South Carolina’s Nine Times Preserve and Devil’s Fork State Park — 2020-03-07

If this seems to you, Dear Reader, like a repeat of my most recent blog post, then you are probably right. In the upstate of South Carolina, there are a few sites that are well known for our early Spring wildflowers. One of these is Nine Times Preserve in Pickens County. This preserve is owned and managed by the Nature Conservancy and is a popular spot to visit for Erythronium umbilicatum or Dimpled Trout Lily. These tiny yellow beauties grow in large numbers along the trail that borders Nine Times Creek, a two-mile-long tributary of the Little Eastatoe River.

This year has been very wet, with more than 10 inches (25 cm) of additional rain over our normal rainfall of 9 inches (22.5) for the first 2.5 months of the year. That’s double our normal rainfall amount! This has caused local flooding in many areas — Nine Times Creek being no exception. In places bordering this normally placid trout stream, there has been a great deal of scouring and depositing of debris. So, where I used to find nice patches of wildflowers, there is now 3 feet (~1 meter) of sand or debris. It was a bit disheartening to find so much damage where there used to be glorious drifts of wildflowers. Having said that, the wildflower trail does have areas that are on the hillside and above the mess beside the creek. The Dimpled Trout Lily along this trail were still in pretty good shape. Here are some shots of these bright yellow wildflowers:

Dimpled Trout Lily

You will quickly note that most of these images of the Dimpled Trout Lily flowers are shot from above, showing only the top of the tepals (petals and sepals). I’ve done a bit of this in the past when photographing the species, but on this particular visit, the flowers seemed particularly appealing when seen from this perspective. In addition, getting the camera at a particular angle that will show the reproductive parts of the flowers is rather challenging, because the flowers generally nod downward and are only a few inches tall. This above-the-flower perspective also shows the attractive, reddish-brown coloration of the top portion of the sepals of a large percentage of the flowers.

I will begin by highlighting the single, pale-form flower which I found of this normally bright yellow wildflower. A few years ago, my friend, Lee Casebere (from Indiana) and I were walking the trail and he spotted an odd, color form of Dimpled Trout Lily. When he pointed it out to me, I was quite surprised, because I had never seen or read about this strange color form. In the intervening years, I (and a few other lucky photographers) have spotted this color form in the same general area among thousands of “normal” yellow flowers. The greatest number of these which I have seen in any particular year is 2 or 3. This year, I found only the single blooming plant. And if you are wondering, it is definitely not Erythronium albidum or White Trout Lily, which is not native to anywhere near this area of South Carolina. It is just a pale-colored mutation of the species:

It was one of those bright, “blue bird” days with plenty of sunshine peeking through the mostly bare forest canopy. This usually provides me with the opportunity to capture the flower and its shadow. I try to look for this situation whenever possible. Here is one image that captures the flower/shadow quite well, I think:

There were also some small groupings or clumps of Dimpled Trout Lilies:

I was very interested in finding some of the colorful Anemone acutiloba or Sharp-lobed Hepatica that are usually found on the creek bank, but most of these had been scoured away or covered up with debris. I did, however, find a single plant in bloom. It shows the blushing, pinkish-purple which I find very attractive. I can only hope that this small population will eventually recover:

After finishing up at Nine Times Preserve, I still had a few hours left to check out another well-known site for some rare wildflowers — Devil’s Fork State Park, home of the largest population of the rare, Shortia galacifolia or Oconee Bells. So, I packed up my gear and headed south on state highway 11 toward the park.

Devil’s Fork State Park is best known for its location on one of our largest, man-made lakes in the upstate, 7,500-acre (3,000-hectare), Lake Jocassee. The lake was created in 1973 to provide cooling water for Duke Energy’s Keowee Toxaway Project – a nuclear reactor power plant complex. The lake is also known as the location of some of the best trout fishing in the region. When the lake was constructed, 90% of the known populations of the rare Oconee Bells were flooded and are now under 300 feet (90 meters) of cold, mountain lake water. Fortunately, several colonies of Oconee Bells were located at slightly higher elevations and survived. This is what now makes up the attraction of the Oconee Bells Trail at Devil’s Fork State Park. Each year, around mid-March, the park holds BellFest, celebrating the rare wildflower.

As a wildflower photographer, I try to avoid the huge crowds that attend BellFest each year. That, and the visible presence of the park staff who get their panties in a wad if they catch you with even a foot off the trail. I understand not wanting the plants to be trampled, but as a naturalist and wildflower photographer, I take extra precaution to watch where I walk to prevent human impact on the habitat. So, I usually visit a week or so before the celebration or a week or so afterward to allow myself the freedom of getting up-close and personal with the wildflowers.

On this trip, I encountered only a handful of visitors — two of which were dear friends, Liz and Tom from north Georgia. It was fun to see them again, and we spent some time chatting and enjoying each other’s company. When I first saw them, I was in the process of locating and photographing the strange but intriguing Monotropsis odorata or Sweet Pinesap aka Pygmypipes.

Geeky botanical stuff follows: This plant is what’s known as a mycoheterotroph, meaning that they have no chlorophyll and must get their nutrition from another living source. These plants obtain their organic carbon from a host green plant by tapping into an intermediary mycorrhizal fungus attached to the living roots of the host plant. They were once thought to be saprophytes; plants which get their organic carbon from dead plant material such as rotting wood. Got that?

Anyway, I have been photographing the Pygmypipes or Sweet Pinesap at Devil’s Fork State Park for many years. I know just where to look for these deliciously fragrant plants. The former common name comes from its similarity to Monotropa uniflora or Indian pipes, but they are very small, reddish purple (not white), and usually hide under the forest’s leaf litter rather than rising above it. The later common name comes from the wonderful fragrance that is reminiscent of cloves and cinnamon. In fact, since the fragrance is so strong and sweet, it is expected that you will smell them before you see them. It is hypothesized that the flowers emit highly fragrant odors that serve to attract pollinators and seed dispersal agents. Bumble bees have been observed finding and pollinating many reproductive stems that were entirely hidden by the leaf litter itself.

On this trip, I found several small clumps of the plants, a few which are pictured here. Some of the flowers were just beginning to open, and I can hardly wait to see them again in a couple of weeks:

Nearby one of the groups of Sweet Pinesap was a fruiting fungus similar to what I’ve seen near the plants in previous years. Here is an image of that fungal fruit:

Here is a shot of the same species (I think) of fungus taken several years ago:

To me, these seem quite similar, but knowing next to nothing about fungi, I’m as a loss as to the genus or species. I know my readers are quite knowledgeable about such things. Perhaps you can help me with this.

A beautiful Spring day refreshes the soul. This pre-Spring day did a lot toward freeing me of my cabin fever and bringing some sunshine into what has been a wet and dreary winter. Much of the content of this blog is a repeat of previous March blog reports from years past. But maybe a new perspective will add just enough difference to relieve the sameness. The bloom season has just begun, and I hope for much more to come in the following months.

Stay tuned…

–Jim