Poinsett Bridge Heritage Preserve, Greenville County, South Carolina — The bridge and Spring ephemeral wildflowers — 2014-04-04

Today, Walter and I decided to drive up to Poinsett Bridge Heritage Preserve in upstate Greenville County, near the small town of Tigerville, for a bit of photography. It’s just a few minutes from home, and the day was perfect for photography — cool and overcast. Poinsett Bridge, built in 1820, is the oldest stone bridge in South Carolina. It is said to have been designed by South Carolina native Robert Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument. The bridge is named after Joel R. Poinsett, another South Carolina native and the first United States Minister to Mexico. The Christmas poinsettia is also named after him.

Here are some shots of the bridge with its Gothic arch:

We had no sooner parked the truck and assembled our gear, when I noticed a number of small, light pink flowers on the hillside next to the parking area. This was exciting, since I had not photographed Claytonia virginica or Spring Beauty in several years. There were many hundreds of plants on the hillside. Up close, the delicate flowers are seen to be striped with dark pink and have bright pink sepals:

Once we finished shooting these beauties, we crossed the road and hit the steps leading down to the bridge. I had heard from a friend who had recently visited the location, that Trillium cuneatum or Little Sweet Betsy were in bloom. Sure enough, just across the bridge and down the trail a bit, we saw hundreds of these fine wildflowers:

As we looked around, we saw a number of starry, white flowers that turned out to be Myosoton aquaticum or Giant Chickweed. The botanical name has changed from the former, Stellaria aquatica — “Stellaria” representing the star shape that the flower resembles. An interesting tidbit to note about the flowers — they appear to have 10 petals, but in fact, there are only 5 petals, each split almost in half:

Farther down the trail, we began to see the first of three species of Violets — Viola sororia or Wood Violet in several shades of bluish purple:

The second of the three violets that were nearby was Viola hastata or Halberd-leaf violet. Its bright yellow color would have been hard to miss against the brown color of the leaf litter:

The third of the trio of violets was Viola pallens or Smooth white violet. We saw lots of the leaves of this species, but only a few plants with open flowers:

Another common species was nearby — Thalictrum thalictroides or Rue Anemone. The dainty, paper-like, white flowers are held about 3 inches (7.5 cm) off the ground on thin stems. There are a couple of sets of tiny, green leaves accompanying the flowers. Both of these shots were taken directly above the flowering plants:

At this point, we have just reached a small tributary creek that flows into Gap Creek, the stream that runs under the bridge. Here, we can see some reddish-leaved plants that are Saxifraga micranthidifolia or Mountain Lettuce. It is said that it can be eaten raw or cooked, and makes a highly-prized salad, although I’ve never eaten any…

The plants in the above image are not yet flowering, but just upstream, I found a couple of plants with open flowers:

Another flowering plant that loves to be very near water is Xanthorhiza simplicissima or Yellowroot. I have photographed this plant with its tiny yellow-green to maroon flowers on several occasions, but I have never been satisfied with the results. Its flowers are colored such that they blend in with almost any nearby background. In addition, if there is any breeze (and there was a lot of wind on this particular visit), the tendrils of flowers swing and sway back and forth, frustrating almost every photographer who attempts to capture its image. The plant flowers in early spring, and the flowers stay fairly fresh on the plant for months. Here is an image of an entire plant, flowering as the leaves are springing forth from the twigy stem:

In order to show the shape and true color of these flowers, I shot two images — one without fill flash (left) so that it is silhouetted against a light background, and one with fill flash (right):

By the way, the common name, Yellowroot, comes from the bright yellow color of the root and stem (under the thin layer of bark). I should have provided a shot of this strong, yellow color, but I was too caught up in the moment to think about doing so… Here is a link to a shot I found on the web — a wonderful blog called, “woolgathering & wildcrafting“. It shows the bright yellow color that becomes evident when the bark is removed. The plant was used by local people as both a dye and for medicinal purposes as a bitter tonic for stomach ailments:

Slightly uphill from the tributary, was a patch of Mitchella repens or Partridge Berry. These creeping plants have bright green leaves year around. In the summer, the tiny trumpet-shaped flowers are easy to spot on the forest floor. An interesting feature of this plant is that each pair of tiny white flowers is attached to a single ovary that will produce a single fruit at the end of the summer. At close inspection, it is easy to see this feature, since the fruit has two “navels”:

Just next to the Partridge Berry fruit were the leaves of a plant known as Hexastylis shuttleworthii or Largeflower Heartleaf. The flowers of this plant are always at ground level and cannot be seen unless the covering leaf litter is removed. But once it is removed, a spectacularly strange flower will appear. The color of the flowers is quite variable, ranging from spotted pinkish-purple to browinsh-red:

Soon it became time to pack up our gear and head home — the end of another great day out in the woods of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. Spring wildflowers generally last only a few weeks, so one has to make the time to catch them at their best. This is always a wild time for the photographer going to place after place, hoping to capture that “perfect” image, but most of the time just being sasified with the experience…

–Jim