Bells that ring in my heart

A love affair with Shortia

Dear readers, I know a lot of you live far from my little perch in the Blue Ridge Mountains of the Carolinas. So you might not be acquainted with Oconee Bells.

Please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to this exquisite plant. It’s just now beginning to bloom, as it does every year during these first sweet breathless breaths of spring. Tiny fringed white bells pop out of the leaf litter, nodding shyly on the ends of slender pink stalks. Each bloom is as delicate as gold leaf. The slightest breeze stirs them into an ecstatic dance.

When I see them, my heart dances too.

Shortia galacifolia grows in only a handful of places on Earth, and this is one of them. Every March, when the Bells bloom along with other spring ephemerals, wildflower fans come from hundreds of miles around to visit them in their natural habitat. To see them up close, you have to get down on your hands and knees. They’re that small.

Oconee Bells are native to these mountains, as I am. They’re named after the South Carolina county where I was born. The Cherokee word aequonee means “beside the water.” Very appropriate, because that’s exactly where Oconee Bells flourish: beside the water. This is a finicky plant, refusing to grow unless it has running water nearby. It thrives in the humid, cool atmosphere of mountain cove forests, where you’ll find it sprawling over creek banks like an evergreen carpet dotted with white stars in springtime.

I’ve been in love with Oconee Bells—madly in love, crazy in love—ever since I discovered our shared heritage. I’ve lived many places in my life, yearning for a home base. (I wrote about that search here.) When I returned to these mountains several years ago, Oconee Bells somehow came to symbolize my homecoming. They welcomed me back to the place where I belong.

Once I learned about the dramatic history of this rare plant, I was hooked even more. Discovered, lost, and rediscovered over the course of a hundred years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Shortia was dubbed the “Holy Grail” of American botany. After one explorer found it growing in a lush valley surrounded by low mountains, no one else could find it again for nearly a century.

You’d love the story. It’s epic. I’m trying to turn it into a novel. If I can pull off such a mammoth undertaking, it will be the literary work of my lifetime. My homage to this endangered plant I hold so dear.

Why do I say endangered? Because Oconee Bells have an extremely narrow habitat range and limited genetic diversity. Which makes them frighteningly vulnerable to the vagaries of human development.

In the 1970s, Duke Power created a massive hydroelectric project in northwest South Carolina. The emerald green valley where Oconee Bells flourished, their ideal habitat, was flooded to create a lake 300 feet deep. Progress came to these mountains, yes. It also wiped out as much as 85 percent of Oconee Bells’ native range.

Where Oconee Bells once flourished (Archival photo of Jocassee Valley, before being flooded to form a lake)

My land, with its shady forest and a stream wandering past the base of a mountain, is a mini-version of that lost valley. It has the same topography, the same climate, the exact same elevation. We’re only 12 miles from Shortia’s original home.

That’s how I knew we had to plant Oconee Bells here.

This is where my friend Jon Fritz comes in. Jon is a plantsman extraordinaire and owner of Bluestem Landscape Design. Jon knows everything there is to know about the flora native to these mountains. He apprenticed with an expert named Joe Townsend to learn the secrets of growing Oconee Bells from seed. (In the wild, the plant reproduces by stolons that creep across the ground.)

For five years, Jon nurtured a tray of Shortia seedlings in his shade house. He was waiting for the right place to plant them. Meanwhile, I was waiting for a dream to come true—the dream of growing my own Oconee Bells, helping this precious species rebound.

One fine day last winter, Jon showed up at my place with eight sleepy plantlets nestled in a screen tray. They weren’t particularly showy, but I understood why. During cold months Shortia hibernates under the leaf litter, some of its round green leaves turning purplish-bronze.

We headed down to the creek. I probably don’t need to tell you, my heart was singing the whole way.

Jon chose where we would plant them, taking care to space the Bells apart so that hungry deer might not nibble all of them. His mattock bit easily into the loamy soil of the stream bank.

As we lowered each young plant into the ground, I whispered blessings of welcome. They were so small, we used our fingertips to press the dirt in around them.

It’s now a little more than a year later. I am the grateful steward of a botanical treasure. I take my job seriously, checking on our Shortia plants nearly every day. I want to make sure they’re safe. I want them to take root and thrive. I want these precious native wildflowers to flourish here in their new home. Which, I am thrilled to report, they have.

Here is this spring’s first bloom. It popped up a few days ago. I’m so happy to share it with you.

Are you falling in love, too?