The climate on the north face of the mountain is cooler and more humid, and nature unveils new forms there: sums of angles, sharp-edged debris, slopes shrouded in tangles of leaves and branches. You are in the alder grove.
This is the home of the Green Alder (Alnus viridis), a tall shrub whose dense branches form impenetrable thickets that can rise up to a height of three meters.
Its slim, curved and elastic branches – prostrate – conceal unexpected strength: when avalanches plunge violently downhill, those branches do not snap under the weight of the snow, but bend and resist. The strength of the Green Alder is typical of pioneer plants. The same strength that allows them to grow in patches of poor, rocky soil, transforming them into nutrient-rich earth.
This time, though, the strength lies in the roots: immersed in the earth, they are hosts to bacteria that capture the nitrogen in the atmosphere and transfer it to the soil. This increases the soil’s fertility to the point that other plants can finally grow there. Like the Megaphorbiae, for example, tall grasses with a taste for nitrogen.
