catawba?

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Day 59: We have made it to two months! Still watching and waiting, but it's OK to go sight-seeing alone.

And what do we find? One of our favorite trees in bloom.

In the speak-easy days before spell check, heck I'll go one better, before Mr. Webster's dictionary, spelling was more an art form than a science.

Case in point: the Native American Catawba tribe lived in the Southeast along the border of what is today North and South Carolina. Beautiful country, I've been there.

The Catawba were primarily an agricultural people that were friendly towards early European colonists but constantly at war with other Indian tribes. (Big mistake! If the tribes had worked together and driven us out, we'd all still be living on the moors.) 

Today, roughly 2,600 Catawba still remain, mostly in the Palmetto State. The group has a tribal totem: a tree with showy white flowers. The tree bore their tribes’ name: catawba but because of a spelling error, the describing botanist—a man named Scopoli—recorded the name as “catalpa,” and that’s the moniker we use today.

Catalpa or catawba, misspelled or not, it’s still a beautiful tree when it’s in full bloom as it is now. With large heart shaped leaves, it's a fine example of southern treedom, which really isn't a word but in the spirit of freestyle spelling, I'll use it anyway.

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a maiden's hair

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Flat fronds splayed horseshoe-like and borne on a thin black stem. Delicate. Dainty. Another world kind of beauty. That's maidenhair fern, (there are several species) so called because some Native American women used its oils to rinse their hair. The emollients gave it a shiny luster.

The photo was taken beside Baskins Creek in Gatlinburg near my boyhood home. Rain had fallen overnight. Morning dawned damp and dripping, but the fern did not seem to mind. Ferns and frogs are such a sodden lot.

Smoky Mountain folklore says that if a maiden handles a stem and the leaves do not flicker, her virtue is assured. A man's virtue is determined by altogether different means.

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at home LeConte

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Mt LeConte in the Great Smoky Mountains

The seasons are beginning to mingle. For weeks, fall colors have flowed with slow restraint down the slopes like the tears of a geisha; while last week, a light snow dusted the higher elevations. The first kiss of winter, as soft as a lover's touch, covered Mt. LeConte above Gatlinburg, my hometown.
 

Thomas Wolfe wrote "you can't go home again." He meant that things change. After you leave, it's never the same. Yet, perhaps he was wrong, Asheville is on the other side of the mountains; here Mt. LeConte still looms.

I grew up in the foothills south of downtown Gatlinburg as did my father Russell, as did his father Homer, as did his father Jim, as did his father Caleb. I come from a long line of hillbillies, mountain men, and the mountain that has loomed over all those lives is Mt. LeConte. 

Its silhouette is recognizable as the mountain with four peaks. At 6,593 feet, High Top, the second peak from the left, is the third highest point in the Smokies, topped only by Clingman's Dome at 6,643 and Mt. Guyot at 6,621. 

Chet Raymo writes in The Path, "If we don't belong somewhere, we belong nowhere. If we are not attached to a particular landscape, we might as well be adrift in space...The place we learn to love can be a windowsill in a New York high-rise, a patch of woods on Walden Pond, or a million acres of the high Sierras. What's important is that we feel at home.

I feel at home at the base of this old mountain.

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mom day bear

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Like most of you, I went to visit my mother on Mother’s Day. Well, I suppose you actually visited your own mothers, but if you visited mine, I’m sure she appreciated it.

My mother lives in Gatlinburg at the top of a long and steep paved driveway. Located next to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, just about everything in the mountain resort is built on an incline. If you ever fall down, you practically roll to the center of the town. I grew up on Baskins Creek, a name that evolved from the "bearskins" that were once dried along its streambanks.

A few years ago, we had just begun to settle down for a Mother's Day lunch when mom walked out on the deck.

“Come quick,” she shouted. “Bear. Bear.” And indeed, outside a Smoky Mountain black bear was galloping up the driveway. Was it on its way to visit my mother too?

When I arrived at the sliding glass door, the running Ursus americanus took notice and altered its course to enter the woods opposite the house; climbing the hillside quickly, it soon disappeared. It was a young bear, not a cub and certainly not full-grown, perhaps a yearling; lanky and long-legged without the waddlesome paunch you’d expect on a bear.

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goin' nowhere

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“Clouds so swift, rain won't lift, Gate won't close, the railings froze.
Get your mind off wintertime, You ain't goin' nowhere.”


- From “You Ain't Goin' Nowhere” by Bob Dylan

- Photo of the LeConte Creek watershed near my boyhood home in Gatlinburg; old snowfall on the ground and a new one moving in. Mt. LeConte is in the photo but hidden, as it often is, by the low moving clouds. But that's just the way it is with that mountain.

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frozen in 2010

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If yesterday's photo taken in December wasn't enough to frost your cake, here's a couple from last week in Gatlinburg. Both were taken in Baskins Creek near my boyhood home.

What's going on? The first two weeks of the New Year and the temperature never rose above freezing? Aren't you glad you're indoors where hot cocoa is always an option?

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four wings

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The Carolina silverbell is one of those somewhat hard to find trees that grow in our area. The name comes from their home range — although they can be located in a few more places other than just the Carolinas — and their clustered blossoms that dangle from the branches like pearly white bells in the spring.

Carolina silverbells are often found growing deep in the Smoky Mountain "hollars" around my hometown, Gatlinburg.

This time of the year, the silverbell produces a “four-winged” fruit that is unique, often compared to a deflated punching bag. The unusual design begs the question, “Why four wings?” It must somehow help with seed dispersal. Since the trees are often found near a waterway (as was the one I photographed along the shoreline of the Tennessee River) I suspect the four wings help the fruit float downstream to a new home. But that’s only a guess.

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what is it?

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"A curious thing, Dr. Watson," a chagrinned Sherlock Holmes might say. "Most curious."

Hugh Morgan sent me the above photo. He and his grandson found the critter—measuring about 1.5 inches long—on Roaring Fork Motor Trail in The Great Smoky Mountains National Park near Gatlinburg.

He wondered, “Do you have any idea what it might be?”

My best guess is that it’s the caterpillar of a tiger swallowtail, although all the ones I have seen have been green, but here is a description I found on the Internet:

“The caterpillar of this species changes dramatically as it goes through its various molts. In the first two instars (those periods between molts) it looks just like a bird dropping. It then changes to be predominantly green with two large eyespots near the front end. Just before pupating, the larva turns dark reddish brown.”

Does anyone else have a better idea?

- Photo by Hugh Morgan

you say potato

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This odd little plant, known as “varahi” in Sanskrit, is a vine with heart-shaped leaves. Native to Asia and Africa, it has become widespread throughout southeastern North America.

Scientifically known as Dioscorea bulbifera; it’s a member of the yam family most noted for the bulbils that form in the leaf axils along the twining vine. The plant uses these organs to store carbohydrates, i.e. plant sugars.

Here’s where it gets curious. The bulbils look like very small Irish potatoes, which leads to the plant’s most common name in this country: air potato.

I said it was an odd little plant. Bulbils? That’s a another good Scrabble word.

-Photo taken near Baskins Creek in Gatlinburg.

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flame on

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Very few orange flowers exist. Very few. There are lots and lots of red and yellow ones, but when it comes to orange. Zip. For some reason nature avoids it. (I do not look that good in the color myself.)

Even fewer orange-flowered shrubs are out there. In fact, I can only think of one in my part of the world. But, it's spectacular. Flame azalea is now in bloom in the Smokies.

During his travels through the southeast in 1773, early American naturalist William Bartram wrote about flame azalea. He scribed, “The fiery Azalea, flaming on the ascending hills or wavy surface of the gliding brooks...The appearance of it in flower, which are in general of the colour of the finest red lead, orange and bright gold, as well as yellow and cream colour; these various splendid colours are not only in separate plants, but frequently all the varieties and shades are seen in separate branches on the same plant, and the clusters of the blossoms cover the shrubs in such incredible profusion on the hill sides, that suddenly opening to view from dark shades, we are alarmed with the apprehension of the hills being set on fire.”

This photo of the fiery shrub was taken near Twin Creeks in the LeConte Creek watershed just south of Gatlinburg early last Sunday morning.

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