Jul 4
hydrangea
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hydrangea
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Falls of Hills Creek Scenic Area, a short detour off the Highland Scenic Highway in the Monongahela National Forest. The scenic area includes three beautiful waterfalls on Hills Creek, the lowest of which (top photo) is the second highest waterfall in West Virginia.
From top: the lower falls, which is 63 feet high; the middle falls, which is 45 feet high; great rhododendron (Rhododendron maximum) in bloom; a ravine hillside overspilling with ferns, hairy wood mint (Blephilia hirsuta), and wild hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens); a gorgeous hairy wood mint, whose stacked, fragrant flower garlands lead to its other common name - hairy pagoda plant.
Hydrangea arborescens — smooth hydrangea a.k.a. wild hydrangea
Wild smooth hydrangea, Hydrangea arborescens.
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A whole hillside of Hydrangea arborescens - one of our native hydrangeas, with green fruit. Sometimes these will have the large, showy sterile flowers around the edges, although I didn’t see any, and those persist after the fertile flowers are gone. This can look quite striking in the winter:
That looks more hydrangea-y, right? The cultivated varieties are bred to have more of the sterile flowers, and fewer (or none) of the fertile ones. Pretty, but not so useful to the plant.
“A rainy day is the perfect time for a walk in the woods.”
— Rachel Carson
The photos above were taken along the Virgin Hemlock Trail at Coopers Rock State Forest following a prolonged rain. The old forest's dripping green intensity, charged by early summer's electric, stormy atmosphere, reminds us that nothing really dies here; all matter is reabsorbed and repurposed and made new again. You can smell it in the wet moss, decaying wood, and humus. The forest is immortal and sentient and relentlessly renewing itself.
From top: Little Laurel Run rushing through the old hemlock forest like a gem-filled artery; partrideberry (Mitchella repens), a trailing, evergreen vine whose fragrant white flowers come in pairs; a tall, handsome whorled loosestrife (Lysimachia quadrifolia) in bloom at the forest's edge; white avens (Geum canadense), a shade-tolerant perennial of forest margins; swamp dewberry (Rubus hispidus), a bristly-stemmed relative of the blackberry; wild hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens), also known as smooth hydrangea, a rapidly-colonizing woodland shrub with high wildlife value; running clubmoss (Lycopodium clavatum), an attractive, spore-bearing vascular plant; crown-tipped coral (Artomyces pyxidatus), an elegant, edible coral fungus that grows on decaying wood; and eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), the forest's majestic benefactor, which can grow to over 100 feet high and live to be more than five hundred years old.
Wild hydrangea (Hydrangea arborescens), also known as smooth hydrangea, is a deciduous shrub of Appalachia’s shady hillsides, ravines, rock outcrops, bluffs, and stream banks. An aggressively-spreading perennial, the plant forms lovely mounding colonies - often in cascading tiers on moist hillsides - via horizontally-branching stolons or runners. In late spring, wild hydrangea produces large, flat clusters of white flowers, consisting mostly of small, fertile flowers that attract hordes of pollinators. Larger, sterile flowers occasionally grow around the periphery of the clusters. Commercial cultivars of this shapely shrub are bred to grow only sterile flowers, which makes them quite beautiful to look at but useless to wildlife as a nectar source. The plant’s leaves are large, ovate and finely-toothed around the edges; they grow in opposite pairs along the stem. The above photos were taken along the Mon River Trail.