Bells and Pipes (redoux) – Devil’s Fork State Park, Oconee County, South Carolina — 2015-03-16

My friend Lee Casebere and his wife Pat decided to come down from Indianapolis, Indiana to visit for a couple of days. Lee had seen images of the rare, Shortia galacifolia or Oconee Bells, and he wanted to see and photograph them himself. I had told him that mid-March was the perfect time, so he rented a villa at Devil’s Fork State Park in Oconee County, South Carolina for the visit. His lakeside villa was less than a mile from the premier site for that rare plant, so he couldn’t have been any closer.

We met around 9:30 am on March 17 at the villa, loaded everything in my trusty truck, and drove down to the parking are where the trail begins. The weather was perfect — well, perfect for everything except outdoor macro photography. It was bright and sunny with an expected high temperature of close to 78 degrees F (26 degrees C). The “bright and sunny” part was what bothered us, but that’s better than what it has been down here for the past week — cloudy and very rainy…

Anyway, we unloaded our gear and proceeded down the trail to our first stop: a seep just loaded with Oconee Bells. On a couple of previous trips, I had seen a couple of the super rare pink form of this species, and I was hoping to locate one for Lee to photograph. Well, we found a small clump of them. Seems that the original pink-flowering plant had multiplied. Shortia galacifolia reproduces by seed as well as stolons. The seeds are not always viable, but it’s ability to make multiple plants by stolons or runners is profound. Lucky for us that this one plant had decided to make more copies of itself. Here is an example of this rare, pink form:

Here is a shot of the typically white flowers. I’ve posted numerous images of these beauties in previous blog entries here and here:

I was really pleased at finding more than a couple of pink flowers of this species:

There is a lot more to see at Devil’s Fork SP, but we wanted to visit a couple of other places before the end of the day. However, since we were at the site where I’ve found Monotropsis odorata or Pygmy Pipes, also called Sweet Pinesap, we agreed to check out the location for these wonderfully mysterious plants just down the trail. Finding the area where they grow is fairly easy — just use your nose. Actually locating the plants is a bit more problematic — hands and knees work… Once you smell the spicy, clove-like smell, it is imperative that you drop to your hands and knees and gently root through the leaf litter to find the one- to two-inch (2.5- to 5-cm) tall plants; they are usually completely covered by leaf litter.

We arrived at the location where I had found them last year, and we immediately recognized their tell-tale fragrance. It didn’t take long for me to find the first little clump. While I was searching, Lee found another clump — plenty for each of us to photograph. The color variation this year was remarkable, from pink to deep, grape-purple. Here is a sample of the color forms we found:

To get a better idea what we saw of the entire clump, a wider-angle shot is necessary. From this angle, it is easy to understand how difficult it is to see these little plants from a standing position, particularly if they are covered by leaves:

I just couldn’t seem to get enough of these beauties. Here is another, closer shot of the group:

Finally, I’ll leave you with a close-up of one of the flowers. I’m still learning how to use my newly acquired point-and-shoot camera in close-up mode:

As I said earlier, we had a bit more travelling to do, so we reluctantly packed up and headed back up the trail to the truck. The weather was with us, and we chatted on the way back just how fine it was to be out in the field again after such a miserable winter. We reached the truck with visions of Trillium flowers and other Spring ephemerals dancing in our heads. Next stop: just up the road a bit to Station Cove Falls trail at Oconee Station State Historic Site…

–Jim