Mountain plant nice to visit during hot summers | Culture | Summerville Journal Scene

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Mountain plant nice to visit during hot summers

Published Thursday, July 22, 2010 3:46 PM

Summerville Journal Scene ®

photo by John Nelson

Mystery Plant’s flowers are very sweetly fragrant.

June, one of my favorite months, is over. It’s the beginning of summer, but it's usually not too hot, although this past installment was rather toasty. June should be one of those months with 31 days. (Could June and March trade one day with each other?)

Now the lightning bugs are out in full force, the mimosa trees are finishing their flowery spectacle, and we are rolling into early July, about to enter the doldrums of "high summer," when there's plenty of green out there.

True Southerners know how to tolerate heat, humidity, and bugs, at least for a while. Air conditioning has made it possible, after all, for us to put up with the hottest and buggiest of times. Of course, an old tradition in the South involved fleeing the Lowcountry for the mountains as soon as it got too hot.

Into the mountains! Cooler and cooler as we climb! To breathe again!

Once we get into the mountains, here is the perfect Mystery Plant to greet us. It can be a tall, deciduous shrub, sometimes attaining small tree size. Its leaves are generally dark green and smoothish, without many hairs. Sometimes the plants seem to be covered with flowers, very conspicuous and showy.

Each flower is nearly 3" long, the corolla with a tubular base, flaring outward widely into five lobes. Occasionally, a yellow blotch will adorn one of the petals. Five long, pale stamens are inside, along with a dramatic style, white at the base, but very gradually becoming pink, and darkening toward the tip into a ruby-red stigma. And, these flowers are very sweetly fragrant. You might imagine that this plant is somehow related to our garden azaleas...and you would be right in thinking that. Our mysterious shrub is related to azaleas, and is placed in the plant family (Ericaceae) which includes blueberries, sourwood, mountain-laurel, heath, and heather, as well.

This particular species is restricted almost entirely to the mountains (or at least higher elevations) of the Appalachians, all the way from Pennsylvania through central Alabama. It seems most at home on damp soil, and is reasonably common along streams, especially waterfalls and wet, rocky (slippery!) places. I've seen it along the Cheat River in West Virginia, and scattered along the Blue Ridge from the Peaks of Otter to Asheville, and not too long ago on a hiking trail along the Horsepasture River in the Nantahala National Forest (North Carolina). On some of our Blue Ridge peaks, though, it may be found on open balds, fascinating habitats that seem to be naturally open, grassy areas.

Now I don't mind being a flat-lander, and I've grown accustomed to the heat and skeeters. But I'm looking forward to a short summer trip soon, and this plant is definitely a mountaineer I'll enjoy seeing.

Answer: "Smooth azalea," "Sweet azalea," Rhododendron arborescens]

John Nelson is the curator of the Herbarium at the University of South Carolina, in the Department of Biological Sciences. As a public service, the Herbarium offers free plant identifications. For more information, visit www.herbarium.org or call 803-777-8196.

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