Learning to love wildflowers

Jim Parham’s wonderful new book Wildflower Walks & Hikes left me thinking about how simple pleasures can help define your quality of life.

My grandmother maintained a yard of flowers, mostly bulbs. She had a simple house with uneven floors and windows that were covered with ice on the inside in the coldest of winters. She had no money, she lived simply, but boy, did she have flowers.

Nana subscribed to the well-learned policy of digging bulbs to spread them, rather than driving to the garden store and buying a wheel barrow full.

So every year I’d be out in the yard with her, identifying spots where bulbs had gotten crowded. I would dig them up, separate them and then take the extras for planting elsewhere.

Nana was in her 80s and frail, bent over and walking with a cane. She’d go out in the yard with me, talking and enjoying the weather, because we wouldn’t be addressing this task if the weather wasn’t good.

We would slowly stroll, and she would use her walking stick to point out where to dig to find crowded bulbs. I would go get a metal chair from the screened porch and position it so she could sit nearby, watching and talking.

These memories are so warm and joyful: a boy and his grandmother. Talking, sitting, digging, spreading the possibility of color around the yard beneath the oak trees as passersby slowed and waved.

On a slight rise behind her house Nana cared for a single rose planted decades before, apparently by her husband. His name was Ernest but the rose in question was called “Poppins’ rose” because that is what older grandchildren had called him. 

I never knew Poppins; he died years before I was born. No matter whether he was a talker or not, educated or not, loving or not; I felt a warmth in my heart because right there was a rose that represented him.

Throughout the mountains you could—and probably still can—find ramshackle homes surrounded in the spring by an explosion of flowers. Old-time residents might not be able to afford paint for the exterior of the house, or gutters, or gravel for the driveway, but they knew they could grow flowers and bring an eruption of beauty to their property.

My mother had a special place just below our house for a Jack in the Pulpit.

This forest flower has many names, according to Parham’s book: Arisaema triphyllum, Indian turnip, pepper turnip, bog onion, brown dragon, Indian cherries, Indian cradle, marsh turnip, plant-of-peace.

My mother pampered her Jack in the Pulpit, but I often got the sense that where it grew was not necessarily the best side of the hill, or had appropriately acidic soil, or offered enough—or too much—moisture.

Nonetheless she visited it frequently, sweeping away leaf fall so her Jack stood tall.

Mom also appreciated seeing sassafras in her woods, and would repeatedly comment about how the Cherokee made tea by steeping bark of the plant.

I don’t think we ever made sassafras tea, but it apparently was good to know that you can.

My mother also enjoyed having azalea bushes along the driveway, as well as a variety of flowers in a bed off the front of her porch. She had her special rose area, which was also the cemetery for family pets. I loved thinking beloved pets fertilized the rose buds, much like a red fern in a classic American novel.

My upbringing gave me an appreciation for wildflowers, and when I had several hemlock trees removed after they were blighted I made certain to ensure none were trampled.

The south-facing slope was home to several stands of Jack in the Pulpit, so I carefully dug them up and moved them.

When she was a child, my wife’s parents gave her a copy of the classic Wildflowers of North Carolina book. She has forever used it as her reference guide as we’ve sought out wildflowers in the mountains.

We have since bought a newer edition of the classic, which has many more color photographs and is designed to carry along while on forest explorations.

Parham’s new book appears to be a valuable library addition if you enjoy seeking out beautiful mountain wildflowers. It details numerous hikes on which you can see these native flowers in their natural habitat.

I think Nana would have enjoyed it. I think my mother would have, as well.

I know Susan and I will.

—Jonathan Austin