These spikes sprout flowers no larger than a baby's smallest fingernail that open into forms as complex and colorful as any you find in a florest's shop. One type is even mosquito-pollenated. Arctic Dryas flower on the beaches. In very moist areas, a carnivorous species called Pinguicula vulgaris, or common butterwort, produces a flower that at casual glance looks just like a violet. It catches then digests tiny insects right on its sticky leaves.
Summer days can get quite hot, even into the eighties.
Boreal botany thrives. Plants such as Arctic dryas flower and set seed or fruit almost as quickly as do desert ephemerals. Insects, voraciously hungry for flesh and blood and nectar, instinctively know that they must cram their entire life cycle into the few months of sunshine between when the snow finally melts away in May or June, and autumn's first hard frost. Their presence, and their appetites, present challenges for animals and humans. A fine course for CHurchill Canada botany or Arctic Botany in general.