It is the ideal time now (at least in these parts) to seek one of my favorite wildflowers, Grass of Parnassus, a flower that would be the star of any bog. I have one particular place to visit it each year, but do you think I would divulge that location on this website? Of course not! Instead, I offer a photograph that I took several summers ago:
Wednesday, August 23, 2023
Grass of Parnassus
p. 1
Saturday, August 19, 2023
A Landscape of Neurological Nets Underfoot
[From August 19, 2009]
The universe, and in particular planet Earth, is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects.
-Thomas Berry
I love a challenge and saving the Planet seems like a good one....I believe that mycelium is the neurological network of nature. Interlacing mosaics of mycelium infuse habitats with information-sharing membranes.
-Paul Stamets
I’m still sorting through the many wildflowers I’ve photographed this year, and intend to devote some study time this winter to be a better taxonomist next year. Even so, I recognize that learning to identify individual plant species unlocks only a few of the secrets of the Southern Appalachian forest.
This week I hiked a couple of miles on the Sugarland Mountain Trail, between Newfound Gap and Clingman’s Dome. In a place like this, it’s not unusual to find an abundance of epiphytes like mosses and lichens growing on trees. But at one point on this trail, you can look up and see red spruce trees that have sprouted and are growing from the broad limbs of the yellow birch trees.
Twenty feet up, red spruce trees have sprouted on the limb of a yellow birch.
That’s just a tiny example of the complex, and sometimes unexpected, relationships among the organisms of the high elevation forest. If I didn’t already recognize how little I know about forest ecology, the various mushrooms that I observed along the trail were constant reminders. As I learned only recently, mushrooms are no longer classified as plants but are included in the separate and distinct Kingdom of Fungi.
Looking at the forest as a mere collection of trees and flowers is to overlook the crucial role of saprobes and mycorrhizae. Paul Stamets calls the web of fungi that pervades the forest "a neurological net."
Recently, I read an article on myco-forestry, or “the cultivation of fungi as part of forest agriculture.” In the New Life Journal story, Zev Friedman drew the connection beween fungi and the hemlocks disappearing so rapidly from the Southern Appalachians. One mushroom, the Appalachian Reishi (Ganoderma tsugae) grows on dead hemlock trees.
According to the Friedman, the closely related Chinese Reishi (Ganoderma lucidum) is known as the "mushroom of immortality" because of its pharmacologic value:
Clinical trials have verified many effects of reishis, including potent anti-tumor (sarcoma and hepatoma) action, adaptogenic and immune stimulating qualities, and spleen cell regeneration. Reishis also seem to possess anti-hypertensive and anti-allergenic properties.
He explains how Ganoderma tsugae could be cultivated in the forest garden:
Dying hemlocks can be cut down, inoculated with reishi mycelium in May or June, and staked along the topographic contours of hills as retaining edges for paths or native medicinal plant beds, simultaneously decreasing erosion and runoff while building topsoil. The fungus decomposes the log more quickly into mulch and soil than would occur without human intervention, while producing highly valuable medicinal and edible mushrooms for many years.
The entire article is at:
https://www.thefreelibrary.com/It's+good+to+grow+mushrooms%3a+Zev+Friedman+dishes+the+dirt+on...-a0199193902
Paul Stamets has a fine article on "Permaculture with a Mycological Twist" at https://fungi.com/blogs/articles/permaculture-with-a-mycological-twist
A visionary mycologist, Stamets is one of the heroic geniuses of our day:
I see the mycelium as the Earth's natural Internet, a consciousness with which we might be able to communicate. Through cross-species interfacing, we may one day exchange information with these sentient cellular networks. Because these externalized neurological nets sense any impression upon them, from footsteps to falling tree branches, they could relay enormous amounts of data regarding the movements of all organisms through the landscape.
-Paul Stamets, Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World
Tuesday, August 15, 2023
Foraging for Sochan
[From August 8, 2010]
Eventually, the food movement had to go this far. As soon as a lot of people started buying organic, locally grown farmers'-market fare, food snobs had to do something else to feel superior. They had to look down on the masses' reliance on the whole modernized "growing food on purpose" thing. They had to go back to a more honest, preagricultural method: foraging.
Time Magazine, July 26, 2010
I was on my way home from a weekend of permaculture study.
With no reason to be in a hurry, I turned from the Blue Ridge Parkway at Craggy Gardens and walked the trail to the summit. Always one of my favorite short hikes, it was no exception this time. I nibbled on wild blueberries and watched the roiling fog obscure and reveal range upon range of mountains, looking like waves in the ocean.
When I got to the observation deck at the top, a man and his teenage son were enjoying the sky show. One second, the quickly dropping sun gilded a row of clouds, and then the fog would take away the view of the sun completely.
They both had some good stories, and the three of us talked for a while. I mentioned “permaculture” and explained it in brief, and that I’d just been briefed in the culinary potential of native woodland plants. Coincidentally, the dad had just read a Time article on high-end chefs using foraged ingredients. I told him I’d look it up and read it, and he said he’d find out more about permaculture. After I got home, I did find the Time story, Joel Stein’s “Into the Woods.”
…searching the woods or parks or even cracks in the pavement for edible plants has become the latest culinary obsession. In June, forageSF's Iso Rabins gathered 70 vendors and 2,000 customers in San Francisco for his once-a-month Underground Market for foraged food. There's a restaurant in Los Angeles called Forage that lets people take in stuff they find (or, for slackers, grow in their gardens) to exchange for credit toward their dinner. Meanwhile, menus across the land are listing wild leeks, fiddlehead ferns, stinging nettles and berries you've never heard of.
Chris Hastings of the Hot and Hot Fish Club in Birmingham, Ala., often goes foraging and explains its appeal: "You can pursue a bunch of b_______ cooking like sous vide this or sous vide that or foam this or foam that, but to celebrate wild, foraged things and get back to an elemental place is an intellectually much more interesting place for me as a chef." In early summer his customers can order a completely foraged dessert. "It freaks them out," he says. "The flavors are intense. They're unique. They're not like a cultivated strawberry."
…Tyler Gray of Oregon-based Mikuni Wild Harvest sometimes rides the New York City subway with $50,000 worth of foraged truffles in his backpack. "It's such a crazy subculture," he says of food finders, who speak in "traveling-gypsy code," as he puts it. "You don't want anyone to know where you're foraging," says Gray, whose truck has been shot at while he was out searching for food.
Ava Chin, who blogs about urban foraging for the New York Times, won't say where in the city she once found nearly 100 morels. She recently tapped a maple tree near her Brooklyn apartment, which upset her neighbors. "In New York, everyone freaks out and figures you must be hurting the tree," she says. "I don't know where they think maple syrup comes from."
Even with its many jumps around the map, the Time article leaves out a lot. The story succeeded in bringing a worthwhile topic to broader awareness, while it came close to trivializing the subject.
Actually, foraging can be as simple or as complex as you want to make it. We could talk about it from the perspective of anthropology, biology, spirituality, economics, ecology....or as a pop culture fad.
Euell Gibbons told us how to fry up a batch of elderberry blossom fritters. The question is, why would you want to? A new generation of wild foodies is advancing the concept of knowing when to pick, and how to prepare, native plants so they aren’t merely edible, but delicious. Among the books to emerge from this new wave is Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods From Dirt To Plate, by John Kallas.
Green-headed Coneflower
Here in the Southern Appalachians, one wild plant that happens to be blooming right now, is considered by many the number one native plant deserving a place on the plate. If you know it by the flower, you might call it green-headed coneflower. But if you treasure it for the spring greens from the young plants, then you might call it sochan. Several years ago in the Smoky Mountain News, George Ellison described it.
Sochan (“Rudbeckia laciniatum”), called green-headed coneflower by non-Indians, is one of the most prized spring greens the Cherokees gather. They sometimes call it “sochani.” Many of their gardens have semi-cultivated patches of the plant in protected areas. Closely related to black-eyed Susan (“Rudbeckia hirta”), it grows to 10 feet tall in wet areas and along damp woodland borders. The flower heads that appear in mid-summer are about three inches wide with drooping yellow rays and a center disk (unlike the purple disk of black-eyed Susan) that’s greenish-yellow.
The Cherokees recognize sochan as soon as it comes out of the ground in mid-spring by its distinctive irregularly divided leaves and smell. Consult your wildflower field guides for flower and leaf-shape diagrams of green-headed coneflower. Then you will be able to locate the plant this summer along backcountry roadways when it’s in full bloom. Mark the spot and return next spring for greens. Prepare the young shoots and leaves (boiled with several changes of water) have a rich texture and zesty flavor. It’s even good cold as a snack with a little vinegar added. In the opinion of many - this writer included - sochan is the very finest of the traditional potherbs gathered in the Blue Ridge region.
Though you certainly would not have to go that far to find it, the walk to the top of Clingman’s Dome takes you through acres of green-headed coneflower blooms...or next year’s sochan patch. Considering how these things go, I wouldn’t be surprised to find sochan on the menu of any hip restaurant in Asheville or Sylva come next spring.
As permaculture makes more inroads into the culture, what’s old is new again. (After thinking further on this, I'm not sure it is a matter of permaculture making inroads. Permaculture reflects the deepest and most eternal laws of nature, and nature has plenty of self-correcting strategies to deal with anyone who would defy those laws.)
For more links on this - http://lifeisfare.wordpress.com/2010/07/26/the-latest-culinary-obsession-foraging/
Thursday, August 3, 2023
Tripping Through the Valley of the Green Bird
One a recent walk along the Little Tennessee River, I encountered a tree with heart-shaped leaves and long pods hanging from its branches. An ID for the tree did not come to mind immediately, but then I saw a large green caterpillar munching on one leaf and it all started coming back to me.
I had encountered catalpas in South Carolina's Eastatoe Valley and wrote about it January 10, 2009, and no, I didn't catch a catalpa buzz. Catalpas and trilliums are still thriving. Sadly, Bob's Place (the oldest tavern in South Carolina) burned down a few years ago.
Lighting the hallucinogenic catalpa. [For demonstration purposes only.]I took a right turn at Bob’s Place, just before the Road Kill Grill, and descended into the Valley of the Green Bird.
Whenever I visit this place, I think of the trilliums that grow here, in abundance, thanks to an anomaly of Appalachian geology. I’ve been told that one hill alone hosts seven different varieties of the flower. Of course, that rainbow of trilliums is hidden underground for the next couple of months.
The "Green Bird" - the extinct Carolina Parakeet |
Here are some things I’ve just learned – trilliums have a symbiotic relationship with ants. The fruit of the trillium matures, splits open, and releases its seeds in late summer. Attached to those seeds are nutritious, lipid-rich elaisomes, especially attractive to ants.
The ants carry the seeds back to their nests, where they eat the elaisomes and discard the seeds intact. Waste disposal sites, enriched by the carcasses of dead ants and ant feces, form fertile seedbeds. The seeds over-winter before germinating. The first year, they develop only a small root; the second year, a rudimentary leaf; a year or two later, a single true leaf. In a couple of more years, the plant produces three leaves and, after another year, the trillium finally flowers. The cycle can take six years or more from seed to flower.
Trilliums aren’t the only evidence of persistence in the valley. The old homesteads and farm fields still look like they belong here.
One of those patches of ground called out to me and I pulled over for a closer look. I could see this land had been farmed for centuries. A large pasture stretched out to the edge of the creek that runs through the middle of this valley. Between the pasture and the road was a garden plot lined by several gnarled apple trees and one cigar tree. Dark slender pods, a foot or longer, hung from all the limbs of that tree better known as the catalpa.
Supposedly, the tree was a totem for the Catawba Indians, and it was only due to a transcription error by a botanist that the name "Catalpa," rather than "Catawba" was applied to the tree. To my way of thinking, it’s one of those humble trees that doesn’t get its due respect. With a thick covering of heart-shaped leaves it provides a protected refuge for many species of birds.
If you want to catch catfish, remember this:
The tree is favored by the Catalpa Sphinx moth. The caterpillars of that moth eat the leaves of the catalpa, and are such an excellent live bait for fishing that some dedicated anglers maintain small groves of the trees, just to have a reliable source of "catawba-worms".
trilliums are often inconspicuously absent from reclaimed old fields in the smokies. i would never have thought about this but a few summers ago a friend was looking for some trillium patches to study the ant dispersal of the seeds. if you drive above twin creek on the loop road above gatlinburg there are many old fields that still have remains of fence rows and terraces.
there are no trilliums.
none.
around the edges, in what had remained more or less intact forest, you may find trilliums. they have not managed to diffuse across the landscape via our formicine friends in the 75-80 years since the inception of the park.
what other wonders such as these are hidden from our view by the veil of ignorance, by not having ever watched an ant visit a plant.
There are always people sitting on the porch up there with a drink. Doesn't appear a place for a stranger to visit.
Saturday, June 10, 2023
To Learn a Fern (Aarnivalkea)
[From June 27, 2010]
When I went out walking the other day, I brushed up against four or five different types of ferns within the space of fifty yards.
I was ready to return with my fern book and finally start learning their identities, yet I didn’t realize how little I know about ferns.
Maidenhair Fern, April 23, 2010.
I figured that the distinctive silhouettes of the fern fronds would be enough to arrive at a positive ID, but no. In many cases, you have to turn the fern and study the pattern of bumps, called sori, on the underside of the leaf.
A sorus (pl. sori) is a cluster of sporangia.
In ferns, these form a yellowish or brownish mass on the edge or underside of a fertile frond. In some species, they are protected during development by a scale or film of tissue called the indusium, which forms an umbrella-like cover.
Dicksonia antarctica. Picture taken by DanielCD on 17 May 2005. Picture is of the underside of a fern frond. It shows a fertile frond which is covered with sori (sing. sorus)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:SoriDicksonia.jpg
Sori occur on the sporophyte generation, the sporangia within producing haploid meiospores. As the sporongia mature, the indusium shrivels so that spore release is unimpeded. The sporangia then burst and release the spores.
The shape, arrangement, and location of the sori are often valuable clues in the identification of fern taxa. Sori may be circular or linear. They may be arranged in rows, either parallel or oblique to the costa, or randomly. Their location may be marginal or set away from the margin on the frond lamina. The presence or absence of indusium is also used to identify fern taxa.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorus
The best time to identify ferns is when the sori are fully developed. Here’s one more description of what to look for:
Many ferns bear their spore cases (also known as sporangia, sori, or fruit-dots) on the undersides of some of the leaflets—turn over the leaves and look for small dots, often brown. Other species have separate stems devoted to holding spore cases. These structures have fertile leaves that usually look like miniature versions of the larger plant but later turn brown and curly.
Identification of many of the twice-compound species requires examining placement of spore cases; comparison of sizes, shapes, veining patterns, and numbers of leaflets; and other meticulous evaluations, which obsessive botanists usually enjoy.
Read more at Suite101: How to Identify Ferns: Primitive and Beautiful Plants of Woods and Meadows http://botany.suite101.com/article.cfm/how_to_identify_ferns#ixzz0rvFoo332
Sori (containing spores) on the underside of a curling Polypodium fern.
Catskill Mountains, New York, USA
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fern_Sori.JPG
I had already been contemplating the fractal* quality of ferns, even before stumbling onto the bit about spore cases with leaves that resemble the larger plant.
Trees and ferns are fractal in nature and can be modeled on a computer by using a recursive algorithm. This recursive nature is obvious in these examples—a branch from a tree or a frond from a fern is a miniature replica of the whole: not identical, but similar in nature.
The connections between fractals and leaves are currently being used to determine how much carbon is contained in trees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractal#cite_note-4
Barnsley's fern computed using an iterated function system
I haven’t been back to the ferns, but I’ll find them in due time. I still don’t know much, but more than I did before.
Two lessons, for now.
One, when you look at a fern, you’re looking at mathematics in action.
And two, always look on the underside of the leaf!
The Great Smoky Mountains All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory reports 53 species of ferns representing the Pteridophyta division of plants (within the national park).
http://www.dlia.org/atbi/species/Plantae/Pteridophyta/index.shtml
Finally, as if that’s not enough reason to go out and learn a fern, there’s this:
Finnish tradition holds that one who finds the "seed" of a fern in bloom on Midsummer night will, by possession of it, be guided and be able to travel invisibly to the locations where eternally blazing Will o' the wisps called aarnivalkea mark the spot of hidden treasure. These spots are protected by a spell that prevents anyone but the fern-seed holder from ever knowing their locations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fern
Wednesday, May 24, 2023
The Amazing Spiderwort
[From June 12, 2009]
It has been great fun to get more acquainted with wildflowers this year. I only regret that I’ve waited so long to give them the attention they deserve. The past couple of weeks had been a fairly slow time for finding new flowers. As the trees leafed out and the forest canopy closed, the early spring flowers deep in the woods have faded.
Now, it’s time to look elsewhere. This week, a flower hunter could do worse than to look alongside the Blue Ridge Parkway from Balsam Gap to Waterrock Knob. Rhododendrons and flame azaleas are hard to miss, even if you’re zipping past at 45 MPH. But anyone who gets out and takes the time to look will find lots and lots of smaller flowers blooming. I’m still culling from a couple of hundred photos I took there this week.
The spiderwort, one of the few flowers I could have identified before this year, is blooming in abundance. I enjoy taking macro shots, and even though a photographer might pass up the spiderwort for more charismatic flowers, it is a splendid subject if you stop and take a closer look. Generally speaking, bright sun is not the ideal condition for taking wildflower pictures. I’ve found, though, that with flowers that lend themselves to close-ups, the bright sun helps in achieving clear, sharp results. Predictably, this is less true for white flowers. For some reasons I don’t quite understand, yellow flowers are even more difficult to photograph well in bright light, at least in my experience. That’s not a problem with the blues and purples of the spiderworts.
I had known that the spiderwort was of particular interest to botanists although I had forgotten why. They have several notable characteristics:
-The plants are easily hybridized.
-Their cell structure makes it relatively easy to observe the flow of cytoplasmic fluid through the plant.
-Due to its large chromosomes, spiderwort is the plant of choice for viewing (under a microscope) cell division in the stamen hairs.
-Old petals don’t fall from the flower, as with most plants, but seem to melt due to certain enzymes.
One of the most curious traits of the spiderwort is its response to ionizing radiation, such as gamma rays. Upon exposure, the stamen hairs which are normally blue will turn purple or pink. So the plant is studied as a natural barometer of air pollution and radiation. Less than two weeks after contamination from low “safe” doses of radiation or hazardous chemicals the stamen hairs will start to mutate and change color. Since the spiderwort can absorb toxins and store them internally, it gives a more useful measure of the cumulative effect of contamination over time, compared to other means of measuring external and temporary levels of toxins.
Reportedly, the Cherokees used the spiderwort for food and medicine. The young leaves were eaten as salad greens. The plant was mashed into a paste and rubbed onto insect bites to relieve itching and pain. The roots were used in a poultice to treat cancer. A tea made from the plant was used as a laxative and for stomachaches.
If I have identified it correctly, the spiderwort I found in such abundance along the Parkway this week was the Mountain Spiderwort, Tradescantia subaspera var. montana. Fortunately, thanks to some prior study of the wildflower guide I had known to be alert for another member of the spiderwort family. Otherwise, I might have ignored the Commelina communis as more of the same. As with the Mountain Spiderwort, this plant has three petals, but it would be easy to assume that it is missing one. While two of the petals are blue (and bluer than the Mountain Spiderworts that I’ve seen) the third petal is smaller, white, and easily overlooked. Some people call this plant Mouse Flower since the two blue petals do resemble a pair of mouse ears. But it is better known as the Common Dayflower, which refers to the blooms lasting only one day before melting away.
I always see my father's eyes as blue
When spiderwort comes up in spring. I saw
It first when no one in Nebraska knew
What name it had in Gray's old botany.
None but my father. He would leave his team,
Take down the book he'd sold the seed-corn for,
Scan page, and say: "That's spiderwort." In fall,
"Oh, no, not weeds. That's blazing star." I'm glad
Except for what my mother must endure,
He left us hungry, chased some wan, wild goose;
But told me names of shepherd's purse in spring
And tumble-weed and golden-rod in fall.
- Margaret E. Haughawout (1929)
Wild Strawberry Fields Forever
[From May 24, 2008]
Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see.
It's getting hard to be someone but it all works out.
It doesn't matter much to me.Whenever I taste a wild strawberry, I automatically think back to the time that William Bartram crossed the Cowees at Leatherman Gap and descended into Alarka Valley.
What an incredible coincidence for me to find wild strawberries on May 24, 2008, because it was May 24, 1775 that William Bartram encountered this scene:
…enjoyed a most enchanting view, a vast expanse of green meadows and strawberry fields; a meandering river gliding through, saluting in its various turnings the swelling, green, turfy knolls, embellished with parterres of flowers and fruitful strawberry beds; flocks of turkies strolling about them; herds of deer prancing in the meads or bounding over the hills; companies of young, innocent Cherokee virgins, some busily gathering the rich fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native bowers of Magnolia, Azalea, Philadelphus, perfumed Calycanthus, sweet Yellow Jessamine and cerulian Glycine frutescens, disclosing their beauties to the fluttering breeze, and bathing their limbs in the cool fleeting streams; whilst other parties, more gay and libertine, were yet Collecting strawberries or wantonly chasing their companions, tantalising them, staining their lips and cheeks with the rich fruit.
Keep in mind that Bartram was a 36-year-old man who’d endured several weeks of difficult travel, far from the comforts of home:
This sylvan scene of primitive innocence was enchanting, and perhaps too enticing for hearty young men long to continue idle spectators. In fine, nature prevailing over reason, we wished at least to have a more active part in their delicious sports. Thus precipitately resolving, we cautiously made our approaches, yet undiscovered, almost to the joyous scene of action.
Now, although we meant no other than an innocent frolic with this gay assembly of hamadryades, we shall leave it to the person of feeling and sensibility to form an idea to what lengths our passions might have hurried us, thus warmed and excited, had it not been for the vigilance and care of some envious matrons who lay in ambush, and espying us gave the alarm, time enough for the nymphs to rally and assemble together; we however pursued and gained ground on a group of them, who had incautiously strolled to a greater distance from their guardians, and finding their retreat now like to be cut off, took shelter under cover of a little grove, but on perceiving themselves to be discovered by us, kept their station, peeping through the bushes; when observing our approaches, they confidently discovered themselves and decently advanced to meet us, half unveiling their blooming faces, incarnated with the modest maiden blush, and with native innocence and cheerfulness presented their little baskets, merrily telling us their fruit was ripe and sound.
We accepted a basket, sat down and regaled ourselves on the delicious fruit, encircled by the whole assembly of the innocently jocose sylvan nymphs; by this time the several parties under the conduct of the elder matrons, had disposed themselves in companies on the green, turfy banks.
For an itinerant botanist who answered to the name "Puc Puggy", Billy Bartram knew how to have a good time.
On this very day, 233 years ago, he took great delight…