Puzzling over ramps and quadrilliums in the moonshine
The revolving door of visiting scientists spun faster as the week went on.
Like one of those great blue herons that sometimes finds itself in the backyard lily pond, John Pickering landed Thursday night – and we wondered for a minute if the backyard was big enough. Pick is indeed a presence. The retired UGa professor is one of the early co-founders of the All Taxa Biological Inventory in the Great Smokies, and continues to reinvent (in every conversation!) the way we think about species inventories.
But Pick was conspicuously silent as he looked over the wildflower covered slopes at Paint Rock. You could tell this was a landscape big enough, dramatic enough, rich enough to accommodate his broad interests.
Was it Pick or Doug Booher, or maybe Justin Hart or Jonathan Kleinman from the University of Alabama’s Forest Dynamics program, who first spotted the quadrillium among the wildflowers at Callaway Sinks? We weren’t sure whether this four-parted aberration of the three-leafed trillium was just a lucky find, or a sign of good luck. Hart and Kleinman were enthusiastic about the potential of the forest plot, and pledged to work to bring their university’s resources to the effort in whatever way they could (Greg Starr and Christy Staudhammer, on sabbatical in France, also hope to involve their labs at University of Alabama).
All day long, and deep into the night, Pick and Finch argued over the identity of plants. Maarten van der Giessen and Colleen Keleher, who’ve pioneered the propagation and introduction of a number of unusual Alabama native plants, joined in the debate. They had come in that afternoon, and watching them see the bluebells for the first time was almost as moving as watching the bluebells. As the group picked apart what they’d seen after dinner, all were aided by the glow of an unusually fine distillation of Alabama moon light. The most intriguing plant problem of all was the identity of the flowerless clumps of lily-like leaves they’d seen near one of the sinks. Lily of the valley, Pick insisted. Wood lily, Beth Finch said. Not likely on either count, said Bill Finch, though he conceded it did look a bit like Convallariaceae. Maarten just sipped and smiled.
But it’s always wise to remember that a plant has more than looks. Each has a distinct chemical profile, with flavonoids that can often be tasted and smelled. The hills of Paint Rock are increasingly rich with odors and flavors as the spring develops – the minty brightness of the extremely rare limerock woodmint, the lemony spice of spicebush. And as Al Schotz eventually reminded us, the pungent odor of the legendary mountain garlic, ramps. There would have been a quick resolution to the argument if they had just bent down and nibbled on the distinguished and utterly distinguishing flavor of those mysterious leaves: sweet, rich, peppery, garlicky, with a hint of musk.
Here’s one last sip for ramps, that rare delicacy of the Paint Rock mountains, and a poem from Pick to memorialize the day:
Unusual beauty by John Pickering
Whether by the design
of a dyslexic dog
or the cruel dealings
of your developmental
mishandling of some new mutant means,
you, Quadrillium,
are a strange,
magnificent one.
You made it,
transformed
from the normal,
not a lucky Irish
four-leaf clover,
but a different
gentle giant
amongst your
Trillium clan,
a perfect
hopeful monster.
Goldschmidt
would wonder
at your form,
take pleasure,
grin with pride.
Four leaves,
four petals,
four sepals,
your new symmetry
displayed with glory.
But whatever for?
With whom will you mate?
Will you confuse the bees?
Will your plan
now be passed on
to a new genus,
or be scrambled back
into Trillium’s
hard-scrabble
conservative world,
or end in deathly solitude?
It’ll not be child’s play
to plug your square peg into a triangular world.
Win or lose,
without a goal,
without a thought,
at least the hard hand
of chance tried,
with some success,
to bring about
your three-plus-
one-more excess.
So wait hidden amongst
the profusion of beauty
in Calloway Sinks’
rich herbaceous layer,
entangled with
the tried and true.
Time will tell.
New forms will come,
others go.
As for yours,
we do not know.
A million years
from now,
things will be different,
as they’ll change
every tomorrow,
by small increments,
Nature’s
punctuated jokes,
and wicked asteroids.
We fear change,
try to keep
things the same,
expend much futility
on protecting
the status quo,
as we warm
and on we go.
Stop.
Let’s embrace
our future
as it comes.
Unless time ends,
change is the norm.
Beauty remains.
