2007-11-04 Day trip to the Green Swamp, North Carolina. On Sunday, November 4, 2007, I met my friends Skip and Kelvin to do a bit of nature photography. We met at the "pond" off Highway 211 in the Green Swamp. For those of you who have visited this special location, the pond is currently no more than a dry, sandy depression with a shallow pool of water in the lowest spot. The regional drought has left the Southeast high and dry. This is not good for plants that are accustomed to a rather wet habitat.

Our goal on this day was to find and photograph the following fall-blooming species:

Spiranthes longilabris (long-lipped ladies'-tresses)
Spiranthes odorata (fragrant ladies'-tresses)
Parnassia caroliniana (Carolina grass-of-parnassus)
Gentiana autumnalis (pine-barren gentian)

We felt quite lucky to have found each of those species in good shape, if in fewer numbers than we would have hoped for.

In the past, the Spiranthes longilabris flower stems were fairly easy to spot even though they were nestled in the dense wire grass of the longleaf pine savannah. Because of the prescribed growing-season burn back in early July of this year, the wire grass had a growth spurt and came into seed this fall. The grass was an amazing four feet tall, which made it quite difficult to find the relatively small Spiranthes flowers. The grass was so tall that it was easy to fully disappear from sight while squatting down to photograph these delicate Spiranthes. I soon discovered that Skip had a very good eye for spotting these hidden plants, so I just followed him around the savannah while he pointed them out.

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