A gray jay alighted on the branchlet where six dark blue cones grew as upright as pillars. The work of a single summer's growth, the cones were finished and ready for their final task of falling apart to free their winged seeds.

The jay's weight was just enough to wobble the branchlet and thereby free a few more seeds.

An October breeze carried one twirling seed to a duff mat atop a depression of coarse grit accumulating from slowly disintegrating granite. The seed remained in place, dormant and undisturbed, through winter and into spring.

Warmed by sunshine and moistened by melting snow, the seed first pushed free a tiny root; the stem and leaves, slowly outgrowing the seed coat, followed a few days later.

If You Go

What: Kevin Cook's Noontime Nature lecture will be "Fir Loft." It will detail the wildlife species found in and common to subalpine firs in Colorado.

When: Noon, Tuesday, July 3.

Where: Loveland Public Library, 300 N. Adams Ave.



As the root grew down, the stem grew up. Three days after the leaves pushed above the gritty duff and found both air and sun, a fungus found the root. A benevolent species, the fungus insinuated itself among the cells of the root and encapsulated the tips of the root hairs.

This mycorrhizal fungus became a lifelong tenant in what would grow into a modest tree.

Three other groups of fungi also found the tree and soon enough called it home.

Several lichens were among the new tenants, but they limited themselves to the dead bark and wood. Live plant tissues produce chemicals that prevent the lichens from becoming established, so the lichens can only grow on tissues the tree no longer needs.

Another fungus was not so polite. By mere chance its spores found a wound caused by a neighboring tree that fell in a wind storm. The wound became an infection court, and soon the fungus was proliferating inside the wood of the tree's trunk.

After several years the wood-softening fungus was found by a three-toed woodpecker. Ready to nest, the woodpecker and its mate took turns excavating the fungus-softened wood to create the space in which they would lay their eggs and rear their nestlings.

That first winter after the three-toed woodpeckers fledged, a young boreal owl, newly on its own, found the now-empty cavity and moved in. It stayed partly because it had a place to escape both daylight and harsh winter weather and partly because it found a familiar food.

Spreading outward from the tree were sinuous mats of duff interspersed by mounds of conifer needles that had been accumulating for years beyond counting. Together they provided a perfect growing medium for that third fungus group, duff-dwelling and mushroom-forming.

Those mushrooms and some of the lichens were the favorite food of the southern redback-vole, and the redback-vole was the favorite prey of the boreal owl.

The subalpine fir needed 160 years to reach 50 feet tall, but by then it was a dominant feature of the high mountain forest, hosting a few tenants all year and many more tenants just during summers.

Beyond being a tree, it had become a home known to the locals as the Fir Loft.

