The Green Swamp and Shaken Creek — two TNC Preserves in North Carolina — 2014-05-04

After leaving the Francis Marion National Forest and my two Atlanta buddies Alan and Steve on Saturday, I headed up the coast to Shallotte, North Carolina where I spent the night in anticipation of my visit to the Green Swamp Preserve and Shaken Creek Preserve. Both are managed by The Nature Conservancy. I have been visiting the Green Swamp Preserve for almost a decade, but this would be my first trip to Shaken Creek Preserve. I would be meeting my friend, Skip Pudney, a native of Leland, North Carolina, and we would then head toward Shaken Creek where we would join up with another mutual friend, Kelvin Taylor.

I met Skip in the Green Swamp Preserve at “the Pond”, our usual meeting place, and we headed from the parking lot across the boardwalk into Shoestring Savannah where we would end up finding a couple of dozen Calopogon barbatus or Bearded Grass-pink orchids scattered here and there among the ferns and grasses. This native orchid is found in grassy savannahs along the southeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain from North Carolina to Florida and the Gulf Coast to Louisiana:

The flowers are about 1 inch (2.5 cm) across, and are usually some shade of magenta pink. I have photographed the white or alba form, but it is very rare. It should be obvious at this point that this tiny orchid is a favorite of mine — especially since I’ve featured it in my past blog entries. Go here to read about its unusual pollination strategy.

Here are some more images of the Calopogon barbatus that Skip and I found in the Green Swamp:

As you probably noticed, we were early enough to observe dew on some of the flowers.

We finished photographing the orchids and decided it was time to pack our gear and head for Shaken Creek. It would take us 1.5 hours to drive there, so we called Kelvin to make sure we could synchronize our meeting. There is a gate at the main entrance, and it is usually locked. Fortunately when we arrived at the gate, it was open, so we proceeded into the preserve. We had already discovered that Kelvin had beat us to the location and was already deep into the preserve searching for good photographic opportunities.

Having gone no more than 100 feet (30 meters) past the gate, we began to see large numbers of purple flowers beside the road. These were Pinguicula caerulea or Blueflower Butterwort, a carnivorous plant found in the southeastern United States. The ground-level rosettes of leaves are lined with sticky glands that capture insects.

The flowers that really stood out from the crowd were the white ones. Pinguicula caerulea, like its cousin Pinguicula lutea or Yellow Butterwort, occasionally have plants with white flowers:

This is not a true “albino” form, since dark purple veins can be seen inside the corolla tube of the flower.

Here are some more shots of these colorful flowers:

So, we decided to meet Kelvin in one of the large savannahs a few miles inside the preserve. When we finally got to the meeting spot, we discovered hundreds of additional Pinguicula caerulea at the edge of the woods. I had never seen such a sight. As we wandered through the carpet of flowers, Skip spotted a tiny white flower near the ground. It turned out to be the flower of Drosera brevifolia or Dwarf Sundew, a carnivorous plant found in the southern United States:

The bright white flower of this plant is about 3/8 inch (1 cm) across. What is unusual (and quite characteristic of this species) is that the flower is only slightly smaller than the nickle-sized (2 cm) rosette of leaves at the base of the plant. This flower size characteristic is one of the deterministic features used in identifying the species. The tiny leaves are covered with sticky tentacles and digestive glands. This species can be differentiated from another similar species, Drosera capillaris by the presence of tiny glands on the flower stem.

We spent a couple of hours wandering around several of the large savannahs. In the process, we discovered more Calopogon barbatus plants. It seems as if they were in each location we visited that weekend:

A few of the plants had flowers that were much darker pink that are typically found:

It was time for me to think about heading back toward home, a 6-hour drive. I asked Kelvin if he had seen and photographed Kalmia carolina or Southern Sheepkill also known as Carolina laurel, one of the prettiest shrubs in the preserve. The species got its common name, Sheepkill, from the fact that the leaves are toxic if eaten in large quantities. It is found scattered from Virginia down to Georgia and disjunct into Tennessee, but is fairly common along the Atlantic Coastal Plain in North Carolina. Nowhere have I seen it more robust than in Shaken Creek

The bright pink flowers were easy to spot along the preserve’s gravel roads:

As an added bonus to these beauties, we found a couple of extremely fragrant Rhododendron atlanticum or Coastal azalea also known as Dwarf azalea. The common name, Dwarf azalea, is appropriate since the plant seldom reaches the height of 2 feet (60 cm) or more. These particular plants were in full bloom, but were only 6-8 inches (15-20 cm) tall:

Now it was truly time to head back home. What a great day out in the field with great flowers and great friends. One of these days, when I’m much older and much grayer, I’ll treasure these moments and relive the good times through my memories. I couldn’t ask for more…

–Jim