Gaywings

Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, USA, Wednesday, 12 May 2023

Fringed Polygala or Gaywings (Polygala paucifolia), Dolly Sods Wilderness, Wednesday, 12 May 2023

A tiny discovery.

We were at Dolly Sods because of this year’s predicted Shad bloom (as we have done in previous years), but as usual we stopped at various points along Forest Road 75 to look at the low-growing flowers on the forest floor. I was looking at a patch of wild strawberries (Fragaria virginiana) when this odd little orchid-like flower, shaped a bit like an airplane, caught my eye. They’re obviously not airplanes, and they’re also not orchids. They’re classified as Milkworts (Polygalaceae), and they are clearly an easily missed treasure of the forest.

Gaywings (Polygala paucifolia).

Bleeding Hearts

Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, USA, Wednesday, 19 April 2023

Bleeding Hearts (Dicentra eximia), Dolly Sods Wilderness, 19 April 2023

Early blooms, I think. They were scattered around the forest floor, most of them not yet in bloom.

More on Dolly Sods

Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, USA, Sunday, 19 July 2022

Blueberries (Vaccinium sp.) on Dolly Sods

Low-bush Blueberries (Vaccinium sp.) on Dolly Sods. We picked quite a few that day, some in the overlook area near Red Creek Campground.

Overlooking the Allegheny Front

Another Ghost Tree

Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, USA, 12 May 2022

Nearly a year ago we went to Dolly Sods to see the shadbloom (see here), and besides the bloom we found this unidentified dead tree in a small clearing in the midst of a conifer forest.

To be honest, this wasn’t totally unexpected. I’d been seeing reports of some spectacular, mystical tree on Dolly Sods for a while, so while I wasn’t looking for it specifically it didn’t really surprise me when I noticed it.

Anyway, the weather was cool and damp, and the top of Dolly Sods seemed to be stuck in the cloud. And so the light that fell into the clearing and on the tree was just right to give the area a haunted glow.

I don’t know what type of tree it is.

Shadbloom

Dolly Sods Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia, USA, 12 May 2022

Some ten months ago now we drove to Dolly Sods because we’d been told that the spring shadbloom would be spectacular. It was — the blossoms gleamed white amid the otherwise wintery mountain vista — and we hope this year’s bloom will be just as good.

Shad refers to Amelanchier, a genus that includes about 20 species of small deciduous trees and shrubs. They’re also known commonly as shadbush, shadwood, shadblow, serviceberry or sarvisberry or sarvis, juneberry, saskatoon, sugarplum, wild-plum, or chuckley pear, and probably a lot of other odd names that I’ve never heard.

We have three small Amelanchier canadensis in our back yard, but they are far too young and small to put on any kind of a show. I guess I just have to wait for them to grow, encouragement for a long life, I suppose. But in the meantime I can pop off to the mountains in the spring to see the big show.