen shrub that is spicy-scented when the flowers are in bloom. The shrub is extremely fire-resistant. The leaves were boiled into a tea to treat tuberculosis.
Another prevalent trailing evergreen shrub is the kinnikinnick or bearberry. The red berries persist through winter and are feed for bears and birds. The word kinnikinnick comes from an eastern Indigenous word for “mixture” for smoking. Tea was made from the leaves, and the berries were used to flavour soup.
Trip report by Sherrin Perrouault
Then the topic of insects was discussed as participants watched for signs of insects and learned about where they are in winter months. We learned that even though we don’t see them, they are all around us in the park in many different forms and places waiting to emerge in the warmer months.
The first ones to appear, which they do by the thousands on warm days in February, are the springtails. These tiny but important bugs make their way up from the soil to the top of the snow where they look like a sprinkling of black pepper. They are so important as nutrient recyclers producing the best soil as they chew their way through decaying matter.
After spending the winter tucked in under bark, the first butterfly to emerge in the spring in the KNP is the mourning cloak, easily identified by its dark brown wings outlined with a yellow to white edging.
Some insects spend the winter in a larva stage, hidden in galls or in tunnels in trees. So even though we don’t see insects in the park in the winter, they are hiding all around us!
Photos by Flo Brokop
