■fiw V- /O # / SHORTIA NEWSLETTER OF THE WESTERN CAROLINA BOTANICAL CLUB SPRING 1988 MILLIE BLAHA, Editor From the PRESIDENT’S DESK - 2- Bill Verduin I call to your attention a paragraph from Pleasant River by Dale Rex Coleman: "The landscape is neither a fortuity nor a permanent fixture created by fiat. It is a stupendous master- piece sculptured from rock by blasting heat and icy cold, cut by the wind, molded by rain, and adorned with life. It is an unfinished masterpiece. The elements, having labored at it for millions of years, anticipate uninterrupted toil for millions more to come. It is the greatest of all privileges to behold their creation and to watch them at their work. Go out and look!" Yes, go out and look. That is just what the Botany Club will be doing all spring, summer, and fall. Look at the trees but enjoy the beauty of the forest, too. Look at the flowers but raise your eyes often to drink in the splendor of the hillside. Look at the stream as it hurries along polishing its rocks but enjoy, too, the beautiful music of flowing water. Come out often and look with us it's one of the privileges granted those who have eyes to see. Attention! Schedule changes Because of a snowstorm, the January 8 program was cancelled. It has been rescheduled. Please ADD this program to your Jan. -June 1988 Outing Schedule Mar. 14 "IN SEARCH OF ORCHIDS" (Charles Moore 884-9614) Not only has our speaker searched for orchids in Transylvania County, but he also has traveled to Alaska, the Yukon, Canada, the Great Lakes region, the West, the Midwest, and northern United States, exploring bogs and other habitats for these fascinating plants. His talk will be illustrated with color slides Community Meeting Room, First Federal Savings and Loan, 2:00 p.m. Please DELETE from your Jan. - June 1988 Outing Schedule the outing to Lake Jocassee on April 8, 1988. REPLACE it with this: Apr. 8 PEARSON’S WOODS (Millie Pearson --749-3171) *** One of our most popular Spring wild flower pilgrimages is to Pearson's Woods with Millie Pearson, our gracious hostess. Spectacular best describes the masses of trilliums and many other wild flowers along a 2-mile trail which includes a steep climb in one area. Lunch will be eaten beside a rushing stream. Meet at Southgate Mall at 9:00 a.m. Join others at Millie Pearsons at 9:30 a.m. Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from IMLS LG-70-15-0138-15 https://archive.org/details/shortianewslette1014west WESTERN CAROLINA BOTANICAL CLUB RECORDER'S REPORT for 1987 The Botanical Club scheduled 40 hikes this year with more than 680 attending, an average of 17 per hike. The Hardy Souls Hike and the Lake Jocassee trip were cancelled because of bad weather. The damage from the 1987 ice storm closed some trails, and we did some substituting during the early part of the season. We again had to cancel our trip to Big Butt and went to Bear Pen Gap instead, a happy choice. There were 10 indoor meetings, including our annual meeting. Over 380 attended the indoor meetings, an average of almost 40 per meeting. We had adequate turnouts at our three workdays, Millie Pearson's, Holmes Educational State Forest and the University Botanical Gardens in Asheville. Our three workshops drew 8 people per workshop. If you had gone on every hike this year you would have added 4,000 miles to your odometer. You would have had an overnight at Snowbird Lodge, at Franklin, at Cullowhee and at Cosby. The weather was kinder to us and we had many fine days for our outings. The Club continued its love affair with the Blue Ridge Parkway. We went East (North) with Miles Peelle in July, but mostly we found ourselves going west again and again. We found our way to Heintooga, Balsam Gap and Soco Gap. We began to identify plants by mile posts on the Parkway, and it soon became evident that the Botanical Club overlooks few overlooks. We found saxifrage on rock faces. We took short hikes off the parkway to see old stands of trees and displays of orange-fringed orchids. We searched the ditches for sundews. We found ladies' tresses and gentians where they had survived the Parkway's mowers . We welcomed Bill Verduin back, and he and Ben Tullar did more than their share in leading us on some special trips. We appreciated the hospitality at Foothills Equestrian Nature Center (FENCE) where Ivan Kuster took us in March and again in September. Asa Gray called botany "the amiable science". I think of that when I think of our group. Our leaders try, whenever possible, to scout hikes for us, and so to be able to point out to us the unusual and uncommon plants we see. We can bear in mind the broad definition of botany as the study of the parts and functions of plants, and their habitats as well as their classification. A birder member in the Club once described herself as not a "lister". As recorder I must be a lister and it is useful to the serious beginner. But remembering always Asa Gray's "amiable science" we are free to learn at whatever speed and depth we want and still can enjoy the variety of programs offered by the Club. It is easy to get discouraged when faced with the names of all the plants in this rich botanical area. Learning the identity of plants by name is a challenge, and is rewarding. But for those of you who get discouraged, I share with you a few heretical lines I wrote in my field book the first year I became a member of the Botanical Club. The lines are attributed to Shakespeare and go as follows: "Those who give a name to every fixed star ^ Have no more profit from their shining nights Than those that walk and know not what they are". —ANNE ULINSKI i 0£je//c w tv cod { To discover that the familiar name of a plant has been changed is very frustrating , until one discovers that the culprit behind these changes is the plant taxonomist . The plant taxonomist is a specialist who studies plant identification (what the plant is called), classifica- tion (what its relationship is to other plants), and nomenclature (what a plant's correct name is, based on the name's history according to a specific code of nomenclature). In May 1987 some of us were introduced to a plant's name change. On a Botany Club outing to the Jore Mountain area in Macon County, Dr. Dan Pittillo, our leader, had taken us to an area where the rare yellowwood tree grows. Unfortunately this member of the Pea Family was not in bloom. It was a disappointment not to see its clusters of showy, fragrant .white butter- fly-like flowers. Most of us knew the scientific name of this tree as Cladastris lutea, the name by which it had been known for about 100 years. When Dr. Pittillo referred to it as Cladastris kentukea, some of us had quizzical expressions on our faces. He promptly explained that the name had been changed. An older name had surface and had priority. Yellowwood was first described in 1813 by Andre Michaux's son, Francois, who called it Virgilia lutea. He believed it to be similar to other members of the African genus Virgilia . In 1825, Rafinesque separated the North American plants from the genus Virgilia and described them as a new genus which he named Cladastris . He rejected Michaux's epithet of lutea and gave it another name. Ultimately the name Cladastris lutea was accepted and commonly used. In 1971, a botanist named Rudd was studying the legume family and found a publi- cation that preceded Michaux's 1813 publication by two years. Georges Louis Marie Dumont de Courset (1746-1824) named it Sophora kentukea. And thus the specific epithet kentukea is the earliest known for this tree. It is now known as Cladastris kentukea (Dum-Cour) Rudd, indicating that Dumont de Courset was the first person to describe it and Rudd later was responsible for the new name. Plant names, because they are assigned by man, are artificial, so one need not be too disturbed when they are changed. More important than being able to recite the name of a plant is knowing something about its living attributes, its characteristics and its preferred habitat. Yellowwood Flowering twig, x i/A. "MILLIE BLAHA - . HOW ABOUT SOME LATE WINTER &etntnUr Vol . X , No . 4 S H 0 R T I A Winter 1988 - 89 A quarterly publication of the Western Carolina Botanical Club Editor: Dorothy Rathmann Distribution: Frances Gadd Please submit contributions for next issue by February 15, 1989 to: Dorothy Rathmann, Editor Carolina Village Box 23 Hendersonville, NC 28739 Dues: $8.00 per year (includes all members of immediate family). Make check payable to Western Carolina Botanical Club and send to John Saby, Treasurer, 8 Tamarac Terrace, Hendersonville, NC 28739. pc* pfrTANiCA*' SHORTIA c/o Frances Gadd 218 Pheasant Run Hendersonville, NC 28739 FIRST CLASS