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By Any Other Name
Written By: Lance Hardin - Highlands-Cashiers Land Trust | Issue: July 2023
Diminutive and relentlessly charming, Shortia has played hide and seek on the Plateau for centuries.
Residents and visitors in the Highlands and Cashiers area are often awed afresh by the region’s stunning biodiversity, which began attracting early naturalists over two centuries ago.
Botanist and explorer William Bartram journeyed through the “Cowe” valley (now Macon County) in May 1775. A prolific writer with strong descriptive powers, Bartram identified more than 200 species; one day’s inventory included American Burnet, Cow Parsnip, Cucumber Tree, Mountain Laurel, Black Locust, Carolina Allspice, Flaming Azalea, Rhododendron, Appalachian Mock Orange, varieties of Trillium, Lady Slippers, Dragon’s Mouth, Bee Orchid, Bloodroot, Bellwort, Mayflower, Carolina Silverbell, American Snowbell, and Honeysuckle, among others. Bartram reveled in this wildflower bounty, “these roving beauties” with “perfumed heads – their blooming tufts bespangled with pearly and crystalline dewdrops.” Fortuitously for Bartram (and us), his foray into our region was perfectly timed to catch wildflowers at their annual zenith.
French-born botanist André Michaux ventured into our area in 1787 and 1788. His travels took him along the Whitewater River, past Silver Run Falls, and through Whiteside Cove, from where he climbed up through Wildcat Gap to the Highlands Plateau. Like Bartram, he was enchanted by our area’s flora and collected many specimens and seeds.
His most noteworthy find, however, was “a new plant with denticulated leaves spreading over the mountainside a little way from the river.” A specimen made its way to a Paris museum, where famed botanist Dr. Asa Gray saw it and determined to locate it once again in the wild, initiating a decades-long obsession. In 1885 and 1886, nearly 100 years after its initial discovery in our area, Professor Sargent of the Harvard Arboretum and Frank Boynton of Highlands finally located patches of the elusive plant south of Sapphire.
Named Shortia galacifolia by Dr. Gray, it is more known as the dainty Oconee Bell.
So, congratulations, for centuries botanists have labored to come here and experience the diverse and incredible natural environment just outside your door!
Follow their lead, get outside, and make some personal discoveries! For more information on ways to do that, go to www.hicashlt.org.
