Add acreage to your spiritual landscape

Lots of folks like to study those molded relief maps of the region, the ones that show the upraised contours of the mountain ranges. Some have even pieced together the maps for the Southern Blue Ridge Province from Southwestern Virginia to North Georgia as wall hangings, making it possible to contemplate in miniature the glorious terrain we call home.

It’s pleasurable to sit in an easy chair on a rainy day and ponder the way the ridges join or meditate over how they might have looked before eons of erosion wore them down into their present configuration. Even more rewarding is a venture to a local vista for a panoramic look-see at the real thing.

In one sense, of course, high vistas are places that enable us to rise above our everyday humdrum existence and take in grand scenery, even when we don’t know exactly what we’re looking at. As one writer aptly phrased it, “There’s wonder and delight up there ... elbow room for the soul ... all you have to do is suspend judgment and analysis long enough simply to be there, on the mountain, experiencing it.”

Well, no one would want to fail to take in the beauty or be exhilarated, but we also shouldn’t forget that Blue Ridge vistas are windows that allow us to see and comprehend more truly. A little “analysis” from time to time won’t hurt.

On a clear day, you can observe the bare bones of the land and come to a fuller understanding of the exact lay of the land. The thoughtful choice of a series of strategic vistas in your particular section of the Blue Ridge will enable you to observe just where the major ranges abut and how the peaks, spurs, gaps, upland valleys, streams, rock cliffs, gorges, grassy balds and other topographical features fall into place. You will come away with a more precise notion of your place in the world.

Because we’ve lived in the Tuckasegee River valley on the southern edge of the Smokies for the last 40 or so years, my wife and I have concentrated our attention on the interior portion of the Southern Blue Ridge Province from the Great Smokies on the west and north, to the Nantahalas in the south, and the Balsams in the east. One of our greatest satisfactions while driving or walking is being able to look up and recognize specific peaks and ranges by name, to know how they interconnect and relate to the remote cove we live in. They have become old friends. Each new lookout visited, each new mountain range recognized by its distinctive shape adds acreage to our spiritual landscape.

Among our favorite vistas are Wayah Bald (5,342 feet) in the Nantahalas, Waterrock Knob (6,292 feet) in the Plott Balsams along the Blue Ridge Parkway, and Clingman’s Dome (6,643 feet) on the high divide of the Smokies along the N.C.-Tenn. state lines. All three can be reached directly by vehicle within a single day. When it’s clear, one can easily see the 30 or so miles from each of these vantage points to the other two corners in what is a vast triangle. This triangulation technique allows an observer to view a given terrain from various directions and fit together landscape in an efficient manner.

Waterrock Knob is a fun place to visit because it attracts such a mix of visitors: drive-by tourists looking for the next overlook; thoughtful tourists savoring a special spot; plant enthusiasts seeking out species restricted to the northern hardwood and spruce-fir forests (yellow birch, spreading wood fern, mountain ash, etc.); birders looking for high-elevation species (ravens, golden-crowned kinglets, winter wrens, etc.); frisbee-catching college students; sunset and sunrise watchers; hikers, walkers, and strollers; and so on. I like remote, difficult-to-access spots, but I also like places where a diverse gathering of people are having fun. I like to watch them go about their chosen activities.

Just last week, I found out about the upcoming “Blue Ridge Parkway: Celebrating Heritage and Communities” event that will take place this coming Saturday at Waterrock Knob. Nevertheless, I wanted to support the event if possible. So I contacted BRP ranger Pam Mann and offered to do a nature walk and talk of about 45 minutes duration starting at 3 p.m. I’ll talk some about the geologic-geographic setting. I’ll have with me a handout for the field guides I use for general natural history as well as for trees, shrubs, vines, ferns, grasses and wildflowers in Western North Carolina. (And I’ll also bring copies of the actual books and source materials). Then we’ll go walking (slowly) and see what we may see. I hope that you will join me in support of one of our great national treasures.        

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Charlie’s Bunion and early history of the park

(Editor’s note: This column first appeared in The Smoky Mountain News in July 2005.)

Are you by chance looking for a high-elevation day-hike that embodies quite a bit of the region’s human history? If so, try the moderate to steep portion of the Appalachian Trail that leads from the Newfound Gap parking area in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to Charlies Bunion.

Murlless and Stallings in Hiker’s Guide to the Smokies (1973) designated Charlies Bunion to be “probably the most spectacular view in the park. Almost sheer cliffs drop more than 1,000 ft. into Greenbriar section.” Located on the Tennessee-North Carolina border 4.0 miles north of Newfound Gap, this bare rock outcrop is situated at 5,375 feet. The narrow, cliff-hugging trail affords breathtaking views not only down into the abyss but far westward out beyond Mt. Le Conte into Tennessee. It’s not the Grand Canyon by any means, but the site can give you a touch of vertigo in a heartbeat.

The rocky outcrops of Charlie’s Bunion (formerly called Fodderstack) were created in the mid-1920s when a fire swept over the crest. The exposed humus was washed completely away shortly thereafter in a deluge. The curious place name dates to 1929 when Swain County native Charlie Conner was hiking with outdoorsman Horace Kephart, photographer George Masa, and others along the high divide. When they paused for a rest on the rocks, Conner took his boots and socks off, exposing a bunion or two that rivaled the surrounding stones. Eying Conner’s feet, Kephart remarked, “Charlie, I’m going to get this place put on a government map for you.” And he did.

As exciting as the views from Charlie’s Bunion are, the walk from Newfound Gap up over Mt. Kephart and down around Masa Knob is equally interesting. It’s a stroll through the early history of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Newfound Gap (5,040 feet)is situated 16 miles from the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on the North Carolina side of the GSMNP. The site came by its name when it was discovered (perhaps as early as the 1850s) by surveyors to be a lower pass through the high Smokies than Indian Gap two miles to the west. In 1928, when funds to acquire national park lands were proving hard to come by, John D. Rockefeller donated over $5 million as a memorial to his mother.  In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) dedicated the GSMNP — which had been officially founded in 1934 — in ceremonies at the gap.

At 1.7 miles, the AT leads to a gap and an intersection with Sweat Heifer Creek Trail. According to Allen R. Coggins in Place Names of the Smokies (1999), this name “goes back to a time when cattle (including young, virgin female cows called heifers) were driven up the strenuous pathway along this stream to summer pasture.”  One supposes that this sort of rugged terrain made the virgin heifers sweat.

At 2.7 miles, the AT reaches the intersection with the Boulevard Trail, which leads 5.3 miles to Mt. Le Conte, named for John Le Conte, a scientist, not for his older brother, Joseph Le Conte, as is often supposed.  

About 100 yards from the AT, a spur trail off the Boulevard Trail leads 0.8 miles to Mt. Kephart (6,217 feet) and the Jump-Off (6,100 feet), which also has truly spectacular views. The mountain is named for Bryson City writer Horace Kephart (1862-1931), author of the classics Camping and Woodcraft (1906) and Our Southern Highlanders (1913). Kephart was a force in the movement that helped establish the GSMNP and was nominated to have a mountain named after him in the late 1920s while still living.  

This story is told in full for the first time in a Web site titled “Horace Kephart: Revealing an Enigma” www.library.wcu.edu/digitalcoll/kephart/), which was completed about six years ago by the Special Collections division of Hunter Library at Western Carolina University. Using a variety of media, the library has built an in-depth archive around the life and times of Kephart that presents photos, artifacts, documents, writing, maps, and links to other sources of information.

In the section of this Web site devoted to the naming of Mt. Kephart, it’s noted that, “The life of Horace Kephart ended unexpectedly in a 1931 automobile accident. While the National Park he campaigned to create was not yet a reality, it was already clear that despite the obstacles to its founding, the park would come to the mountains he had grown to love. Of the many individuals involved in creating the park, Kephart was already recognized as a leader in the movement during his later years …The North Carolina Literary and Historical Commission urged that a mountain in the coming park be named after Kephart. In 1928 [a peak] in the proposed park was officially named [for him], an honor rarely given to living individuals.

At 2.9 miles along the AT you will reach Icewater Spring and shelter (5,900 feet) after swinging around the North Carolina side of Mt. Kephart. From Icewater Springs, the trail drops down through slate outcrops and across Masa Knob.

George Masa (1881-1933) was the well-known Japanese photographer whose Japanese name was Masahara Iisuka. Masa had a commercial studio in Asheville, but he spent as much time in the Smokies with his dearest friend (who he called “Kep”) as he could. His magnificent photographs of the Smokies often illustrated the articles Kephart wrote in support of the park movement. Masa was so distraught when Kephart was killed in the automobile accident that he petitioned the government with a barrage of letters requesting that he be buried with “Kep” at a site in the Smokies. This was not to be. Masa is buried in Asheville.

But it is absolutely appropriate that their names be linked in this way via natural monuments in the high Smokies along that portion of the AT leading from Newfound Gap to Charlies Bunion.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Constructing your own coffin

A portion of this Back Then column appeared in SMN in August 2004 as “A Box to Call Your Own.” It has been rewritten and expanded. The notes regarding ancient (pre-Cherokee) burial practices can be found online: www.handsontheland.org/HistoryExploration/cultural_comparison/archives.cfm?cl=death&site=&period=0)  

When I was a boy growing up in Virginia, there was a very old man in our neighborhood who was was eccentric; or, at least, his neighbors judged him to be so because he was reputed to have built his own coffin in the work shed behind his house.  

His immediate neighbors boasted that they had watched him doing so through the hedges. This made an impression on me. I used to wonder what it would be like to sleep in an open coffin that you had yourself constructed.  

Great Britain, for whatever reason, has for centuries specialized in eccentrics of all varieties. Naturally enough, that island nation has produced numerous coffin-building tales. Jemmy Hirst of Rawcliffe was one of Yorkshire’s most eccentric characters during the early 18th century. For one thing, he rode a bull rather than a horse when foxhunting. For another, he made a vehicle equipped with sails and a carriage of wicker-work that housed his bed and was drawn by Andalusian mules.

Jemmy, of course, constructed his own coffin. It had windows and shelves. When he died in 1829, aged 91, 12 pounds from his estate was set aside to pay a dozen old maids to follow his coffin to the burying ground. Two musicians were also engaged, a fiddler and a piper, who, as a final salute, played Jemmy’s favorite tune “O’er the Hills and Far Away,” which I also like and have placed on my tentative song list.

This country has turned out its fair share of “original characters” — as eccentrics were known in the 19th century. One day a man named Warren Snow, who Moffit didn’t care for, entered his place of business.  Seeing the coffin hanging over the checkout counter, Snow dared to inquire as why it had been made so far in advance of his likely death. Moffit looked up and replied: “I want everything dry and light so I can go over Hell just a-flying, so I won’t have to stop down and see you.” All of us could do worse than be “light and dry” so we can “go over hell just a-flying” when the time comes.

Closer to home, Sylva native John Parris noted in These Storied Mountains (1972) that “Many a mountain man has made his own coffin. But old man Eddie Conner is the only man I ever heard of who planted the tree that provided the lumber for the one they laid him away in.”

In May 1885, Conner had as a young man planted a walnut sprout at his sister’s home place in the Smokemont area of what is now the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In 1918 he suffered  “a slight stroke of paralysis” and decided it was high time to get “busy making my preparations for the last go-round.” By this date, the walnut sprout had grown into a tree that measured two feet and seven inches in diameter.

With the help of two Cherokee Indian men, Conner felled the tree and they drug it to a nearby rail line, where it was loaded up and freighted “to the big band sawmill at Ravensford where the lumber was cut for my casket.” A carpenter by the name of Jim Ayers assisted Conner in the construction of his casket.  

This wasn’t your ordinary run of the mill casket. It featured “a heavy walnut panel on the lid to make a round or oval-shaped top.” It was “trimmed in three-inch cherry molding, cut in mitered squares like picture frames, leaving a two-inch black walnut margin clear around the top, the sides and the ends.”  The brown and red colors highlighted the casket’s appearance so much that, in Conner’s eyes, it “truly gives a beautiful combination beyond compare.” And to top it all off, the lid was constructed from “two pieces, joined together with hinges near the bulk of the breast, with a face glass reaching almost back to the joint hinges, well counter-sunk, to prevent the heavy lid from smashing it.”

When it was done, Conner gave his creation a test drive, as it were, by putting in his pillow and laying down in it “to see how good it fit.”

The coffin was then stored away in the attic of Coot Hyatt’s home above Bryson City. Upon passing away in 1951 at the age of 87 — 33 years after finishing it — Eddie Conner was laid to rest in his masterpiece.

During the prehistoric Archaic Period, 10,000 to 3,000 Years Before Present, people usually buried their dead in shallow graves in a flexed or semi-flexed position. These were sometimes lined with stone. In regions where bedded limestone occurred stone box graves were constructed for both elite and commoner. Burial items for a 16-20 year old high-status female in the summit of a mound included a short neck painted water bottle, marine shell beads, and turtle shell rattles on each ankle. Accompanying a child in a separate burial “were two marine shell ear pins and copper beads” as well as “preserved fragments of cordage and red and yellow textile.”

A person I know claims there are “no dogs in heaven.” We used to argue about this over the Internet. To my way of thinking, heaven wouldn’t be heaven without dogs. The early Indians and then the Cherokees apparently felt the same way as a favorite dog was sometimes buried with his master so they could make the journey into The Darkening Land together.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

‘Big Ice’ links flora and fauna here and in Asia

When walking a trail in the Smokies (or Nantahalas or Great Balsams or wherever) here in the southern Blue Ridge, I sometimes pause to observe the landscapes and flora and imagine that I’m in the mountains of northern Japan or eastern China. Botanists are familiar with a concept sometimes known as “The Asian Connection.” In Hollows, Peepers, and Highlanders: An Appalachian Ecology (1994), George Constantz devotes an entire chapter to this topic.  

“Here’s a claim that might surprise you,” Constantz noted. “The forests of eastern Asia and southern Appalachia are so similar that if you were swept from one to the other you would be hard pressed to tell them apart.”

He went on to explain that, “At the genus and species levels this similarity involves more than 50 genera of Appalachian plants that are restricted to eastern North America and eastern Asia and, except in fossil form, are absent in between.”  

The ginseng trade was, of course, established due to this connection, with the North American species being closely related to the various Asian species and supposed to have similar medicinal virtues. And, as Constantz also pointed out, “More than two-thirds of the total orchid genera of temperate North America are related to orchid species in eastern Asia,”   

In The Woods of Time (1957), Rutherford Platt listed other plants that have exact or very closely related genera and species, one residing in eastern Asia and the other in the Appalachians: oak, elm, basswood, beech, hickory, maple, birch, hemlock, persimmon, yellowwood, sassafras, tulip poplar, sumac, bittersweet, columbine, hepatica, Dutchman’s-breeches, dwarf ginseng, skunk cabbage, wild geranium, May apple, partridgeberry, sassafras, silverbell, witch hazel, stewartia, and Hercules-club.  

In A Natural History of Ferns (2004), Robbin Moran noted that, “These two regions share more genera and species than any other two regions on earth.” Of the 120 or so species found on the Japanese island of Hokkaido, 47 of them are found in eastern North America, including maidenhair fern, slivery glade fern, interrupted fern, and marsh fern.     

Why do we have an Asian connection? Here’s the short answer, as I have pieced it together from various sources. When the giant super continent of Pangea was being formed between 300 and 250 million years ago, numerous plant communities were contiguous across a circumpolar landmass that included Asia, Europe, and North America. When Pangea split up some millions of years later, the vestiges of this plant community died out in Europe, western Asia, and western North America, leaving the Asian and Appalachian communities intact but widely separated.   

In turn, these remnant communities survived various climate changes. The most dramatic of these, by far, occurred during the Ice Ages. (The last truly cold interval, the Wisconsin epoch, reached its apogee about 18,000 years ago.) The southern Asian mountains and the southern Appalachians escaped being glaciated because both terrains have north-south conformities that impeded the oncoming ice sheets.

I do not know how far south glaciation extended in Asia, but in the Appalachians there was no true glaciation any farther south than northeastern Pennsylvania, although it was, of course, very cold here in the Blue Ridge and adjacent upland terrains. On the other hand, in the Mississippi River valley, where there were no uplands capable of resisting glaciation, the ice sheets extended much farther south to the outskirts of present day Cincinnati.

Platt explained that this trans-world plant connection wasn’t revealed until after trade was opened with Japan in the mid-19th century and plant hunters like E.H. Wilson of the Arnold Arboretum began to return to America with extensive collections that matched our southern Appalachian flora.

By this time, the European-born glaciologist Louis Agassiz had journeyed to American and announced “the sensational discovery of the Big Ice visit to the United States.” Asa Gray, this country’s first great botanist, “put together the Big Ice story and the discovery of the same flora, separated by half the world, and announced in a sensational address, in 1858, that the Big Ice had arranged the world that way.”

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

The mystery of mountain ferns

Identifying ferns is an entirely different process than, say, identifying wildflowers or trees. They don't display flowers, showy fruits, or bark patterns. What they do display are myriad leaf (frond) forms and highly distinctive, if minute, spore cases. Once you learn how to hone in on these features, you're on your way to identifying the 70 or so native species in Western North Carolina.

Perhaps a third of these are so unique in appearance there’s nothing else you can confuse them with. For instance, along the trail that leads down the creek from our house I’ve located, to date, 17 species: Christmas fern, ebony spleenwort, marginal wood fern, rock-cap fern, hay-scented fern, sensitive fern, cinnamon fern, maidenhair fern, New York fern, lady fern, broad beech fern, bracken, rattlesnake grape fern, blunt-lobed grape fern, rusty woodsia, fragile fern, and silvery glade fern. All but the last four are easily recognizable after initial identification.

Perhaps another third of our 70 native species are so rare or inaccessible (sometimes only behind waterfalls) that the average fern seeker probably won’t encounter them. Now comes the fun part. The remaining 20 to 25 species are similar enough in general appearance that their sori (clusters of spore cases usually located on the underside of their fronds) require examination under magnification. A 10-power lens will do just fine. The arrangement, shape, or other features of these clusters will be diagnostic as to species.     

In the workshops I conduct, we first review the fern life cycle and then the language utilized in field guides for fern parts. Afterwards, we visit sites where participants can work on their identification skills, using a non-technical field guide. By the end of the day, everyone is up and running in regard to ferns.

Occasionally, a natural history book will come along that breaks new ground.

Timothy P. Spira’s Wildflowers & Plant Communities: A Naturalist’s Guide to the Carolinas, Virginia, Tennessee, & Georgia (Chapel Hill: UNC Press) introduces readers to the diverse plant communities one can seek out and explore in a systematic fashion. But the concept has never been systematically delineated in a non-technical format for the non-professional plant enthusiast. In a section headed “Plant Community Profiles,” Spira describes in some detail communities found at various elevations in the mountain and adjacent piedmont regions: spruce-fir forests, grassy and heath balds, high-elevation rock outcrops, red oak forests, northern hardwood forests, rich and acidic cove forests, spray cliffs, rocky stream sides, mountain bogs, river bluff and alluvial forests, forest edges, and others.

For example, the high-elevation rock outcrop community is described in pages 119-123 as to distinguishing features, vegetation, seasonal aspects, distribution, dynamics, and conservation aspects. Sources are cited for Suggested Reading about the community. Forty or so Characteristic Plants (trees, shrubs, vines, wildflowers, grasses, sedges, spikemosses, ferns, and lichens) are listed in a table. Six rare species one might encounter in this specific community are enumerated: spreading avens, mountain golden heather, granite dome St. John’s wort, Blue Ridge ragwort, pinkshell azalea, and three-tooth cinquefoil. A set photographs illustrates most of the plants associated with each community. two-hundred and fifty pages are devoted to Species Profiles of each of the hundreds of plants associated with the various communities. Throughout this section, the entries are packed with tidbits of information about plants, including ferns, I had never before encountered.

• I knew hayscented fern as a common species resembling lady fern that often forms dense stands. From Spiria, I learned that “Established plants spread rapidly into open areas as buds at the base of leaves develop into long, creeping, underground stems … Apparently, a dense organic mat of roots, rhizomes, and dead fronds, coupled with a dense canopy of living fronds, inhibits seed germination and seedling establishment of other plants. Chemicals such as coumarin that leach from the fronds or rhizomes of hayscented fern also have an inhibitory effect on seeds and seedlings.”

• Christmas fern fronds, which are evergreen, reorientate themselves to a prostrate position in winter so as to conserve energy during cold months. The warmer ground increases leaf temperatures, promoting photosynthetic activity during relatively mild days.

• Cinnamon ferns are called “living fossils” because the forms we see today are much the same as they were more than 200 million years ago. Individual clumps can be quite old as the fibrous rootstock can persist for years.

• Most plants die after losing more than 15 percent of their water content. Resurrection fern, which curls up during dry weather, can lose up to 97 percent of its water without irreversible harm.       

Most of us don't find it absolutely essential to know the name of every plant and animal we encounter, but it is a quiet joy to know the more common ones on a first-name basis. This has been especially true for me in regard to ferns. They are, after all, our most graceful plant — things of beauty, providing forms that delight the eye and add harmony to our woodland and garden settings.

NOTE: George Ellison will teach a “Native Fern Identification” workshop for the North Carolina Arboretum from 9:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 11. After an introductory morning session, participants will car pool to habitats along the Blue Ridge Parkway where various species can be found. Walks will be short and easy. Materials required are bag lunch, rain gear, hand lens (any household magnifier will do), and the 2001 second edition of "Fern Finder" (Nature Study Guild Publishers) by Anne and Barbara Hallowell. Copies of Fern Finder will be available for purchase at the North Carolina Arboretum. Each workshop will be limited to 15 participants. For additional information call 828.665.2492.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Plant life distinct to the southern Blue Ridge

The elevations of the southern Blue Ridge province above 4,000 feet can be thought of as a peninsula of northern terrain extending into the southeastern United States, where typical flora and fauna of northeastern and southeastern North America intermingle. Through a combination of processes, the province has evolved into the mature upland landscape we know today. It has become especially diverse in two regards: plant life and distinctive natural areas.

According to B. Eugene Wofford’s Guide to the Vascular Plants of the Blue Ridge (1989), the province presently features upwards of 1,500 vascular plants: trees, shrubs, vines, herbs, sedges, grasses, ferns, horsetails, quillworts, and club-mosses. Many are considered to be showy plants when in flower. There are 130 species of trees, whereas in all of Europe there are only 75 or so species. The primitive non-vascular plants include countless moss and lichen species. And the province is one of the epicenters in the temperate world for mushrooms.   

Before the introduction about 1910 of a non-native fungus that decimated the American chestnut trees, the prototypical forest here was “chestnut-heath;” that is, chestnut was the dominant canopy tree, with an understory mainly made up of shrubs such as rosebay rhododendron, mountain laurel, and other members of the heath family. Before the arrival of the fungus, 30 percent or more of the deciduous forests in the province were made up of chestnut. Almost all of the trees seen in the province now are root sprouts that persist despite the fact that their main trunks have died back to ground level. Within a few years, almost all of these sprouts succumb to the fungus before they can flower and fruit. Today, the prototypical forest of the province is “oak-heath.”

The Blue Ridge is a mosaic of varied habitats, large and small: grassy and heath balds, marshes and bogs, periglacial boulderfields, beech gaps, seepage slopes and cliffs, oak orchards or wind forests, and more. The forest types of the present-day southern Blue Ridge include the spruce-fir or Canadian zone above 5,500 feet. It shares characteristics with evergreen forests in eastern Canada and features the most boreal-like climate in the southeastern United States. The conifers that predominate are red spruce and Fraser fir. The latter is being infested and killed by the balsam wooly adelgid, an introduced aphid pest.

Between 4,000 and 6,000 feet, the northern hardwood zone shares characteristics with the “north woods” of New England. But note that Michael P. Schafale and Alan S. Weakley in their Classification of the Natural Communities of North Carolina (1990) made the point that there are clear differences between the two zones:

The name ‘northern hardwood forest,’ traditionally given to these communities, implies a similarity to hardwood forests of the northern Appalachians. Many tree, herb, and shrub species are shared; however our Northern Hardwood Forest has evolved under different climatic regimes, with a different [geographic] history, and has many plant and animal species endemic to the southern Appalachians. It is clearly not the same natural community type as the forests of the northern United States.  

Yellow birch and American beech are indicator species for this southern version of the northern hardwood forest, which also features hobblebush, yellow buckeye, and mountain maple.

In Great Smoky Mountains National Park: A Natural History Guide (1993), Rose Houk described the forest that sometimes appears below the northern hardwood forest in this manner:

In a place outstanding for diversity of forest types, one type, unique to the southern Appalachians, stand out as the richest of the richest. It is the cove hardwood forest, the forest primeval, one of the most diverse plant communities in the world. The word cove, when used with hardwood forest, refers generally to a sheltered valley, sometimes flat and sometimes steep, below 4,500 feet elevation. Cove soils are rich and deep.      

The largest and most famous of the cove hardwood forests is Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest near Robbinsville, North Carolina, just south of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Located on U.S. Forest Service lands, the 3,840-acre tract is an amazing site. In A Directory of North Carolina’s Natural Areas (1987), Charles E. Roe provided this description:

Massive Canadian hemlocks dominate the forest along the stream flats … but farther upstream give way to mixed hardwoods … Hemlocks measure up to 70 inches in diameter, tulip poplars 76 inches, and oaks 72 inches. Rhododendrons prevail in the forest understory on the flats and ravine bottoms as well as on the ridge top heath balds or ‘slicks.’ Green carpets of mosses and liverworts cover boulders, old logs, banks and tree bases in the damp, shaded environments … This classic primeval forest is an exceptional research and recreational source.

Below 3,000 feet, various pine, oak, and hickory species predominate. This type of “pine-oak-hickory” habitat — often made up of Virginia pine, pitch pine, or Table Mountain pine, red oak, chestnut oak, and pignut hickory — can also appear in higher elevations along exposed slopes and ridges that are relatively dry.

Along streams in the lowest elevations and on moist mountainsides up to 4,000 feet, eastern hemlocks form forests called “hemlock ravines.” Rosebay rhododendron and other shrubs sometimes form a dense under story. The eastern hemlock along with the endemic Carolina hemlock are both being infested and killed by the hemlock wooly adelgid, another introduced aphid pest.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Blundering upon a Smokies icon

I’ve always been interested in the processes by which we discover things. Being a naturalist, I’m most interested in the processes by which entities like birds, plants, special places, etc., are located.

I’m a firm believer that preparation generally pays off. That is, if you study up on something — say a bird — and anticipate where you might locate it, your chances are considerably enhanced that you will encounter it. Last year, for instance, I spotted my first-ever Swainson’s warbler in this manner.

Wanting very much to see one, I read the literature regarding the bird’s range distribution. The nearest place where they have commonly been encountered in North America during the breeding season is the headwaters region of the Chattooga River. That was handy enough. Before driving down the Bull Pen Road southeast of Highlands, I studied the bird’s image in several field guides and listened to its call notes and song on tapes.

My first stop was at a pullover above the old Iron Bridge that overlooked a rhododendron thicket, their preferred habitat in the Southern Applachians. After about 45 seconds, I heard a bird singing. Could it be? Yep, it could. I trained my binoculars on the singing bird and there was a Swainson’s warbler, considered by many to one of the most elusive and reclusive birds.

I also think one can almost “will” things into existence. That is, if you want to find something badly enough, you probably can. I have located many very rare plants by putting on my blinders and looking for and thinking about nothing else. Sometimes it takes months, but I’ve never come up empty-handed. If it’s out there, I believe you can locate it if you really and truly want to do so.

And then there is what I think of as my “blunder method.” That is, you simply go out and see what you happen to stumble upon my pure blind luck. Sort of like the proverbial blind pig that stumbles upon an ear of corn now and again. I employed this method last week while camping at the Evins State Park just off the western edge of the Cumberland Plateau northwest of Smithville, Tenn.

On Thursday morning I picked a trail and went out with no particular objective in mind except to observe the extensive stands of Goldie’s and glade ferns reputed to be distributed along the first half mile or so of the trail. After passing through the ferns, I followed the trail down a steep ravine to Center Hill Lake.  

It started to get hot and buggy. I was thirsty and hadn’t brought any water. This is the point at which one either returns to the campsite or pushes on to see just what can be blundered upon. I pushed on and somehow got off the established trail. Not wanting to backtrack, I decided to hump it up the ridge in the general direction of where I’d parked my truck. The ridge slope was really steep; so much so, that I had to stop and rest every few minutes.  

“Well now,” I thought to myself, “this is going to be really good. No telling what I’ll find having gotten lost and ending up climbing the side of a mountain.”

Sure enough, just as I reached a road near my truck, I saw chestnut husks littering the ground. Looking up, there in full bloom was an American chestnut tree. I examined the leaves to make sure it wasn’t one of the disease-resistant foreign species that might have become naturalized at the park. Nope, it was the genuine article.

I have seen American chestnut trees flowering and fruiting at several places here in Smokies region, most notably near Wayah Bald above Franklin. But all of those were small and obviously already blighted by the fungus first introduced to America about 1910 in New York City.

This tree showed absolutely no signs of blight. The bark was firm without any of the fissures that indicate infestation. The leaves were bright and glossy. And it was covered with snowy-cream, spike-like flowers.

Later on, I roughly measured the tree. At breast height, it was nearly 60 inches in circumference and about 18 inches in diameter. I’d estimate it stood over 50 feet in height, and it displayed a nice wide canopy spread in spite of being crowed by several adjacent trees. What a sight!   

Carl Halfacre, the manager of Evins State Park, was just as excited as I was to learn about such a tree on the park’s grounds. Along with cerulean warblers recently discovered breeding there, this wonderful tree will no doubt become one of the park’s claims to fame. Many people would travel a goodly distance just to see a healthy American chestnut in full flower.

I did, however, fail to mention to Ranger Halfacre that I’d been employing my “blunder method” of exploration to make the discovery.

Editor’s note: This Back Then column by George Ellison was first published in July 2003.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Tasty right off the shrub

ELDERBERRY WINE

There’s a fly in the window

A dog in the yard

And a year since I saw you …

Feeling fine on elderberry wine.

Those were the days

We’d lay in the haze

Forget depressive times

Round a tree in the summer

A fire in the fall …

The bottle went round …

Passed on from hand to hand …

— excerpted from lyrics by Elton John

 

Those who’ve participated in my natural history workshops know that I’m not a very good source for information regarding either edible plants or propagation. For the most part, I obtain vegetables at the grocery store or, in season, from our gardens. Propagation I mostly leave up to my wife. But there are exceptions.

One flowering wild plant that always gets me to thinking with my stomach is common elderberry (Sambucus canadensis), which is just now coming into bloom in the lower elevations throughout Western North Carolina. You probably know it already; if not, look for white flat-topped loose clusters of flowers up to six inches or more broad that appear on a shrub 3- to 10-feet tall.

The flowering heads resemble several of the shrubs in the Viburnum genus, but elderberry has compound leaves that are divided so as to display five to eleven Leaflets. Vibrunum leaves aren’t divided.

Growing naturally or planted in full sun in moist soil (alongside seeps, ditches, or streams), the shrub makes a nice appearance. I have seen it on display in the zigs and zags of a rail fence. It catches the eye when placed in a woodland border

Various ornamental varieties have been developed in recent years. These display various leaf colors and patterns, as well as fancy names like “Aurea” and “Argentomarginata,” which features white-edged leaves. To my way of thinking, however, our plain old native homegrown elderberry species does just fine. It’s showy enough.  

In the fall, the plant bears deep purple or black fruits that sometimes weigh their branches to the ground. Many use them for making sweet breads or jam, but, in my experience, they are very irregular to taste when eaten directly off the shrub. Some fruits on a given plant can be delightfully tasty while those on an adjacent branch will be insipid.

Elderberry blossoms, however, never let you down. The entire flowering head fried up in a fritter batter makes a crunchy summertime treat that more than repays the effort of harvesting and preparation.

American Indians were (and are) the real experts on using plants as economical food sources. If a plant wasn’t worth their time, they didn’t fool with it. In Native Harvests: Recipes and Botanicals of the American Indian (Vintage Books, 1979), E. Barrie Kavasch provided the following recipe for Elder Blossom Fritters:

“Prepare a light batter, beating together 2 cups fine white cornmeal, 1 lightly beaten egg, 1 cup water, and 1 tablespoon of maple syrup. Heat 1/4 cup corn oil on a griddle and drop batter by large tablespoons onto it, immediately placing 1 elder-blossom flower-cluster in the center of each raw fritter and pressing lightly into the batter. Fry for 3 to 5 minutes, or until golden. Flip and fry for 3 minutes on the other side.  Drain on brown paper. Serve hot, sprinkled with additional loose blossoms and maple sugar. (This amount of batter is sufficient for preparing 16 flower clusters.)”

My wife, Elizabeth, makes a similar batter, substituting fine white flour for the cornmeal and beer for the water. She sometimes uses daylily or squash blossoms in place of the elderberry clusters.

I almost forgot to mention yet another positive attribute of this plant. I wonder who made the elderberry wine that inspired Elton John?

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

A voice heard in the distance

Rural residents know the yellow-billed cuckoo as the “rain crow” or “storm crow” because its guttural “ka-ka-kow-kow-kowlp-kowlp-kowlp” seems to be sounded just prior to a late evening thunderstorm. (The distinctive “kowlp-kowlp-kowlp” portion of the call sounds something like a small dog barking.) The cuckoos on our property often sound a single “kowlp” note rather than the full vocalization.

Most scientific observers have dismissed the association of yellow-billed cuckoos and imminent rainfall, but the authors of Birds of the Carolinas (UNC Press, 1980) do note: “There may be some basis for this bit of folklore, because cuckoos apparently adjust the timing of their nesting effort to the temporary local abundance of suitable prey, which in many instances coincides with periods of rainfall.”

Or it might be that since they tend to call more on hot humid days, the rain crows are most often heard when rainfall would occur anyway. In this regard, ornithologist and artist George Miksch Sutton observed that the bird doesn’t call only when it’s about to rain or is raining. His theory was that when a summer storm is imminent people become apprehensive and pay closer attention to sounds; thereby, they tend to hear cuckoos calling at a certain time and associate the bird with specific weather conditions.

A second cuckoo species that nests here in the mountains, mostly in the upper elevations, is called the black-billed cuckoo because it lacks the yellow lower mandible of its cousin. I’ve never seen a black-billed cuckoo, but I have heard its rythmic “cu-cu-cu cu-cu-cu cu-cu-cu” calls on several occasions, most notably in the region of Blue Valley near Highlands, the Rainbow Springs section of the Nantahala River, and on the Balsam Mountain spur road of the Blue Ridge Parkway above Cherokee.

Both species winter in South America. They arrive in our region during the last week in April and usually depart by late October.

If you see a yellow-billed cuckoo in flight, the most distinctive feature will be a double row of large white spots beneath the tail. The reddish flash of wing against the brownish body is also diagnostic. The sight of the bird in flight or perched on a limb staring at you is one that’s worth pursuing. As Henry David Thoreau observed, “The cuckoo is a very neat, slender, and graceful bird. It belongs to the nobility of birds. It is elegant.”                  

There are certain sounds that haunt the southern highlands. Wind sighing in the spruce-fir. The ongoing ever-changing yet eternally-the-same murmurs of a creek. A little less than a century ago one could still hear from time to time the blood curdling howls and screams of timber wolves and panthers. And then there are the resonate “kowlps” of the yellow-billed cuckoo. No bird is more secretive. Seldom leaving the shrouding foliage, the cuckoo sits motionless.  When it does move, it creeps about with furtive restraint. Seeing one is possible but unlikely. For the most part, this is a bird that you hear … a “voice” in the distance. In my experience, it is a “voice” heard just before raindrops begin to patter softly on the tin roof of my house.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Serpents elicit mixed responses among humankind

Serpents are among the world’s most storied creatures. We are at once attracted to and repelled by them. Many view them as the “personification” of evil.

The ancient Cherokees portrayed the close relationship of good and evil in several of their myths. One of these related the legend of the Mythic Hawk, which represented the Upper World, and the Uktena, which represented the Under World. The Uktena was a monster 30-feet long and as large around as a tree trunk, with horns on its head and a diamond-like crest in its forehead. The light that blazed from this crest attracted humans to sure death like moths to a flame. On the other hand, by evoking the powers of the Upper World, the Cherokees could slay the monster and extract the crest, thereby obtaining visionary powers that enabled the tribe to balance good and evil.

The serpent that inspired the Uktena myth was, of course, the timber rattler. Our other poisonous snake here in the southern mountains is the copperhead. Cottonmouth moccasins are reported, but that species is, in fact, found no farther inland than about the fall line. Those reporting what they suppose are cottonmouths here are actually encountering northern water snakes, a species that is aggressive in and around water but not poisonous.

Insofar as poisonous snakes go, the rattler and the copperhead are sufficient. Nothing else quite focuses your attention and sets all your nerves on end as suddenly encountering a rattler. My family remembers the time when I set the world record for the standing broad jump. We were camping in the remote Rainbow Springs marsh in the Nantahala Mountains. To make a campfire so as to prepare breakfast, I pulled a limb out of some underbrush that had a timber rattler on the other end approaching 50 inches in length. To this day, I recall the serpent’s powerfully muscular near-black body, which showed just the slightest bit of yellow, and the gleaming totally fearless eyes. Coiled with tail buzzing an alarm, it was in every sense the wildest and most beautiful creature I’ve ever encountered. It was also the most ominous.

The great 20th century naturalist, Alexander Skutch, an American, lived most of his life in Costa Rica, studying birds and recording their life histories. An otherwise gentle soul, Skutch detested any human or wild animal that preyed on birds or their eggs. He made these observations in A Naturalist on a Tropical Farm (Univ. of California Press, 1980):

“Why have serpents been deified by some races and regarded as the embodiment of evil by others? … Is it because a snake has so few attributes of animality that it hardly seems to be animal, but rather a creature of unique category? … It is the only large, widespread terrestrial animal that moves without limbs. It has no evident ears and cannot close its lidless eyes. Its only sound is a hiss, and, although sometimes gregarious … it is never really social. With few exceptions, including certain pythons, it is devoid of parental solicitude, never caring for its young ... The serpent is stark predation, the predatory existence in its baldest, least mitigated form. It might be characterized as an elongated, distensible stomach, with the minimum of accessories needed to fill and propagate this maw—not even teeth that can tear its food … It reveals the depths to which evolution can sink when it takes the downward path and strips animals to the irreducible minimum able to perpetuate a predatory life in its naked horror. The contemplation of such an existence has a horrid fascination for the human mind and distresses a sensitive spirit.”

I don’t agree with either the essence of the Cherokee legend or with Skutch’s observations. Serpents are a life form that epitomizes terrestrial grace. Their body patterns — rings, stripes, hourglasses, spots, etc. — are often as intricate as fine jewelry. They represent a modality of intentness beyond ours. If a serpent strikes, he is fulfilling not a premeditated obligation but a space in his existence that you entered. He does not mind that you exist. He would not mind if you did not exist. He simply does not care one way or another. But he isn’t evil.

George Ellison wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. In June 2005, a selection of his Back Then columns was published by The History Press in Charleston as Mountain Passages: Natural and Cultural History of Western North Carolina and the Great Smoky Mountains. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 28713, or at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

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