Black and White

[From October 4, 2007]

A dusty box of old family photos attracted my attention recently. I’ve been taking some time to scan the photos and identify people and places pictured in the old prints. I’ve found a few photos that aren’t your usual family portraits or vacation snapshots. Here’s the story for one of those pictures....

click on photo for better view

It was a thrill to play for the Padres. The fans cheered and my feeling was it was because I was a San Diego boy making good. It had nothing to do with race. – John Ritchey

At first glance, nothing is particularly remarkable about the black-and-white photograph, a simple portrait of a visiting team, waiting to play in the World Series of the American Legion baseball league.

Growing up in Albemarle, North Carolina some years later, I knew that one of the most exciting and memorable events in the town’s history was winning the 1940 national championship in front of the home crowd. To prepare for the finals, a crew of 100 carpenters added bleachers to the little ball park. All the stores and schools in town were ordered to close early on game days. Governor Clyde R. Hoey came from Raleigh to throw out the first ball.

Thousands thronged to the games. Albemarle’s star pitcher would be known as "Lefty" for the rest of his life.

That was the legend I knew.

But only after finding the photograph of San Diego’s American Legion Post 6 team did I learn there was much more to the story. At the instant that my father, Frank Eury, snapped the shutter, one player on the second row was partially obscured from view, cap pulled down, chin in hand. The player’s name was John Ritchey.

A powerful hitter, Ritchey was 15 years old when he propelled San Diego’s title run in 1938. The team advanced to the national semifinals in Spartanburg, SC, where officials barred Ritchey and another African-American player, Nelson Manuel [second row, second from right] from the game. Nevertheless, San Diego managed to overcome the racist chicanery and took the national championship that year.

Ritchey’s coach, Mike Morrow, was a San Diego legend whose high school teams included whites, blacks and Hispanics. Well into a successful season of American Legion play in 1940, Morrow wanted to prevent a repeat of 1938's player ban. For the national semifinals played in Shelby, NC, officials did allow Ritchey and Manuel to take the field.

Following their semifinals win, San Diego moved on to the finals against Albemarle. Anticipating problems, Coach Morrow threatened to take his entire team back to California if his players were ruled ineligible.

Two days before the first game, the Charlotte Observer reported it was "understood" that officials would allow them to play. One day before the opener, the newspaper (under the headline "Colored Boys Will Start for Pacifics") added:

A telegraphic poll conducted today by a Charlotte sportscaster brought replies from many North Carolina and out-of-state towns, all requesting that the colored lads be allowed to play.

The next day, reporting on the outcome of the first game, the paper stated that Ritchey and Manuel watched from the dugout because national Legion officials made the request not to use black players.

San Diego took the first two games over Albemarle by scores of 6-5 and 3-2, but Albemarle came back to tie the series with 6-3 and 7-5 victories against the California team.

In the fifth and deciding game, Albemarle held off a frantic San Diego rally to take a 9-8 win and claim the title. Although he was not allowed to play in the finals, John Ritchey was awarded a trophy as the tournament’s leading hitter.

In a wrap-up on the series, September 7, 1940, Observer sports writer Jake Wade addressed the controversy:

A crowd of something like 12,500 wrote history, with frenzied emotion such as has never been witnessed in a ball park in the Carolinas.

The crowd did not always behave so nicely. Parts of the crowd, I should say. The boos for the San Diego colored boys, when Coach Mike Morrow of the Coasters ill-advisedly had them warming up, was brutal. No credit to those who were guilty in this baseball crazy, partisan-mad assembly that overflowed Efird-Wiscassett Park.

Wade concluded:

Albemarle grasped it. Lisk flicked his pitch-out. The runner on third was nailed flat-footed. The ball game was over. Albemarle’s young men were junior champions of the world. The house came down, and tonight the bells were still ringing, the horns blowing, hoarse voices still whooping. The little kingpins were being accorded a rousing salute, and no kingpins deserved one more.

Art Cohn, sports editor for the Oakland Tribune, took a harder line against the ouster of San Diego’s players:

A great club, that San Diego team. It waded through the local, State, sectional and National play-offs and loomed as a cinch for the title. Until it hit Albemarle. Then hell broke loose.

Once below the Mason and Dixon, the most un-American of prejudices, racial discrimination, reared its ugly head, and, as a result, two regulars on the San Diego team were ruled ineligible. It seems that John Ritchey and Nelson Manuel, the two boys involved, had been found guilty…of being Negroes.

Ritchey and Manuel were good enough to play with and against their white brothers in California, Arizona, and even in Shelby, North Carolina, but it was a different story in Albemarle. There the good citizens had not yet learned that the Civil War recently ended.

So San Diego took the field for the first time without Ritchey and Manuel, and San Diego was beaten for the first time. It was a great triumph for Albemarle. The village should be proud of its contribution to American tolerance.

In a 1995 interview, John Ritchey recalled his life in baseball and his disastrous trip to Albemarle:

My earliest memories are of playing baseball, because there wasn't anything else to do. Most of my friends were White. Peanuts [Henry Savin] was a Mexican kid. The others were Nelson Manuel, Billy Williams, William Indalecio, Tom and Luis Ortiz. We played sandlot ball and the San Diego Police sponsored the league. Nelson was easy going and one time he got a job selling ice cream. It only lasted for one day, because he ate too much of the ice cream he was supposed to sell. He didn't get to eat much at home. They were good times playing with my friends....

With Post 6, I was taking batting practice in Albemarle and I hit a couple of line drives over the fence. They wouldn’t let me play for the National Championship game!

During World War II, Ritchey served as a staff sergeant in the Army Corps of Engineers and earned five battle stars from duty in Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and Berlin. After the war, Ritchey returned to baseball and led the Negro American League with a .369 batting average in 1947. The following year, he broke the color barrier in the Pacific Coast League when he joined the San Diego Padres, had seven hits in his first 11 at-bats and finished the season with a .323 average.

Although he never played in the major leagues, Ritchey enjoyed a successful baseball career until his retirement from the game in 1955. After baseball, Johnny and his wife Lydia raised a family in San Diego, where he worked as a deliveryman with Continental Bread Company for twenty years. Ritchey died in 2003 at the age of 80.

Two years later the San Diego Padres paid tribute to the "Jackie Robinson of the West Coast" by unveiling a bronze bust of John Ritchey. Tom Shanahan writes about what happened when family and friends raised money for the sculpture:

San Diego baseball historian Bill Swank came across some stories that tell us about John Ritchey as a man. "One guy said Johnny Ritchey didn’t know him, but he knew Johnny," Swank said. "He donated $200 because every time he saw Johnny around [San Diego State University] he would smile and say hello. He said he never forgot what a nice guy he was, and he knew what Johnny had been through in North Carolina."

Swank said a woman donated money because Ritchey had once rescued her from being taunted on campus by some bullies. Think about that for a moment: In 1940, Ritchey, a black man, stopped white bullies from tormenting a white girl.

"She said Johnny Ritchey’s bust should be made out of gold," Swank recalled.

Looking again at the photograph, I see nothing particularly remarkable in the image. Young ballplayers, far from home, looking a bit distracted. A team photo, not so different from thousands of others. Light and shadow of one split second from a September day, creating a picture of victory and defeat, pride and shame, back in my home town.

More at:

A Baseball Legend Worth Knowing

Interview from The Journal of San Diego History

Addendum 

After documenting this story, I contacted two distinguished aficionados of San Diego baseball history, Tom Shanahan and Bill Swank.  As a result, John Ritchey's family received a print of the photograph that prompted this article.  Also, the following year, Tom published the following article on the Voice of San Diego website:

Johnny Ritchey’s Silent Protest

Tuesday, June 17, 2008 | A little-known page of San Diego sports history, spoiled by the shameful era of Jim Crow America, resurfaced recently when a guy named Perry Eury in North Carolina dug through a dusty box of old family photographs.

Frozen in time, like a clip taken from a Ken Burns baseball documentary, is a black-and-while photograph snapped by Eury’s father. It shows a broken-hearted pose struck by Johnny Ritchey, San Diego’s least appreciated athlete in our region’s pantheon of sports legends.

The year was 1940 — seven years before Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color line with the Brooklyn Dodgers. The team photo was taken in Albemarie, N.C., a town below the Mason-Dixon Line. The event was the American Legion baseball national championship between San Diego and Albemarie.

At the time, Ritchey was a 17-year-old kid that had led the San Diego’s American Legion Post No. 6 to the national championship series. He would take home a trophy as the tournament’s leading hitter, even though he was barred from playing in the finals, a best-of-five series.

Ritchey would go on to become an historic figure as the “The Jackie Robinson of the Pacific Coast League.” And that makes this a good week, with the Padres’ Salute to the Negro Leagues Saturday night at Petco Park, to tell a story about a man not enough San Diegans appreciate.

He broke the PCL color line in 1948 for the minor-league San Diego Padres at old Lane Field. It was a year after Ritchey, a catcher, was the Negro Leagues batting champion with a .381 average for the Chicago American Giants.

A loophole in Ritchey’s contract with the American Giants, and Robinson’s barrier-breaking season, allowed the Padres to sign a hometown hero.

Ritchey had played baseball at San Diego State before he earned five battle stars in World War II. He served as a staff sergeant with the Army Corps of Engineers at Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and Berlin.

But barriers still stood in 1940, even for a kid accustomed to playing on lineups with white, black and Hispanic teammates that were typical of legendary coach Mike Morrow’s rosters for American Legion ball and his San Diego High teams.

Upon dusting off the photo, Eury did some research, and he subsequently sent a copy to Bill Swank, a San Diego baseball historian.

At first glance, the photo appears to be a case of Eury’s father snapping the camera shutter when the players weren’t ready. Ritchey looks down, the bill of his cap pulled low to hide his face, with his chin buried in his left hand

Swank, who knew Ritchey and his personality, is convinced the pose is more than a case of an impatient athlete bored with the photographer’s pace. Swank believes Ritchey’s forlorn look was the deliberate pose. It was his way of protesting this shameful time in America.

It would be another generation before black track and field athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos struck a defiant pose at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

In 1940, the exclusion of Ritchey from the championship series wasn’t an event that caught people off-guard. Before San Diego traveled below the Mason-Dixon Line, Morrow had gained assurances that there wouldn’t be a repeat of 1938 when Ritchey and teammate Nelson Manuel, another black player for San Diego, were barred from American Legion finals. That was the year San Diego beat Spartanburg, S.C., in Spartanburg.

But a decision by national Legion officials to bar Ritchey and Manuel from the finals came after they had already played in San Diego’s semifinal victory in Shelby, N.C.

In the final, San Diego won the first two games before Albemarie won the next two and the decisive fifth game, 9-8. Ritchey and Manuel, both regulars, watched from the dugout.

Eury’s research included an account of the series published on Sept. 7 in the Charlotte Observer that was written by sports editor Jake Wade.

“A crowd of something like 12,500 wrote history, with frenzied emotion such as has never been witnessed in a ball park in the Carolinas. The crowd did not always behave so nicely. Parts of the crowd, I should say. The boos for the San Diego colored boys, when Coach Mike Morrow of the Coasters ill-advisedly had them warming up, was brutal.”

Eury’s research also found this story written by Art Cohn, sports editor for the Oakland Tribune:

“A great club, that San Diego team. It waded through the local, State, sectional and National play-offs and loomed as a cinch for the title. Until it hit Albemarle. Then hell broke loose. Once below the Mason and Dixon, the most un-American of prejudices, racial discrimination, reared its ugly head, and, as a result, two regulars on the San Diego team were ruled ineligible. It seems that John Ritchey and Nelson Manuel, the two boys involved, had been found guilty…of being Negroes. Ritchey and Manuel were good enough to play with and against their white brothers in California, Arizona, and even in Shelby, North Carolina, but it was a different story in Albemarle.”

The man known as the Jackie Robinson of the Pacific Coast League should also be the kid that led San Diego’s American Legion Post No. 6 to two national titles in 1938 and 1940.

Tom Shanahan is voiceofsandiego.org‘s sports columnist. He is the media coordinator for the San Diego Hall of Champions and an occasional writer for Chargers.com. You can e-mail him at toms@sdhoc.com. 

https://voiceofsandiego.org/2008/06/17/johnny-ritcheys-silent-protest/

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".

Indians smoked the catalpa seed pods for the hallucinogenic effect, which is why the tree became known as the "Indian Cigar Tree." I’d be more than happy to report on anyone else’s experience in this regard. I believe I’ll pass, but I do have a couple of pods for anyone who wants to give it a try.

Go ahead.

Light up.

Tune in. Turn on. Drop out.

Who knows? Maybe the Green Bird will make an encore appearance.

After that 2009 account of Eastatoe's catalpas posted, I received a number of comments, including the following.  (It was always lovely to learn from the readers of these tales, "back in the day.")

From Joe:

Back where I'm originally from (the Chicago area) we had what I presume to be a northern catalpa next door, all throughout my youth (we called it a cigar tree). And after I moved away years ago, my dad convinced the neighbor to cut it down. You know, you can't really not understand, being the normal dude he is--what with the mess of flowers and pods it left all over the suburban lawn--but I always thought it was quite a mysterious tree. Had I known of its fish catching and hallucinogenic qualities, well, I might have been more adamant of its right to be. But it's good to learn these things later than never. 

And from Anonymous:

never heard about smoking a catalpa. i know someone who might try it.

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.

Hill Billy Rave had the scoop on Bob's Place:

Bob's Place down off of the Pickens Highway is commonly known as "Scatter Brain's". Story is someone got mean and the proprietor blew his brains out with a shotgun. I don't know how far back that was, I heard it when I was a little kid.

And, like me, Duck Hunter knew Bob's Place as a landmark, rather than a destination:

On my way out to some waterfalls I always know to turn at Bob's Place. Not sure what road that is... just turn at Bob's.

There are always people sitting on the porch up there with a drink. Doesn't appear a place for a stranger to visit.

Swindled!

From the diary of Lt. John Phelps, serving in Cherokee County, NC during Cherokee removal

Thursday 21st June 1838

On the 12th inst the Regiment with the exception of one company left camp under the command of Col. Fanning, and marched out among the mountains five or six miles to the east. Some of the Indians were already coming in, and being informed that many of them were collecting at a place of worship of theirs, seven companies of us marched thither and bivouacked. By night fall about a hundred had assembled, and when the camp was hushed they held a prayer meeting. They are of the Baptist persuasion.

A mural by artist Elizabeth Janes depicts the arrival of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma in the 1830s. Painted from 1938-39, the 8-by-15-foot mural is on display at the Oklahoma Historical Society in Oklahoma City. (Image courtesy Oklahoma Historical Society)

One of them opened his prayer by saying that it was probably the last time that they should ever meet at their wonted place of worship; but he exhorted them and prayed that they might not be led astray in the western wilderness.

The twilight was gleaming faintly upon the old hills about them, where they had strayed when young, and formed their earliest and dearest associations; they had left their homes, their neat gardens and fields, their stock and poultry, as tho’ they were going to church, and even thus were they to set out upon their journey for the land from which they expected nothing but sickness and death.

Some of their people as well as whites had returned from that country, and told them that it was very unhealthy. But they must leave their solubrious hills and go to it, tho’ they had never given their consent; they had been belied by one who professed to teach the religious whose rites they were celebrating. The Occasion was deeply affecting, and Indians tho’ they were, the congregation were all in tears. They sung some appropriate hymns and then retired.

As the ceremonies were conducted in Cherokee I was obliged to rely upon an interpreter for what little information I could get concerning their import. It was with much difficulty that he could express the substance of the prayers, tho’ he said that they made one feel quite smart, by which I was pleased to understand that they were thrilling even to him. The next day several whites came about in order to get claims on their property.

The manner in which they had been cheated was various and the cases were numerous. For instance, a white would purchase their improvements, get a deed signed by creditable witnesses, pay a dollar or two down, and promise to pay the remainder when they started for the west. This would be the last of it.

But in general their property was wrested from them with less ceremony than this. It was in vain that we told them not to trust to the whites, that the government would fairly compensate them for every thing that they abandoned; they preferred to make sure of one tenth even of the value of their property than to rely upon the promises of the government which had cheated them more cruelly than the individuals who were prowling among them.

Timberlake Map of 1762

 [From 6/14/2007]

In the spring of 1761 Lieutenant Henry Timberlake kept notes of his time among the Overhills Cherokee (eastern Tennessee). This is an account of his visit to the village of Settico:

About 100 yards from the town-house we were received by a body of between three and four hundred Indians, ten or twelve of which were entirely naked, except for a piece of cloth about their middle, and painted all over in a hideous manner, six of them with eagles tails in their hands, which they shook and flourished as they advanced, danced in a very uncommon figure, singing in concert with some drums of their own make, and those of the late unfortunate Capt. Demere; with several other instruments, uncouth beyond description. Chuelah, the headman of the town led the procession, painted blood-red, except his face, which was half black, holding an old rusty broad-sword in his right hand, and an eagle’s tail in his left.

We then proceeded to the door, where Chuelah, and one of the beloved men, taking me by each arm, led me in, and seated me in one of the first seats; it was so dark that nothing was perceptible till a fresh supply of canes were brought, which being burnt in the middle of the house answers both purposes of fuel and candle. I then discovered about five hundred faces; and Cheulah addressing me a second time made some professions of friendship, concluding with giving me another string of beads, as a token of it.

He had scarce finished, when four of those who had exhibited at the procession made their second appearance, painted milk-white, their eagle-tails in one hand, and small goards with beads in them in the other, which they rattled in time with the music. During this dance the peace-pipe was prepared; the bowl of it was red stone, curiously cut with a knife, it being very soft, tho' extremely pretty when polished. The stem is about three feet long, finely adorned with porcupine quills, dyed feathers, deers hair, and such like guady trifles.

After I had performed my part with this, I was almost suffocated with the pipes presented me on every hand, which I dared not to decline. They might amount to about 170 or 180; which made me so sick, that I could not stir for several hours.

The Indians entertained me with another dance, at which I was detained till about seven o’clock next morning, when I was conducted to the house of Chucatah, then second in command, to take some refreshment.

Soon after this, Timberlake prepared his famous map of 1762, shown here next to a contemporary Google Earth image.

The left side of the map is north.

At lower right, the Tellico River meets the Little Tennessee.

At upper left, Chilhowee Mountain.

Trading paths from Virginia and from Charleston, SC converged just down-river from Settico, located on the south bank of the Little Tennessee.

(Click on either image to enlarge)

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.

[*Fractals being processes or images that exhibit something called self-similarity, something made up of a reduced version of itself.]

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

Peacocks on Pigeon River

[From June 17, 2008]

Two books about Western North Carolina, both published in 1913, are still in print: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders, and Margaret Morley’s The Carolina Mountains. I suppose that the arbiters of taste in such matters favor Kephart’s book by a wide margin, and I can understand why it has aged well despite its shortcomings. Morley indulged in flowery prose that was fashionable in its time, but turns off most modern readers. I like it, though. Her chapter on The Forks of the Pigeon River showcased her talent for describing mountain scenery, and you could do much worse than to read it while traveling from Canton to Cold Mountain.

An episode on the Little East Fork of the Pigeon demonstrated how Morley’s high-flown idealism was at odds with the gritty reality of mountain life. Morley was surprised to encounter a gang of peacocks:

When we admired them with a sort of anticipatory pleasure in the time to come, when peacocks will sun themselves on the walls of the charming gardens that charming people will make here, we were brought violently to earth by learning that the real value of the peacock is in its superiority to chicken meat.

As with almost any outsider writing about Appalachia, Morley starts skating on thin ice when she gets into social commentary. Though not as guilty of condescension and caricature as the parade of writers that preceded her to these mountains, Morley adopts a certain tone in discussing “the mountaineer” that some might find objectionable. On the other hand, she was witness to a period of social, environmental and economic change in the mountains not unlike our own. This passage caught my attention because it hints at the complexities of what we call “property rights”:

The mountain people are many of them poor and ignorant, but the ill-clad man, who to the city visitor may look like a vagabond, is not to be treated as such; he knows some things the fine-appearing stranger does not know, and is well aware of the fact. The mountaineer is very old-fashioned, so old-fashioned that he values native shrewdness above what he calls "book-larnin"'; so old-fashioned that he thinks his neighbors as good as himself, and himself as good as his neighbors, irrespective of who has the biggest cornfield; and so old-fashioned that he believes progress to be a menace against his personal freedom, a thing to be combated at every point.

His long-continued, almost communal life in a free wilderness, where every one had a right to do what he pleased, — hunting, fishing, pasturing, even cutting down trees wherever it happened to suit his convenience, — made for him the acceptance of other ideas of property rights peculiarly difficult. He gladly sold his land to the newcomer whose slaughter of the forests he understood, but if the purchaser, instead of destroying, tried to preserve the forest land, prohibiting, burning-over, pasturing, and common use of the territory — then there was trouble. Also the inalienable right to hunt and fish when and where he pleased was a part of the faith of the mountaineer, whose long sojourn in the wilderness had ingrained in him primitive ideas which the gradual filling-up of the country did not change, although his methods were rapidly exterminating both fish and game animals.

Morley came to the mountains from the intellectual circles of New England. She settled into the artists’ colony of Tryon after she had already gained some notoriety in Victorian America for writing sex-education books for children. She must have been an object of curiosity, traveling difficult mountain terrain in the cumbersome clothing of her time, and taking amazing photographs along the way. It’s likely she was an object of scorn for being a part of the invasion that she derided. Even so, I find something timeless and hopeful in the words she left us:

For Nature is long-suffering and very kind, so kind, indeed, that in moments of discouragement one has only to remember that even if the worst were to happen, and these beautiful mountains become devastated by ignorant invaders, when the time came, as come it would, that the profaner depart, nature would begin anew her beneficent task of creating beauty.



East Fork of the Pigeon, oil, 16"x20"

Kep' and Kelly

[From 6/28/2007]

 

Been to any good cemeteries lately? I rank "exploring cemeteries" right up there with "reading the dictionary" on my list of most fun things to do. Way up there. Really.

Just the other day, I took a stroll around the Bryson City Cemetery on Schoolhouse Hill and discovered something quite remarkable about the place. I don’t know of any other cemetery from which you can view, not one, but two mountain peaks named after people buried in the cemetery.

Both individuals so recognized played significant roles in the establishment of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. "The Apostle of the Smokies", Kelly Bennett (1890-1974) was a local pharmacist, a mayor of Bryson City and an enthusiastic booster when the Park was proposed in the 1920s. Looking toward the west from his grave, you’ll see Kelly Bennett Peak.

Just a few feet away lies Horace Kephart (1862-1931), a Saint Louis librarian and writer who came to the mountains more than a century ago. His story of life in the Smokies, Our Southern Highlanders, is a classic of Appalachian literature.

If you look toward the high ridge of distant mountains northeast of town, you can pick out Mount Kephart, named in his honor just a couple of months prior to his death in 1931.

Edison in the Smokies

[From May 15, 2007]

 

101 years ago, Thomas Edison spent a few days in Jackson County (NC) examining cobalt deposits for a storage battery that he was developing. It was not the last trip that Edison would make to the mountains.

His camping trips with Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, John Burroughs and others notables are legendary. The old photo [above] shows the “vagabonds” camping (and shaving) in the Smokies in 1918. Left to right: Henry Ford, Bishop William F. Anderson, Harvey Firestone (stooping). Thomas A. Edison and President Warren G. Harding

One tale of the campers’ adventures is re-told by Patricia Zacharias of The Detroit News :

En route to a new campsite on a rainy day, the Lincoln touring car carrying Harding, Ford, Edison, Firestone and naturalist Luther Burbank bogged down in deep mud on a back road in West Virginia.

Ford's chauffeur went for help and returned with a farmer driving an ancient Model T. After the Lincoln was yanked from the mire, Ford was the first to shake the farmer's hand.

"I guess you don't know me but I'm Henry Ford. I made the car you're driving."

Firestone chimed in, "I'm the man who made those tires." Then he introduced two of the campers: "Meet the man who invented the electric light -- and the President of the United States."

Luther Burbank was the last to shake hands. "I guess you don't know me either?" he asked.

"No," said the farmer, "but if you're the same kind of liar as these other darn fools, I wouldn't be surprised if you said you was Santa Claus."

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.

Spiderwort

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.

Let me take you down, 'cause I'm going to Strawberry Fields.

Nothing is real and nothing to get hung about.

Strawberry Fields forever.

-The Beatles

Today, I spent a few hours mowing and was richly rewarded when I uncovered a bunch of wild strawberries. I switched off the lawnmower and gathered the tender fruit.

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…

…in wild strawberries.