More Flora of North Carolina

Before our North Carolina trip fades into the recesses of memory, I thought I'd post more photos. This set is about wild flowers and domestic crops we encountered. The next set will look at the marvelous garden plants we found in Blowing Rock. Everywhere we went, the roads and lanes were lined with mountain laurel and rhododendrons. I'm not an expert at telling them apart, but I think this may be the rosebay or "great" rhododendron. Or maybe not. But they are all spectacular.

This little composite, maybe some kind of black-eyed susan, was growing literally out of a rocky side of a mountain. The Blue Ridge is comprised of granite--not the reddish granite we know in Oklahoma or even in Colorado, but a slate gray granite that lurks beneath the very thin soils in these mountains.

At one scenic overlook masses of these cheerful yellow flowers were growing next to a thicket of blackberries. They appear to be St. John's Wort, which is an herb some people use for depression, so no wonder they looked cheery.


At another overlook on the Blue Ridge parkway we found these giant specimens of common milkweed. No butterflies yet, though.

As we moved into Yadkin County farm country in search of ancestral places, I saw my first field of tobacco growing. At first I though they were tall, skinny cabbages but then I looked at the big leaves and decided it had to be tobacco. What we noted was the sheer number of small tobacco fields in this area as farmers made the most use of the clearings in the forest--clearings that undoubtedly go back to the original settlers of the Carolinas in the 1700s.


Another common crop in this area was field corn, and we also saw many small wheat fields and even some alfalfa as well as lots of pasture. But we also saw a lot of this, which we think is some kind of cane, either molasses or sugar.

There were many fields like these, too. We aren't sure what this crop is. It grows low and is leafy like soybeans, but it doesn't quite look like soybeans. Since North Carolina is a major peanut growing state, we wondered if this was a peanut field. Still another crop we noted was Christmas trees. There were a lot of Christmas tree farms in the mountains and even in the Brushy Mountain area of Yadkin County. But all of the photos I tried to take of them are just a blur.
As we left the Yadkin area (then known as Surry County) where the McElyeas lived from 1787-1793 or so, as well as some of the Boones and Linvilles, we stopped at Belews Creek, now a lake, or a series of lakes, betweeb Stokes and Rockingham counties. Linville genealogy states that Thomas Linville, an ancestor of Norm's family, settled on Belews Creek for a time. We were able to find a boat ramp area to pull off and enjoy the shade and the sparkling water. This tree had littered the ground with these little black fruits. I think it is a wild black cherry.
After leaving Belews Creek, we ventured on into Caswell County, where the McElyeas acquired land grants as early as 1779. I'll elaborate on that more when I write another post.