Last weekend all the grownups in our family (except for the ones in Oregon and China) went to western North Carolina to stay at the incomparable Snowbird Lodge. I love my grandchildren without measure, but it was lovely to spend some adult time with our grown children. What treasures!
Perched high in the peaks of the southern Appalachians, the lodge has easy access to both the Cherohala Skyway and the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest, providing us hours of hiking through the woods and driving over a mile high to view the surrounding National Forest.
Though I loved the exciting vistas from the Parkway, it was in the woods that I felt most at home and happiest. Most of the wildflowers I had seen here in spring have disappeared into the forest floor. Acres of trilliums were no more than a few dry, dusty leaves. But a few of the flowers produce fall berries that rival the beauty of their spring flowers.
I was thrilled to find Indian Cucumber root, by no means rare in our neck of the woods, but it can be considered unusual. I first noticed it because of the splotch of red in the upper whorl of leaves, which is characteristic when the plant develops berries, almost as if the berry leaked out onto the leaves.
We passed a small Euonymus shrub with it’s startling purple / orange / pink seed pods. With a name like “hearts a bust’in with love” how could you not love this? My mother used to say that it was the only plant in nature that had colors that clashed with one another.
Pokeweed lives up to its name, at least the “weed” part. It pokes its way into all kinds of open and empty spaces but in the woods, the bright magenta stems and the dark, shiny berries look pretty. Although the new spring leaves are considered edible and tasty, the berries are toxic and should be left alone.
False Solomon Seal is of minor interest in spring, with a terminal raceme of white flowers, but now in the glory of fall, the bright red shiny berries make it an exciting and beautiful wildflower.
Partridgeberry, in the madder family, and forms a carpet of tiny green shiny leaves interspersed with small red berries. It is also known as squaw berry, two-eyed berry, and running fox. It makes a lovely ground cover.
