Day trip to Clay County, North Carolina for Trillium pusillum — 2016-04-02

Early Saturday morning, my good friend Alan Cressler called me and asked if I wanted to join him and Steve Bowling on a day trip to Clay County, North Carolina to photograph Trillium pusillum or Least Trillium also known as Dwarf Trillium. Although it is found in several of the southeastern states, it is still quite rare. As you can guess, I didn’t hesitate to answer in the affirmative. I am about 2 hours away from our meeting place north of Clayton, Georgia, so I hurriedly got my camera gear packed into the truck and got on the road.

Least Trillium

Before I go any farther, I have to state that I do not know if this is one of the five or six named varieties of Trillium pusillum or merely the typical variety, Trillium pusillum var. pusillum, so I will call them Trillium pusillum without regard to variety. There are several characteristics that can be used to distinguish one variety from another. These include length of the pedicel, number of major veins in the bracts (leaves), width of the petal, etc. The discussion of Trillium pusillum in Flora of North America states in part, “Trillium pusillum comprises widely disjunct, regional populations, each varying somewhat from the others and variable within itself as well. Some of these populations have been named as varieties or separate species …some of the variation might be environmentally induced.”

The plants in the population we photograph were no exception to “variation within a particular population”. As you will see in the following images, petal width, pedicel length, and number of major veins in the bracts (to mention a few characteristics) seem to vary from plant to plant, even in this small population.

These plants were growing in Clay County. They were growing in full sunlight on a rather steep hillside. Fortunately for us, the hillside had been mowed in order to open up the area from the heavy shade of Kalmia latifolia or Mountain Laurel and other woody shrubs. When we arrived at the site, I was quite surprised to see them growing in full sunlight, since the ones I’ve previously seen preferred rather heavy shade. Thinking about it a bit, I concluded that the plants had originally inhabited an area with heavy shade, but now that the shade had been removed, they seemed to be doing pretty well in their new environment.

Another thing I noticed was the petal color of many of the plants. As with some other Trillium species (Trillium grandiflorum, for example), the petals will turn from a bright white to deep rose as the flower ages. More than half of the plants at this site were some shade of pink to deep rose, which tells me that we would have had better luck about a week earlier. But, I am definitely not complaining, since there were more than enough fresh flowers to meet our photography needs. Apparently, as the flower ages, the petal shape becomes more narrow. Here are some images of the fresh, white-petaled flowers we saw at this Clay County site:

As I mentioned, most of the flower petals had begun to turn pink. In my opinion, this pink color is very pleasing, and I think some of the pink ones we saw turned out to be the prettiest:

There were a number of flowers that were a much deeper rose color:

Trillium plants were not the only wildflowers we saw. On the way back to the car, I stopped to photograph a couple of groups of one of the largest Bluets I had ever seen. There are quite a few species in our region, but this one is fairly easy to identify. This is Houstonia serpyllifolia or Thyme-leaf Bluet also known as Mountain Bluet. Beside the fact that its leaves resemble those of Thyme (Thymus species), its flowers are large – about 1/2 inch (1 cm) wide. This species also commonly produces large clumps of plants:

We had just about reached the car when I noticed a population of Epigaea repens or Trailing Arbutus plants growing on a hillside. Its sweet fragrance wafted in the breeze, and I set up my tripod to capture its delicate beauty. In our region, Trailing Arbutus can have white flowers or pink flowers, and since these were pink (the loveliest, in my opinion) I had to photograph them. We would be seeing more of this rather common plant later on, but I didn’t know that — it was a “bird in hand” kind of thing:

We finally reached the car, and Alan decided that we would visit one other site — the Buck Creek Serpentine Barrens of the Nantahala National Forest also in Clay County, North Carolina. This region is distinguished by an unusual geology which supports a great variety of plants due to its ultramafic soil/rock composition and regular prescribed burns. This ultramafic rock is not common for this region of North Carolina, and it supports a number of rare flora. Today, we were chasing an unusual Viola species, Viola appalachiensis or Appalachian Blue Violet.

As we neared the area where the plants had been found in previous years, we began seeing what appeared to be the species we were searching for. It seemed to have most of the proper characteristics, but we were still not sure we had it identified correctly. One plant key led us to Viola labradorica or Labrador Violet. Apparently, both species are quite similar, but we had seen large populations of Labrador Violet at our previous location, so this led to further confusion. Because of being unsure about the whole matter, I will present the images as those of Viola labradorica, with the possibility of changing the identification of the plants in my images in the future. The leaves vary in size from a dime to a nickel:

We did see two other fairly common wildflowers at that site. The most obvious was a plant with brilliant yellow flowers — Potentilla simplex or Common Cinquefoil:

The other common flower we saw was the vining, Vicia caroliniana or Carolina Milkvetch:

As I mentioned earlier in this post, we also saw a number of clusters of Epigaea repens or Trailing Arbutus flowers. Even though this plant is fairly common, at least in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, I can’t seem to get enough of both its shell-pink flowers as well as its leathery leaves and wonderful, floral fragrance. I wish I could replicate “scratch and sniff” on this blog… 😉

It was getting to be late afternoon, and the wind had picked up, so we had to pack up and get back on the road. I had two hours to drive before reaching home, and Alan and Steve had about 2.5 hours ahead of them. We had spent the better part of the day out in the field enjoying ourselves and taking hundreds of photographs. This kind of activity allows me to shrug off daily stress and allows me to center my psyche in a way that no other activity seems to provide. Sharing my love of nature with both Alan and Steve is something I really look forward to. Hopefully, we will have more of these outdoor experiences during the summer, and I will be happy to share them with you, as well.

–Jim