Fireweed

Description:

This plant can grow up to 2.5 meters (8 feet) tall, but is usually shorter. The top of the plant consists of a flowering stem with lovely pinkish flowers. Leaves are scattered and alternate.

Habitat:

This is a early colonizer of boreal forests that have suffered some form of disturbance, such as windthrow and burned over forests.

Notes:

This plant uses many reproductive strategies to take advantage of its scattered habitat: 1) Seeds are distributed by wind to take advantage of burned over or disturbed boreal forest sites often long distances from the seed source. 2) It is a prodigious seed producer; each plant may produce up to 80,000 seeds. 3) Seeds can live in a "seed bank" in the ground for many years waiting for the right conditions (disturbance) before germinating. I've seen whole mountainsides, recently burned, covered in this plant that prefers little competition and lots of light.