Blenheim Park
Shaping the Landscape Around you (The River)
The Seine River, like many prairie rivers, winds its way across the southern Manitoba landscape, moving through erodible glacial sediment that was deposited here thousands of years ago at the end of the last ice age.
Since then the river continues to shape the land around you, and the plant communities you find here, by slowly carving into the mud banks on the outside of a river bend and depositing sediment in slower, calmer waters on the inside of the river bend. This process of erosion and sedimentation is what causes the river to meander over time, changing the very path of the river as well as the plant communities you find here.
Bur Oak
(Quercus macrocarpus)
Snowberry blooms
(symphoricarpos alba)
Virginia wildrye
(Elymus virginicus)
You are currently situated on a small floodplain where we find a unique plant community within the Blenheim Park forest.
Here you see sedges like crested sedge (Carex cristatella), straw sedge (Carex foenea) in the lowest areas and native grasses like Virginia wildrye (Elymus virginicus) growing among green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanicus) and maple trees (Acer negundo).
This is in contrast to the steep slopes situated only a few meters south and west where you will see bur oak (Quercus macrocarpus), snowberry (symphoricarpos alba), spreading dogbane (apocynum androsaimifolium) and wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulus).
The steep ground conditions to the south and the west are likely the result of entire sections of bank collapsing into the active channel, after years of bank erosion, forming a distinct terrace.​ The small floodplain was likely formed earlier due to river sediment being deposited here over a very long period of time.
A few thousand years ago, this floodplain might have been occupied by a bed of cattails next to the river before enough sediment had accumulated to support the floodplain vegetation you see here today.
