strangling weed

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Dodder. Could there be a spookier plant?

Also known as devil's guts, devil's hair, golden thread, hair weed, hellbine, strangleweed or witch's hair—now, there’s a collection of memorable names that H. P. Lovecraft would have loved—dodder is a parasitic plant. Its orange tendrils slowly reach out and attach themselves to healthy, green plants. At first, it's like a gentle caress.

But here’s what happens next. Are you sitting down?

After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps around it tighter and tighter. If the host contains food beneficial to the dodder, it produces haustoria (essentially roots) that insert themselves into the vascular system of the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. It’s no longer needed. The dodder can grow yards and yards long, latching itself onto even more plants. In this way, the dodder slowly spreads in all directions, feeding on the plants it has entwined.

Devil's guts! It's out there; creeping in all directions.

Wait a minute! Did I just hear something gently scratching on my window?

-Photo taken along Clingman’s Dome Road in the Great Smokies.

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devil's guts?

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Beaked dodder (Cuscuta rostrata)

And there it was, beaked dodder growing on both sides of Clingman’ s Dome Road in the Great Smokies.

Could there be a spookier plant? A more devilish succubus?

Also known as devil's guts, devil's hair, golden thread, hair weed, hellbine, strangleweed or witch's hair—now, there’s a collection of memorable names that H. P. Lovecraft would have loved—dodder is a parasitic plant. Its orange tendrils slowly reach out and attach themselves to healthy, green plants. At first, it's like a gentle caress.

But here’s what happens next. Are you sitting down?

After a dodder attaches itself to a plant, it wraps around it tighter and tighter. If the host contains food beneficial to the dodder, it produces haustoria (essentially roots) that insert themselves into the vascular system of the host. The original root of the dodder in the soil then dies. It’s no longer needed. The dodder can grow yards and yards long, latching itself onto even more plants. In this way, the dodder slowly spreads in all directions, feeding on the plants it has entwined.

This sounds like something out of a George Romero movie, night-of-the-living-dead kind of stuff. Although, perhaps it’s even creepier because it is real and we all know that zombies are not. Right?

Wait a minute! Did I just hear something gently scratching on my window?

Devil's guts spreading in all directions. Creepy!!

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on top of old Smoky

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Sometimes, just knowing they are there is enough.

Yes. I know Northern saw-whet owls live and nest on the top of Old Smoky, but they are secretive and I’ve never been up there at the right season, or right time of the day or in the right conditions to hear one. So for that matter, they might as well nest on the moon.

Dr. Fred Alsop knows the issues. He writes in his Birds of the Smokies, “The peak of singing activity is from the first week of April through the third week of May.”

“Weather conditions seem to be a major factor influencing singing, with most vocalizations coming on clear nights with little or no wind. Rain, fog, low clouds, and other inclement conditions make the chances of hearing this owl almost zero.”

If you know the higher elevations of the Smokies, you know that inclement conditions are a daily occurrence, things change hourly, clouds move in, clouds move out. Perfect conditions are never a guarantee. 

Alsop continues, “I have found from one to eleven birds singing in a single night between Newfound Gap and Clingmans Dome, although there have been many nights when I heard none, even though all the conditions seemed right.”

So, it’s a long way to drive with no guarantee of hearing a single saw-whet.

Still, here we were in Gatlinburg the last weekend in May with nothing on our day-planner. Should we roll the dice? Was a saw-whet in our future, waiting?

After watching the sunset from an overlook, we moved on to Indian Gap on the Clingmans Dome Road and waited in the grass, as the evening grew dark. Conditions seemed right.

Then it came from down the trail to the left of Mt. Collins: “whot-whot-whot-whot-whot.” Mechanical. Eerie. Monotonous. Otherworldly. Unmistakable. And the darker the night ebbed, the closer the little hooter moved up the mountain and our impromptu bivouac.

Yes. Sometimes, just knowing it’s there is enough, but sometimes it's not. 

On this night we got lucky. Sometimes you do.

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fork ridge

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If your longings flow towards lush, green forests far from the madding crowd then wrap your thoughts around this posting and put your yearning to bed. A bed of ferns that is.

Recently, Rachael went with Karen Sue and I on a hike down Fork Ridge Trail on the Smokies crest. It's a sodden, verdent trail that descends downslope into North Carolina from Clingman's Dome Road. Here is some of what we saw.

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purple fringed

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To the orchid chasers: I found another summer orchid to add to our growing list.

The lesser purple fringed orchid was growing in a colony of ferns along the side the newly resurfaced Clingman's Dome Road in the national park.

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balmed

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If flowers are a plant's sex parts, and my botany textbook says it's so, then bee balm has evolved to be in-you-face flamboyant. Notice me! Surrender! It's the Lady GaGa (please pardon the pop culture reference) of the angiosperm world. If I were a bee, a wasp, a fly, or God forbid, even an earwig, it would be easy for me to become so balmed.

This particular bee balm was growing along the Clingman's Dome Road in the Great Smokies.


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day's end

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And finally, all good things must come to an end. The bees were drunk and we discovered we had far too few layers, perhaps we needed a little angelica. It gets cold on the Smokies crest very quickly, even in August. (We left the 90 degree temperatures in the valley to cool off.)

The clouds drifted away and as Jupiter and the Moon lifted their bright faces in the east, the sun dipped below the ridgeline to the west. Or was it the other way around?

Wrapped in everything we could find, Karen Sue and I watched a nice sunset from Clingman's Dome. At 6,643 feet, it's the park's (and the state's) highest peak.

Kathleen and Tim. Thank you for your kind comments yesterday and solving my little mystery for me. I cannot locate your contact info, so I have to thank you in this very public way. But thank yous should not necessarily be hidden.


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great and smoky

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In the national park, you are never too far away from clouds, mist, fog, etc. Generally, all you have to do is travel up, and you'll bump into a cloud or two along the way. After we finished our blueberry snack at Indian Gap, we did just that at Clingman's Dome.

The Great Smokies are great and smoky, although Great Cloudy Mountains would be a more appropriate name.

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