Bryce Aspen Grove Trembling  Aspens

Scattered throughout Bryce Canyon National Park are groves of quaking aspens also known as Trembling Aspens. While they look very similar to birch trees they are an entirely different species of tree. While their bark does resemble the birch it does not peel and has black scars. Their lower branches are self-pruning. Their heart shaped, flat saw-toothed leaves with long stems flutter with the slightest of breezes giving the appearance of quaking or trembling. With the spring comes a glossy green leave while in the fall leaves turn yellow, gold and even red. This is a hardy species that can grow in temperatures as low as minus 78 degrees and as high as 115. They have been known to grow near intermittent springs in desert environments with as little as 7 inches of rainfall per year and at snowy elevations exceeding 10,000 feet. 

Aspens are not individual stand alone trees but rather spring up from an underground root system referred to as clones. When you see a grove of quaking aspen trees they are merely an above ground symbol of the massive clone root system growing underground. Trees from the same clone are remarkably the same in that the leaves turn colors at the same time and with the same coloring. Like a family, what affects one tree affects the entire clone grove. Their root system can spread as large as 20 plus acres. Underground, the root system is protected from fire, temperature, most diseases, and from humans. Construction excavations have tried to kill groves of quaking aspens with little or no success. The trees eventually reoccur somewhere else along the root system.

North of Bryce Canyon National Park at Fishlake National Forest is one of the oldest known aspen clone groves in the world, called Pando. This aspen clone grove is estimated to be nearly 80,000 years old. Quaking aspen groves are abundant in Canada as well.

This photo was taken in October 2012 at an elevation of 8800 feet at Bryce Canyon National Park looking east at Agua Canyon viewpoint with a Nikon D800, 16mm lens, 1/20th shutter at f/8 with an ISO of 800 and a flash.