Jardin du Lautaret: An alpine botanical garden and its glacier – Part 2, Summer
Summer
Cable car to La Meije glacier
The first time I set foot beside the glacier, the mountainsides were dull with dry pasture and summer smog. I didn’t reach the glacier on my own power. I rode the La Grave cable car from the floor of the Col de Lautaret over the larch forest to the glacier-side station, from 1450 to 3200 m in 40 minutes. Within a few steps, we could see the warping, weaving, wavering plain of cracked ice spread to the far wall of the mountain.
Now, a confession: I’ve been oversimplifying things. There’s not only one glacier but several, slung between the peaks. A glacial basin. The one by the cable car station is not the one—actually two—visible from the garden, though they’re all kin to La Meije. But let’s talk about the glacier.
Anatomy of a glacier
A glacier is sometimes called a river of ice, creaking and grinding dozens of meters per year toward the valleys. (Listen here to their dripping, crackling soundscapes.) But when you stand next to this one it seems more analogous to a lake. Not a terrestrial lake; a lunar one, if such a thing existed. A gritty, convulsing surface frozen mid-upheaval. Maybe it’s closer to a lava flow crusted over, cracks cooling just enough to hold.
Only they never solidify; they crowd slowly toward the end of the slope until the crevasses widen and break into seracs—huge chunks of ice destined to tumble.
Like glaciers everywhere, these are shrinking, exposing more and more dark-hued stone to absorb more of the growing heat. By 2100, they could be mostly gone.
In the meantime, the peaks themselves are being destabilized. La Meije was the last major peak in the Alps to be climbed but became a well-traveled summit. In 2018, one of those pioneering, still-popular climbing routes on La Meije was obliterated by catastrophic rockfall loosened by melting ice.
Things fall apart faster up here.
To the Jardin du Lautaret
My friends and I didn’t have time to take a guided walk on the glacier itself, because we were going to the garden. We ate our lunch on a spine of shimmering schist and watched paragliders take off from the drop. Just three bounding steps and they were rising serenely on the thermals over the glaciers clutched by their fingers of stone, and the hazy gray slopes beyond.
On our ride down, we watched mountain bikers juddering over the moonscape of bare talus slopes, the moraines of glacial off-throw. At the bottom, we ate larch-flavored ice cream.
Just fifteen minutes up the Lautaret road, we took the turnoff to the Jardin du Lautaret. It was my first time back since the snow, and though we had missed the height of alpine summer, I was eager to see the garden in its waking phase.
La Meije was there in the panorama, wearing its glaciers with distinction, but the otherwise bare peaks were gauzed by a veil of haze. The hillsides were dry and hissing with crickets.
But the garden wasn’t finished.
Alpine blooms, late summer
Thistles were still in bloom, especially the silvery-purple alpine Eryngium with collars of bracts worthy of Renaissance nobility.
Geraniums wove through the still-green, still-hearty undergrowth. Asters and other dandelion relatives were full sun. The peonies were well past flowering but their fruits are framed by warm pink bracts.
I learned that the French name for larkspur is the same as English: pied d’alouette.
Edelweiss, one of the most iconic alpine flowers, was in bloom in every corner of the geographically arranged beds, including the Himalayas. The Chinese primulas were in fine form: sky blue with handsome stripes, tall and hot pink, and many-petalled purple.
A stream wound through peaceful groves of twisted aspens and stocky spruces and firs.
And of course, there was the chalet, warm in the sun and edged with poppies and thistles going to seed.
The cushion plants
Our favorite spot was the cushion plant beds. My friend, also a plant ecologist, was eager to point out to her non-botanist husband that the cushion form, that miniaturized, tight-leaved, ground-hugging alpine habit, is a prime example of convergent evolution. Many, many unrelated plant species have independently discovered that this is the best way to retain heat and save energy up in the harsh, exposed alpine zone. We saw relatives of carnations, morning glories, sunflowers, ephedra, and carrots who have evolved into their own micro-worlds of turf and spiral and blossom.
À la prochaine
By now, the air had cooled to the perfect balminess, and the slanting sun transformed the haze over the glacier into glory. I didn’t want to leave, but the rental car was due back in Grenoble, an hour and a half and nine mountain tunnels away.
Luckily for me, fieldwork on the alpine gradients would be my ticket back: back to the high pass, the old chalet, and the garden under the spell of the glacier.