Hidden in Plain Sight

When I signed up to spend a day searching for a mountain camellia in the wild, I didn’t even know much about what a mountain camellia was. It was a flower, it was supposed to be rare, and it had some inexplicable air of mystery about it—that’s where my knowledge ended.

As outdoors editor for a regional newspaper here in Western North Carolina, it’s my job to round up announcements about hikes, walks and other goings-on in the mountains around me, and every year, without fail, the mountain camellia appears in my inbox. The announcements are always similar, touting hike leader Jack Johnston as a renowned expert on the flower, someone who has spent decades propagating and studying this rare and finicky species. 

A niche hobby, to be sure. 

But I was curious. So this time, when the announcement about Jack Johnson and his mountain camellias came across my desk, I bit. Shortly thereafter I found myself carpooling with a bunch of strangers who had also signed up for the excursion, offered as a class from Alarka Expeditions, to the remote Needmore Game Lands, a 5,000-acre swath of forest that straddles the Little Tennessee River and North Carolina’s Swain and Macon counties. Somewhere out there, we were told, the mountain camellia was blooming. They were going to be good blooms, too, Johnston promised. In the U.S., the magnolia has the largest flower of any shrub—but the mountain camellia has the second largest, he said.

Before we could go searching, though, a botany lesson was required. What I learned there made me wonder that there were any camellias around at all. The mountain camellia is a delicate plant, Johnston said. It needs good drainage, but it can’t stand getting dry. It needs nutrients, but the roots can’t handle fertilizer. Germination can take up to six years, flowers 10. It’s found in eight Southern Appalachian states, but only in small, isolated pockets of each. 

Johnston himself had a hard time reconciling the fact that the mountain camellia has somehow found a way to persist in the wild, while its close cousin, the much less fussy Franklinia alatamaha, has not. Renowned botanist William Bartram discovered the Franklinia in a 2-acre area along the banks of Southeastern Georgia’s Altamaha River in 1765, and he harvested some seeds to take back home to Philadelphia. Those seeds gave rise to the plethora of Franklinia plants now grown in cultivation, but the tree hasn’t been found in the wild since 1803.

“Franklinia, which is now extinct in the wild, does fantastic here,” Johnston told the class. “I can grow that stuff all day long. It’s the easiest to grow and it’s extinct.”

With that, we set out to find the incredibly delicate yet remarkably non-extinct camellia. It required travel along a decidedly unbeaten path, starting with a splash across a clear little creek that ran down to the Little Tennessee, then an uphill scramble to an old logging road that led through a cutover forest of young trees out to the river. A long, rickety swinging bridge was our path to the other side. It was state-maintained, and purportedly safe, but that didn’t stop me from feeling a little like the donkey in Shrek as I made my wavering way to the opposite bank. 

A narrow, overgrown trail met us there, running alongside the river through patches of forest and even larger patches of brambles that pulled threads from my pants as I passed by. I paused for a moment to photograph some flower or another that took advantage of the sunlit space to bloom, and when I stood up again my fellow hikers were nearly invisible amid the weeds. I caught up just in time to see Johnston veer suddenly—and without explanation—off the barely-there path and straight uphill through a thicket of rhododendron. 

Then he scooped up a handful of whiteness, and I understood. These were mountain camellia flowers, fallen from the branches above. I was surprised. I guess I had expected the shrubs to be smaller, squatter, the flowers growing close to the ground for all to see. I would later learn that is the case when there’s more sun available—Alarka’s operators Brent and Angela Martin have an astounding 19 camellias in their yard, which they showed the group when the hike was over. But in the forest, these fallen flowers were all that were there for us to see, the branches blooming feet above our heads, where they could reach the sun.

They were beautiful, though—large, with white petals that contrasted sharply against dark purple filaments topped with bright yellow anthers. I picked one up and held it in my hand for a long time. I do a lot of hiking, a lot of exploring around the mountains of Western North Carolina, and I’d never encountered a flower like that before. Had they been hidden in plain sight all this time? Or was this just a rare encounter with an even rarer plant?

Both things could be true. It’s safe to say I would have walked right by the camellia had Johnston not led me to it. But the plant is an uncommon sight even for those who know where to look. 

It’s there, though, in little pockets of forest that provide just the right mix of shade, moisture and acidity. And that’s what I love about these mountains. Even when you think you know them, they’re full of secrets, white blooms of beauty just waiting to be discovered.