Flowers

Ever notice how the full moon always rises at sunset and sets at sunrise? This wondrous byproduct of planetary alignment gives us long nights of landscapes silvered by the sun’s reflected light. Even in my urban neighborhood, the moonshine casts strong shadows. In the evenings surrounding the Harvest Moon in September, my garden seemed especially […]

One interesting and beautiful plant you may have seen along a river or creek, sometimes in great number, is spotted jewelweed (Impatiens capensis). You may be more familiar with another of its names – touch-me-not. It is also called common jewelweed, orange jewelweed or orange balsam. Spotted jewelweed grows predominantly in wetlands and can grow […]

This article first appeared in the spring 2000 issue of “The LandMark,” the newsletter of The LandTrust for Central North Carolina. It is reprinted with permission of the author and the LandTrust. When European explorers and colonists, African slaves and their descendants were discovering and settling America, they confronted a vast, unknown wilderness. Trying to […]

With the arrival of fall, one of the most abundant wildflowers around is the yellow goldenrod. It is also one of the favorite hunting grounds of the unique crab spider (Misumena vatia), sometimes called the goldenrod crab spider. Although crab spiders occur all across the world, Misumena vatia is a Holarctic species, meaning it is […]

Even though late summer brings the promise of cooler weather to the Piedmont, we still have the sultry presence of two old-fashioned and fragrant Southern favorites in our gardens – the ginger lily and the tuberose. Everything about the ginger lily (Hedychium coronarium) speaks of its origins in the tropical regions of Asia. This lush, […]

Walk through the forest at Redlair Preserve, an approximately 750-acre property preserved in Gaston County, and you will see in the understory something that look like a design by Dr. Seuss: A medium-sized tree sporting massive flowers and tropical-looking leaves that can grow 30 inches long and a foot wide. The trees are bigleaf magnolia […]

Ruth Ann Grissom As a girl, I once had a vision of a grand flowerbed – a large rectangular plot of red, white and blue petunias replicating the stars and stripes of an American flag. This must have been the summer of 1976, during the celebration of our country’s bicentennial. When I presented the scheme […]

Can you identify 50 species of plants and animals native to your region? Naturalist Kenn Kaufman believes making the effort to do that will profoundly enhance your connection with the natural world. Kenn Kaufman has been an avid birder and naturalist since his childhood in the Midwest. In 1970, at 16, he dropped out of […]

When the flush of spring ephemeral wildflowers begins to fade, several shrub species come into their own. Mountain laurel ought to be at its peak in the coming week. Their enchanting masses of light pink flowers are found throughout the Uwharries, but some of our most interesting and attractive spring-blooming shrubs aren’t nearly so abundant. […]

I’m not immune to the charms of a dozen roses on Valentine’s Day – or any day for that matter – though I’m always disheartened by those with no discernible fragrance and perfect buds that inexplicably shrivel and droop. These are not attributes one cares to associate with romance. I try to limit my purchase […]