Volunteer Unknowns

We could see this patch of white from the front porch, at some distance towards the back narrows of the pasture.

On our next walk-about, we made a point to veer that way through the knee-high wet grass to see if it was just a patch of white fleabane or chrysanthemums we are used to seeing in the pasture and along its edges.

But no. It is an aster, to be sure-with yellow-maturing to gold disk flowers and un-notched ray flowers, a hairy stem, dark tipped bracts. There should be enough features to set it apart from its next of kin.

I just have to overcome inertia and go upstairs and find my Newcombes Guide or, if I get really eager, my Vascular Flora of the Carolinas authored by Radford, Ahles, and Bell.

We’ve just returned from a drive across the width of North Carolina and I see the work of Dr. Bell on many of the otherwise featureless roadsides.

His work though the NC Botanical Gardens is responsible for these roadside bloomeries that persist after he is gone.

I spent two summers at Mt Lake Biological station during summers of 1977 and 1978 when C Ritchey Bell was on faculty there. My favorite memory is the time a long-bearded fellow student offered that, during some free time on afternoon, we should go fetch Dr. Bell to go mushroom hunting in the mountains around the Station–which we did.

We found a nice mess of HoneyCaps, as I recall. We went back to Dr. Bell’s cabin, cooked them up, and against warnings I am sure must be somewhere, mixed ‘srhooms on Saltines and Jack Daniels and had a memorable evening.

Funny how a single image can call up so much story, isn’t it? Sorry ’bout that, dear reader.