Shorline Plants of Pigeon Lake - Shoreline health is critical for a healthy lake. This is is a 3-part presentation filled with photos from Pigeon Lake on to steward the shoreline plants.

1. Riparian / Shoreline Plants
in the Pigeon Lake Area
What’s a Wildflower?
What’s a Weed?
Part 2 of 3
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2. Parts, Sections & Content:
Slides
1 I. Riparian / Shoreline Areas 4 - 13
II. Native Trees & Shrubs for Riparian Areas 15 - 23
III. Native Grass, Reeds, Sedges & Bulrushes 23 – 34
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IV. Native Wild Flowers for Riparian Areas 6 - 20
3 I. Weeds found in Riparian Areas 1 – 23
I. Other Resources Near End Part 3
II. Acknowledgements End of Each Part
Also:
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• Valuable & Interesting Tidbits Throughout

3. 10 Reasons to Go Wild*
Landscaping with native grasses, wildflowers and woody plants can offer
solutions to many of the problem areas we deal with as property owners
or caretakers. T here are several reasons to incorporate native plants into
1. Aesthetics – Indigenous plants are showy, diverse, colorful, and fragrant.
2. Hardiness – Native plants are more disease and pest resistant than their cultivated
cousins eliminating the need for chemical interventions.
3. Vigorousness – Native plants do not require fertilizer to be vigorous growers.
4. Low Maintenance – Wildflower gardens and naturalized sites require very little
maintenance once established, generally needing only a seasonal debris removal and
an occasional weeding.
5. Water Conservation – Once established native plants have deep root systems
and require little or no watering.
...
Continued…
* See www.wildaboutflowers.ca Wild About Flowers specialize in native Alberta wild flowers. 3

4. 10 Reasons to Go Wild* Continued ...
6. Naturally Acclimatized – Native plants grown from locally harvested seed are well
equipped to deal with our variable climate.
7. Sustainability – Plants that are naturally occurring in an area are more easily able to
reproduce and sustain themselves .
8. Weed Control – Naturalizing low usage areas with a mix of native grasses and indigenous
wildflowers leaves little space for unwanted plant species to move in and thrive in the tight knit
complimentary root system they form together.
9. Habitat Creation – Indigenous plants are the fabric of an ecosystem and have intricate
relationships with insects and animals. Choosing to use native plant material is a great way to
help support local wildlife.
10. Education – Some estimates suggest barely 1% of untouched prairie still exists in North
America. Support your environment and learn about naturally occurring plant species and
local wildlife by choosing to use native plants in your landscape.
* See www.wildaboutflowers.ca Wild About Flowers specialize in native Alberta wild flowers. 4

5. Throughout the presentation the bad, non-
native, invasive plants are bordered by RED; the
Fireweed
Himalayan Balsam
Creeping (Canada) Thistle
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6. IV. Native Wild Flowers
Learn in this section about some of our
amazing native wild flowers that grow in
the riparian areas around Pigeon Lake.
All but a couple of the pictures were taken at the lake.
The Pigeon Lake Watershed Association
welcomes your wild flower pictures.
Post on website:
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7. Many native riparian species flower later in
the summer, possibly because wet soil is
colder than dry soil. They flower after
the willows, shrubs, and sedges.
The next slides show a some wildflowers (or herbaceous plants)
roughly in order of early summer flowering,
moving to the late summer flowering.
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8. Marsh Ragwort
An annual or biennial, member of the Composite family. Very abundant in 2009 due
to the drought caused drawdown of water, creating muddy shorelines. The plant
first forms a rosette as above, and it may overwinter in this stage. (It is not prickly
– do not mistake it for a thistle rosette.) 8

9. American Brooklime
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10. A low plant, creeping on mud, or rooted in mud.
Several other buttercups occur in marshy places
e.g. Celery-leaved Buttercup
Yellow Water Crowfoot 10

11. Celery-leaved Buttercup
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12. Golden Dock (left) and Western Dock (right)
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13. 13

14. Pale Persicaria (left) and Yellow Avens (right) 13

15. Two other common shoreline plants flower by the end of June.
Philadelphia Fleabane (left), and Northern Stitchwort (right)
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16. Northern
Willowherb
A native plant that can
grow in such
abundance that it
appears weedy.
It is certainly a good
colonizer of mud.
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17. Silverweed (check the underside
of the leaves to understand the
name) spreads over wet mud by
red runners like strawberries.
Arum-leaved Arrowhead (left)
grows on or in very wet mud and
is often partly submersed.
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18. Marsh Yellow Cress Wild Mint 17

19. These native plants have similar leaf structure although the Water
Hemlock leaves are less divided and the leaflets are narrower.
Water-hemlock Water Parsnip 18

20. Asters are common in the marshes in the late
summer, particularly the Western Willow Aster.
Purple-stemmed Aster (left) and Western Willow Aster
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21. Nodding Beggar-ticks
often turns shorelines
yellow from mid to the
end of August.
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22. A few Alberta Wild Flower Resources
• Wildflowers of Edmonton and Central Alberta, by France Royer and Richard
Dickinson, The University of Alberta Press, 1996.
• GUIDELINES FOR THE PURCHASE AND USE OF WILDFLOWER SEED MIXES,
Alberta Native Plant Council, www.anpc.ab.ca/assets/wildflower_seeds_guidelines.pdf
• University of Alberta Vascular Plant Herbarium http://museums.ualberta.ca/vascularplants/
about.aspx
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