Pipes and Bells — Devil’s Fork State Park, Oconee County, South Carolina — 2014-03-15

On Saturday, I met my Atlanta buddies, Alan Cressler and Steve Bowling at the premier site for one of our rarest native plants, Shortia galacifolia or Oconee Bells. This site is Devil’s Fork State Park, located in the far eastern edge of Oconee County, South Carolina on the the shore of Lake Jocassee.

In addition to the Oconee Bells, there is another rare plant that is endemic to the southeastern Appalachian Mountains called Monotropsis odorata. It has two common names, Pygmy Pipes and Sweet Pinesap. This latter, common name comes from the intense fragrance that is produced by these small plants.

So, that’s where “Pipes and Bells” originates…

Here is an image of each of the plants; the top image is Oconee Bells and the bottom image is Pygmy Pipes:

We actually met about 15 miles west of the State Park, since I had just finished a visit to Station Cove Falls at Oconee Station; the site for a huge population of Trillium cuneatum or Little Sweet Betsy and other spring ephemerals. The story of that trip will be published soon.

As soon as we got out of our cars in the parking lot, we could smell the intense fragrance coming up the slope from the numerous groups of Monotropsis odorata in the park. Yet we were more than 100 yards (90 meters) from the closest plants! That’s how strong the fragrance is. This day was also the day of the “Oconee Bell Fest”, the festival created to celebrate the rare but locally abundant Oconee Bells. I had read that the festival would be ending at 2:00 pm, so we timed our arrival to coincide with the end of the festival. My idea was that, as photographers, we didn’t want to have the hassle of dealing with lots of casual hikers and guides encouraging us to stay on the trail. It turns out that there were quite a few “stragglers” still on the trail, one of which was the very naturalist who taught me many years ago how to locate the Pygmy Pipes. His name is Heyward Douglass. But more about that later…

There is an interesting and unusual story about how the Oconee Bells were first discovered and how they were later named. This story is told in one of my previous blogs, so I won’t recount it here, but I strongly urge you to check it out.

To reach the Oconee Bells, you have to follow a footpath through the open woods, crossing a small creek many times. At each crossing, it is evident that the Oconee Bells prefer to grow near the creek. In fact, they are found no more than a dozen feet away from the creek. Here is a shot of the habitat taken a few months ago of the evergreen leaves of the plants lining the banks of the creek:

Due to the harsh winter or other undeterminable conditions, there were not as many flowers evident as in past years. Still though, there were many flowers dotted here and there for easy viewing:

There were still plenty of unopened buds on the plants, promising to provide flowers for the next week or so. That’s great, since I’m meeting a couple of friends from North Carolina next weekend, to show them this wonderful State Park:

The next attraction we found at Devil’s Forks State Park was Monotropsis odorata or Pygmy Pipes. But, before showing closeup shots of the Pygmy Pipes, I thought it would be instructive to show what they look like from a distance. Here is Alan set up in front of a small group of Pygmy Pipes taking closeup shots. He has carefully brushed away the leaves that were covering the plants. Alan is using an umbrella to shade the sunlight from the plants to reduce the possibility of harsh shadows in his photographs:

I have drawn red circles around two groups of Pygmy Pipes so that you can easily find them in the photograph. Here is where I will tell you how I learned to locate them. As I mentioned previously, Heyward Douglass told me his “secret” method of locating them:

1. Know that you are in the right area for them by noticing their intense, clove-like fragrance.
2. The fragrance will be drifting to you on the delicate breeze in the woods, so determine which direction the breeze is coming from.
3. Get down on your hands and knees with your nose only a few inches from the ground.
4. Crawl along the leaf litter, gently brushing away the leaves until you find the plants.

That’s all there is to it!

Later on in the month, the plants will actually poke a bit above the leaf litter, but by then, they will have lost most of the fragrance and beautiful pink/purple color. So, it’s best to locate the plants in their prime, when they are stil under the thick leaf litter. BTW, they are pollinated by bees that are attracted by the fragrance, and the bees actually burrow through the leaf litter to get to the plants.

Here are some more images of the plants we saw on this trip. Notice the variation in the color of the petals. Some are rose pink while others are dark purple. Almost all of them have a white border around the tip of the petals:

While Alan and I were photographing the plants, Steve reported that he had found a clump of Pygmy Pipes nearby that had a fruiting fungus in the middle of the clump. Unfortunately, the fungus was too decayed to be used to determine its species, but we all agreed that it probably was the exact fungus that allows the plants to survive. Later on, Steve actually found another clump of Pygmy Pipes with a fruiting fungus in the center of that clump, as well. I had never seen evidence of this fungus. Since they don’t have chlorophyl, the Pygmy Pipes must get their nutrition from another source, and that other source is a fungus. This symbiotic relationship between a plant and a fungus is known as mycotrophy:

We did see one other flowering plant that seems to fit in well with the “Pipes and Bells” theme — that is Hexastylis heterophylla, also known as Variable-leaf Heartleaf or Wild Ginger. From a side view, the flower is definitely bell-shaped. Here is a photograph of the leaf of this plant:

The common name, Variable-leaf Heartleaf, was well-chosen because the leaf can be solid green or have lighter color reticulation in the veins as in the example shown above. Also notice that the base of the leaf is covered by leaf litter. This is true for almost all of the Heartleaf species in our area. The flowers are produced at ground level and are usually not visible unless the leaves are gently brushed away. Alan managed to find a plant with several flowers in full bloom. Here are those flowers seen from different angles:

It was now getting late in the day, and Alan and Steve had a 2-hour drive back to Atlanta. So we headed back up the trail to the parking lot where we said our good-byes.

We are fortunate to have so many great places to botanize in our area of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. It is one of the most floristically diverse areas in the United States, and at almost any time of the year, one is able to find numerous and interesting wildflowers in bloom…

–Jim