Craters of the Moon Limber Pine

The canyons of central Idaho open up to the Snake River Plain, which is really nothing more than the giant flattened burn scar that tracks the hot spot that is now the Yellowstone Caldera as the North American tectonic plate was drug over it.  We visited Craters of the Moon National Monument, and in my opinion, it is superior to Yellowstone National Park in some respects.  It's less crowded, probably because it is very remote, and far off the beaten path.  And there are a lot of really cool plants in a small area that are adapted to the harsh conditions.

The first plant I noticed were the limber pines. I have a reverence for pines, I suppose, because they sustained my family, all of which were involved in the timber industry in the Black Hills. Pinus flexilis is aptly named.  You can indeed tie slip knots in the branches without breaking them. I've experimented with this and interestingly, the slip knot did not graft itself into place.  Somehow the branch knew it was tied and died back to the next living branch below the knot. The flexible branches are an adaptation to the windy environments where it grows, usually where few other trees can make a go of it.