10/23/02
 
 
 

Early WNC botanists encountered plethora of plants
By George Ellison

When it comes to plant life, Western North Carolina is situated in one of the most diverse temperate zones on this planet. Few of us will ever get to know even half of the plants in our immediate surroundings. But we keep trying. It’s my impression that the plant enthusiasts here in the Smokies region are as diligent and knowledgeable as any group in this country, perhaps matched only by folks in the New England states.

The manner in which we locate, identify, and become infatuated with certain plants and habitats is continually fascinating. The entire process — not just plant location and identification — is one I like to think of as “botanizing.”

In the field and in the library, so much seemingly happens by chance and is mystifying; yet, given time and care, things often fall into place as if preordained. The process itself becomes addictive so that we continually require new plants and new habitats to contemplate. And however much the stated intentions of the academic and non-academic “botanizer” may differ, I suspect our emotional experiences and rewards are quite similar.

The mid-19th century was surely one of the most exciting periods in regard to the systematic botanical exploration of North America. It was a time when forays into previously unexplored regions were viewed as “botanical excursions” and reported upon as backcountry or frontier adventures. From time to time it’s stimulating to recall the pervading spirit of that era and perhaps even emulate it to some degree in our own endeavors. Before we can hope to locate, identify, and learn about the flora of our chosen region, we have to get out the door and into the field on a consistent basis. Consistent motivation requires a certain mindset, an attitude.

Asa Gray, author of Gray’s Manual of Botany (1848), was this country’s first great botanist. These days, most view him as a stodgy Harvard professor. But who among us would not have wanted to accompany the 31-year-old Asa Gray on his first trip into the southern mountains in the summer of 1841? He described it with relish in 49 rambling pages titled “Notes of a Botanical Excursion to the Mountains of North Carolina, &c; with some remarks on the Botany of the higher Alleghany Mountains.” Gray did not find his “Plantae incognitae” (Shortia galacifolia, commonly known as Oconee bells or Shortia), but he saw and collected in Virginia and North Carolina many fine Appalachian plants in their native habitats for the first time.

In so doing, he traversed “difficult mountain tracks” in a “carry-all” (i.e., a light covered wagon drawn by a single horse). At one point near the South Fork of the Holston River, the wagon crashed in “a heap of stones” so that the horse was “overthrown into the boughs of a prostrate tree.” But after “extricating the poor animal” and repairing the wagon, Gray and his party continued undaunted into the highest mountains of North Carolina.

It was an adventure, and he reported it as such. Primarily a “closet botanist” by his own admission, Gray was able throughout a long career that did not end until his death in 1888 to maintain a youthful sense of adventure in the herbarium and botanical garden. This zestful attitude toward botanizing in all its aspects was infectious and motivated several generations of field workers — professional and amateur botanists alike — who shipped collections made in every nook and cranny of the continent back to Gray for classification.

Who among us would not have wanted to tour the Kentucky hills with Gray’s correspondent and friend Charles Wilkins Short, for whom he named his “Plantae incognitae?” A gentleman botanist in every sense, Short ventured forth in style with his family to collect plants in the countryside around Lexington. His eldest daughter, Mary, recalled those botanical excursions as a time when they “would ride through the countryside in his carriage, with the doors tied open so that he could jump out at any moment when a new object attracted his attention, and with trunks, boxes, baskets, and curtains of the carriage rolled up full of plants, he seemed to be in a state of exquisite happiness.”

And who would not have wanted to travel with Samuel Botsford Buckley (for whom the lovely, high-elevation Appalachian endemic Blue Ridge St. John’s-wort, Hypericum buckleyi, is named) and the immigrant botanist Ferdinand Rugel (discoverer of Rugel’s ragwort, Secnecio rugeli, yet another high-elevation Appalachian endemic) as they set off with other plant collectors on horseback for “the Iron Mountain” via Sevierville, Tenn., in the 1840s? Described by Buckley as “the best prepared and equipped for collecting and preserving specimens of any person” he had ever met, Rugel rode his horse Fox with “a large, square tin strapped to his shoulder and a straw hat tied beneath his chin.” In retrospect, Buckley surmised the party must have appeared to curious onlookers “like peddlers, who often travel on horseback through the southwestern states.”

The journey was uneventful until there was “a clattering of hoofs, and Fox dashed by, with Rugel crying ‘Whoa, Fox! Whoa, Fox!’ his hair streaming in the wind, with tin box and hat dashing up and down at every jump the horse made.” Buckley relocated Rugel a mile or so down the road at a steep hill where Fox had finally come to a stop. Without further ado they proceeded on their excursion into “the Iron Mountain” to explore the steep ridges above Alum Cave Bluffs that lead up to Mt. LeConte. While botanizing along Duckhawk Ridge, Buckley “persisted until he reached a hole through the rock where ‘with palpitating heart I crept back, and hastened down the mountain.’”

Sometimes those who are not active field botanists tend to think that the exploration of the distinctive natural areas and associated plant communities of the southern mountain region occurred during the 18th and 19th centuries and was then concluded, becoming something of a static — if not dead — chapter in our scientific and cultural history. It is true, of course, that the European investigation of the plants, animals, and terrain of the “mountaines” was undertaken with great vigor by the pioneering English, French, and German explorer naturalists.

They were, however, neither the first nor the last; indeed, this ongoing exploration is renewed each time one of us makes a little botanical excursion undertaken with the sort of zest epitomized by Asa Gray and his far-flung colleagues. Our stated goal will be a surer understanding of the teeming plant systems of which these mountains are composed. Our secret reward will be yet another serving of Dr. Short’s “exquisite happiness.”

Note: a longer, annotated version of this Back Then column appeared several years ago in this writer’s Botanical Excursions column, which is published quarterly in “The Newsletter of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society.”

George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He 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. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C. 28713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com