The mother of all wildflower pilgrimages

The Great Smoky Mountains National Park’s 58th annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage returns to its traditional five-day format this year with more than 150 programs crammed into five fantastic days from April 23 through 27.

Dr. A. J. Sharp, head of the University of Tennessee’s Botany Department, directed the Park’s first Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage in 1951. Four hundred pilgrims from 20 states attended the inaugural two-day event. By 1986 the Pilgrimage was recognized by the Southeast Tourism Society as one of the top 20 events in the Southeast. Today more than 1,200 pilgrims from around the world come to celebrate the beauty and biodiversity of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

There are more than 1,600 flowering plants in the GSMNP and spring emphemerals like fringed phacelia, trilliums, bloodroot, trout lily, bellwort, violets and others carpet the early-spring forest floor. Wildflowers are surely the name of the game and the greatest number of Pilgrimage programs highlights these jewels.

But these spring ephemerals are harbingers that the slumbering mountains are awakening and shedding the doldrums of winter. Neotropical migrants like blackburnian warblers and scarlet tanagers are blazing in the canopy adding their color to spring’s palette. Spring peepers add their trill to the cacophony of bird songs; bears stumble from their dens rubbing three months of sleep from their eyes; salamanders wriggle from beneath rocks along the streams; bats dive-bomb unsuspecting newly hatched insects and butterflies bounce from bloom to bloom as the mountains stir.

The Pilgrimage pays homage to these and other aspects of the Park’s biodiversity as well. There are black bear and wild hog hikes, moss walks and fern forays, salamander walks, bat walks, bird walks and insect walks, just to name a few.

And the evenings will be filled with seminars and other special programs like an evening with renowned ecologist, writer and photographer Carol Liquori; a program by the president of the Eastern Native Tree Society, Will Blozan; and a session on fire towers of the Smokies by former Friends of the Smokies Director Charles Maynard.

No matter your skill level or interest, you are sure to find a program or programs and leaders that fit the bill. You can find detailed information regarding the 58th annual Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage at www.springwildflowerpilgrimage.org or by calling 865.436.7318 x 222.

Online registration is currently available and highly recommended. Online registration and phone registration will end April 14. On site registration will begin April 23.

The Spring Wildflower Pilgrimage would not be possible without a group of dedicated, capable partners like Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, City of Gatlinburg Department of Tourism, Friends of Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Gatlinburg Garden Club, Great Smoky Mountains Association, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Southern Appalachian Botanical Society and the University of Tennessee Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

Don Hendershot can be reached at ddihen1@bellsouth.net