The Appalachian Mountains.
Spending time among these forested peaks makes one feel as if time is standing still.
They are a stark and constant reminder of just how small and insignificant our time on
this planet really is.
It's hard to grasp just how old these mountains really are.
They're among some of the oldest on Earth.
They're the collective result of some immense geological processes.
Some 330 million years ago, Africa slammed into North America, causing massive upheaval
of the crust.
This was also the birth of the supercontinent Pangaea.
The resulting upheaval produced a mountain chain similar in size to the present day Himalayas.
The Appalachians have been shaping life in this region of North America ever since.
On average, Southern Appalachia receives over 100 inches of rainfall every year.
The Appalachian Temperate Rainforest is second only to the Pacific Northwest in terms of
rainfall in North America.
All of this has led to an explosion of biodiversity.
I'm Matt from InDefensive Plants, and I would like to introduce you to some of its botanical
riches.
There are few floral displays as superb as that of Lillium Superbum, the turkscap lily.
Look at this.
It's so stunning.
It looks just like something out of Asia, except that it's a native plant, and that
you can't go wrong with.
The only effect of pollinators of this plant are the large swallowtailed butterflies.
As they visit the flower searching for nectar, their wings brush up against these large,
dangling anthers, picking up and depositing pollen as they go.
If you look around today, you'll find a lot of butterflies flying around with pollen stains
all over their wings.
Other insects visit the flowers, but they largely are just coming for pollen, like these bees
that are flitting around here, or the nectar inside.
Small stuff really doesn't set seed for this plant.
This one has a friend in the swallowtailed butterflies.
We're going to be seeing a lot more of these today, I promise.
Now despite the fact that we're in a temperate rainforest, Southern Appalachia still has
its dry plant communities, and the best place to see them are usually these road cuts along
the Blue Ridge Parkway, like we are here today.
And they are spectacular because they're dry, no single species really gets the upper hand.
So you get an interesting mix of different kinds of flowering plants, different kinds
of non-vascular species, and even some shrubs here and there.
We've got things like firepinks, Rebeccaias, loose strifes, a few penstemon and flocks mixed
in, and even up to my left here, I can see that the Indian paintbrush is still blooming
even during this time of the year.
Below us are these different tufts of reindeer lichen and different ferns.
It is just a wonderful assemblage of different families and different kinds of plants.
The shrubs next to me are different members of the Heath family, like blueberries and
mountain laurel.
I highly recommend seeking out these communities because they're some of the most productive
and spectacular to see with the eyes.
Welcome to Lone Bald Overlook, elevation of 5,635 feet.
Check it out.
I'm up here hanging out with one in North America's native honeysuckles, the Northern
Bush Honeysuckle.
Now, as the common name suggests, this is a species that's far more common farther north
than here.
But since we're above 5,000 feet and it's much cooler, this species is thriving.
And it is hardy.
It can grow in some of the driest ridge tops in full sun without any effect.
And what's more, these flowers are a boon for pollinators.
This patch right here, I can literally hear it humming with bumblebees.
It is great, awesome nectar species and one that I think really should be used in native
gardens a lot more often than it already is.
This is a wonderful find, especially in such profusion.
Now, here's something a lot of people don't expect to see in the mountains.
We're looking at a carnivorous plant.
It's the round leaf sundew, Dracera rotundifolia, and it is thriving in this spray-cliff community
here.
The water comes down, obviously, sleeping out of the groundwater from higher up, and it
just coats these granitic rocks.
And everywhere you get a crack or a patch of moss growing, you can find these beautiful
little carnivorous plants with their leaves all expanded waiting to catch insects.
In fact, some of them are getting ready to flower here, but that's not the only interesting
thing we're seeing.
Right to my right here, we see Buckleys St. John's Wharf.
It is an endemic to Southern Appalachia.
You will find this growing nowhere else in the world.
Same goes for this, the cliff saxophrage.
It also grows nowhere else in the world but Southern Appalachia, and it is an amazing
plant that's really well adapted to these cliff-like communities.
It can handle totally saturated conditions, and with this hairy, prostrate, succulent leaves,
it can also handle really dry situations.
These are some of the most unique communities you're going to find in the mountains, and
they're really worth taking the time to observe.
Believe it or not, this orange spaghetti stuff in front of me is a plant.
It produces no leaves, no roots, and no chlorophyll.
It is a true parasite, and it goes by the common name of daughter.
Now, there's a lot of different species, but the point remains that they live their entire
lives by tapping into the vascular tissues of their hosts and sucking all of their water
and nutrient needs from them.
Believe it or not, this plant is related to the morning glories.
Research has shown that these plants can actually detect the volatile chemicals given off by
other plant species.
In other words, they're sniffing out potential hosts.
Once more, by attaching tendrils initially, they can taste whether or not the host plant
is worth attacking.
Now, before we get struck by lightning, we're going to get out of here, but this plant is
one worth paying attention to.
The heath family has done some really weird things in these mountains, and here's a prime
example of that.
This is called pinesap, and if you get down and smell it, kind of to me, it smells like
smoky, spicy honey.
It's an awesome little parasitic plant, so again, no leaves, no chlorophyll, although
it does have roots, albeit very, very specialized ones.
Now, this isn't a direct parasite on the roots of trees.
It's kind of indirect, which means it's going through a fungi channel.
This plant right here parasitizes mycorrhizal fungi.
It produces specialized roots that attract the fungi to make an associate with, kind
of like they do with photosynthetic organisms, although it doesn't pay it back in carbohydrates.
Instead, it causes the fungi to form a specialized structure within its root cells, and then
it cuts it off and digest it.
In essence, it's digesting fungi.
It's pretty cool.
And there's a small group in these mountains, at least, of parasitic heaths that live in
much the same way as pinesap.
Now, there's two different versions of this plant.
I don't know if they're actually splitting them out into distinct species, but in the
spring, you'll see plants that are a little bit more reddish-pink in here.
And in the late summer, kind of like we're at now, these yellowish ones are produced.
It's a really neat one that you should definitely keep your eye out for.
They're often found in the shade because they don't have to photosynthesize, so you have
to look a little bit harder to track these down.
But those are some of my favorite plants.
And not too far from here, I think I see another member of parasitic heaths.
Oh, come on, let's go look at that one.
It's hard not to love the ghostly pallor of the Indian pipe.
So this is another member of the heath family that's reverted to a parasitic lifestyle.
Again, parasitizing fungi that are hooked up to the tree networks.
Now this plant also doesn't produce any chlorophyll, and instead, it looks like a nice ivory smoking
pipe.
Once this plant is fertilized, these drooping flowers become erect, they lose their petals,
and the seed pod swells up, producing thousands of dust-like seeds.
In any hopes, they'll find another spot ripe for germination where the microasal community
is strong.
Again, these ones are harder to miss because of how bright they are.
If you see a little flash of white underneath the shaded understory of a rhododendron, go
look at it.
It's probably one of these plants.
Awesome find.
Anyone that's paid attention to indefensive plants for long enough knows that I love orchids,
and right here is one of my favorite species to encounter in eastern forests.
It's the Downey Rattlesnake Plantain, and it gets that name because its little seed pods
after the flowers have been fertilized kind of look like the rattle of a rattlesnake's
tail.
Now this is one of the most shade tolerant of our northern orchid species, and its leaf
veins are super colorful.
It gets these kind of electric shock-looking patterns on the leaves.
They grow in these clonal little clusters, budding off new rosettes as they go, and every
once in a while they get enough energy to flower.
Now this is also one of the few terrestrial orchid species that can readily self-pollinate,
so all it takes is one seed to grow into a new population provided it finds the right
conditions.
These are wonderful little species, really tolerant of acidic soils, and super heartwarming
to find them growing along the trailside, especially in the shaded understory of a thick
rotted dendron forest like this.
Another excellent find today.
Now here is an awesome orchid that so few people ever get a chance to see.
Now that's not necessarily because it's a rare orchid, but because of just how unassuming
it is in overall appearance.
This is the green adder's mouth orchid, and it is in full bloom right now.
Close detail will reveal that each flower is indeed an orchid flower, but its lifestyle
is just so unique compared to most of the other larger showier species.
It produces the single leaf most of its life, but when it does have enough energy, it'll
throw up this wonderful flowering spike full of these tiny green flowers.
It's incredible and so exciting, especially if you have a hand lens to get down and truly
appreciate it.
This is one of those plant species that really makes you work to enjoy it, and that is really
what I like about these plants.
I'm serious when I say that the Heath family is doing amazing things in these mountains.
Here is a photosynthetic cousin of the parasitic heaths we saw earlier.
This one's the spotted winter green, or pipsisua sometimes it's called, and it's got these
wonderful little recurved petals around one of the most unique flowers that you're going
to see in the floor around here.
Now the leaves are this wonderful striped vein coloration, and it's really tolerant
of some shade, and it really likes these acidic soils.
It's funny because it's growing here underneath some of its shrubbier cousins, like the Rose
Bay rhododendrons.
It's an awesome find, and one really worth getting down and taking a whiff of.
It's got a great odor to it.
I enjoy this plant a whole heck of a lot, and it's not as common up north where I'm from,
but does quite well here as you can see.
Now this right here might be one of the most exciting botanical finds you're going to have
in eastern North America.
This is the American climbing fern, and it's really not all that common to encounter.
Its wetland habitats are readily gobbled up and drained for things like farming and
housing developments, and with it goes all the suitable habitat for this species.
Now believe it or not, these are not the individual fronds.
These are nothing more than the individual leaflets or pinules.
The entire vining structure itself is one complete frond, and this thing can climb as
high as 15 feet, making each frond some of the largest fronds you're going to find in
any fern here in North America.
At the tip of each branchlet, you'll get these small leaflets or pinules that produce the
spore bearing structures, and it really likes to hang out in these acidic wet habitats.
So keep your eye out, but be gentle with this species.
It's super delicate, and it does not transplant well, so don't think this is something you
can dig up and take to your own backyard.
It's simply too unique and too precious to remove from the wild.
They need all the individuals that they can get.
I'm so excited to see this species, and it's doing really well around here.
If you look at the surrounding vegetation, it's climbing up a lot of the different trees
and hanging out in this wonderful little mountain wetland.
Such a great species, and a wonderful find to bring to you guys today.
I am so excited.
Swamp azalea, one of the most aromatic of the azaleas.
Now this group is also a heath, and the azaleas are kind of like a deciduous rhododendron,
and of course they are spectacular when they're in bloom.
Now you'll notice the long anthers and stigma on these flowers.
Like the lilies we saw before, these flowers require large winged butterflies for pollination.
They're the only species large enough to actually contact the anthers and the stigma with their
wings.
It's a really unique form of pollination.
Now this is a swamp azalea, as you can see.
It's growing really near this stream, wonderful little tannic waterfall in the background.
And this specimen in particular is wonderful.
It's doing really well right here.
It's super happy in this beautiful white sandy habitat, and we're really lucky to see
it in full bloom.
I adore this group of plants.
All of them are super colorful, and they do really well in these mountains.
So as you can tell, the heath family, from those tiny parasitic little herbs to these
large shrubs, such a wonderful group of plants.
The Appalachian Mountains are known for the waterfalls, but aside from the splendid areas
that we've seen, they're also home to a unique plant community.
This area is where we call a spray cliff community, and it survives because the clay coming off
of the waterfall keeps it constantly moist, and it's a sheltered micro climate which protects
these regions from deep freezes.
That means they're home to a really cool subset of plant communities, a lot of different kinds
of wildfights, such as rivers and mosses, and even things like ferns.
But underneath this waterfall in particular is one of the most unique denizens of the
Southern Appalachian waterfalls.
So come on, let's go again.
This tiny green thumb growing along this shelf here, and on the ceiling, is the gamutophyte
of a fern.
The fern is tropical, so you'd find it in places like South America.
It runs through the genus Viteria, which is the sew screen fern.
Here in Appalachia, it exists always on an asexual gamutophyte stage, where it grows
tiny little oceans that break off called genuels, and those go into new colonies.
There's a wider debate on why this thing grows here, and why it's great for North America,
and the best hypothesis so far is what was established here about 64 million years ago
in this region was largely tropical.
And since things have cooled down since then, this thing is able to persist in this very
sheltered microclimate, where it can live safe and not experience the extreme temperature
that would cure its cousins.
This is really special, it's only found in a few waterfowl areas and is great for communities,
and it's simply uniquely Appalachian.
Awesome find, and it exists because this beautiful place has been protected.
Well, we've summited yet another mountain, and we've found ourselves in one of these
wonderful rocky outcrop communities.
Conditions are really harsh here for plants.
It's dry, there's not a lot of soil, and the sun can be done right punishing.
Few families have adapted better to these conditions, though, than the heaths.
And if you look around us, you can see things like blueberries, heathers, different kinds
of rhododendrons, a few azaleas, and even prostrate shrubs like bearberry.
But none of these guys would be here if it wasn't for a tiny little plant related to the mosses.
Now let's go see if we can find one of those right now.
Now this plant right here is the real rock star of these rocky outcrop communities.
This is the twisted-hair spike moss, but it's not a true moss.
It's actually more closely related to ferns.
It's a spike moss, a member of the genus Salagenella.
And it excels in these tiny little granitic bowls, wherever it can kind of get a little bit of a root hold.
It'll grow into these large mats.
And what these mats do is capture things like soil and rainwater, and they hold on to those things
and allow other plants like these blueberries shrubs here and some even trees to gain a root hold.
They're essentially ecosystem engineers taking a bare granitic rock face and turning it into a habitable community
for a handful of plant species that are hardy enough to survive in these dry conditions.
Now they usually have a period in which they go dormant.
If it gets too dry, they can just slow down and stop all of their biological activity to the point where they think they were dead.
But as soon as the rains come, these things act like sponges, soaking it in and holding on to it for a lot longer
than it would be if it just were to fall on this bare granite.
This is fantastic, and here they're doing exceptionally well.
The thing to keep in mind, though, is they're very sensitive communities.
Too much trampling will just destroy them.
And if you look around, you can kind of see evidence of that here.
So remember, if you're up on these granitic balds, tread lightly. The plants really appreciate it.
So I'm going to get going before I fall off this mountain.
Thank you.
