Have you started making your 2006 gardening plans yet? It’s time. The garden catalogs started arriving in the mail several weeks ago: Johnny’s, Burpee’s, Pine Tree, Park’s, Shumway’s, Seeds of Change, etc. Folks have been studying these sorts of publications with pleasure for decades.

From time to time, I’ve contemplated compiling an anthology of travel writing from Western North Carolina. Such a volume would commence with the descriptions of the region compiled by the Moravian explorer Bishop Augustus Gottlieb Spangenberg in the early 1750s. Next would be William Bartram, who entered the western tip of the state in 1775 and published his famous Travels’ in 1791. In the 19th century, the accounts were numerous, with my favorite being In the Heart of the Alleghenies (1883) by William G. Zeigler and Ben S. Grosscup. And accounts were equally numerous during the next century. The difficulty would lie not in finding materials but in winnowing it all down to manageable proportions. One late 20th century writer that I’d insist on including would be the irascible Bill Bryson.

I’m fairly good at the identification of deciduous trees during the flowering and fruiting seasons, when one can observe bark, leaves, general growth habit, and flowers or fruit. I’m less adept during the winter months, when one can observe just bark, buds, and general growth habit.

Through the years, I’ve written at every opportunity about Aquilla (Quill) Rose — Civil War veteran, fiddle player, storyteller, moonshiner, and hunter — who was surely one of the more picturesque characters ever produced in the Smokies region. As an “original character,” he figured in Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders (1913), wherein Kephart described the people living along Hazel Creek and adjacent watersheds on the North Carolina side of the Smokies years before the park was founded in 1934.

Last week’s Back Then column described a deer hunt conducted by Quill Rose and his relatives and neighbors in the Great Smokies during the very early 1880s. My source for that event was the long-neglected and exceedingly rare book by Wilbur Zeigler and Ben Grosscup titled The Heart of the Alleghanies, or Western North Carolina (1883). At one point during the hunt, the authors asked if any of the participants had ever heard “of a stone being found in a deer.”

The war in the Smokies proved to be an intensely personal conflict. A curious conjunction of terrain, history, politics and culture bred in the Smokies ... a tragic division of loyalties and a brutal partisan conflict between supporters of secession and adherents of the Union. This was a war where men rode to the house of a neighbor they had known for many years, called him to his door, and shot him dead; where other men left homes and wives and children and trekked north in cold and rain to serve the army and the cause of their choice; and where still others served in poorly supplied, poorly equipped, nearly forgotten units to protect border and home. This was also a war in which families wanted nothing to do with either side and did everything they could to avoid involvement.

— Noel C. Fisher

Andre and Francois Michaux, and John Fraser, and soon to be followed by Thomas Nuttall, Asa Gray, and Moses Ashley Curtis, among others, John Lyon was among the intrepid plant collectors who first penetrated the mountains of Western North Carolina in the late 18th and early 20th centuries to catalogue the diverse and often unique flora that flourishes here. Of those mentioned in the preceding sentence, Lyons is perhaps the most neglected. An overview of his activities and of his death in Asheville (where his gravesite can still be located) is worthy of the attention of those interested in the region’s history in general and of its botanical aspects in particular.

Several weeks ago I was perusing the used bookstores in Asheville, where there are, somewhat surprisingly, at least four excellent establishments in the immediate downtown area. I always check out the sections featuring Western North Carolina and southern Appalachian titles. Aside from natural history, those are the major areas in which I’ve collected since the 1960s. In the Captain’s Bookshelf, an immaculate establishment, I spotted a little soft cover volume by Merrill Gilfillan titled Burnt House to Paw Paw: Appalachian Notes (West Stockbridge MA: Hard Press, Inc., 1997).

Have you ever been walking one of the wind-swept, sun-bitten, high-elevation rock outcrops in the Smokies region when you suddenly encountered a grove of strange, almost stunted looking pines with outlandish cones? As described by Donald C. Peattie in A Natural History of Trees (1950), each such pine will bear “huge cones that encircle the limbs in dense clusters, each knob of the cone armed with a horrendous hooked prickle, as if to guard the harsh fruit.”

A hunter was in the woods one day in winter when suddenly he saw a panther coming toward him and at once prepared to defend himself. The panther continued to approach, and the hunter was just about to shoot when the animal spoke.

I frequently hear from people who have spotted a mountain lion in Western North Carolina. Or at least they think that’s what they saw. I’d guess that about 95 percent of these sightings are of something else. But the other 5 percent seem to be pretty reliable.

I’ve never been to Asia, but ever since I was a youngster I have, from time to time, fantasized about doing so. For years, I read every adventure-travel book I could find about the region. And I still love happening upon new books about plant exploration in remote China, Tibet, and adjacent regions.

Whenever I’m conducting a native plant identification workshop, I try to note several regional plants — one each in the fern, shrub, and tree categories that participants might utilize effectively in an ornamental setting. I usually recommend cinnamon fern (Osmunda cinnamomea). Among small trees, the sweet pepperbush (Clethra acuminata) is my favorite. In the ornamental shrub category, the highland doghobble (Leucothoe fontanesiana) is certainly attractive and manageable. It has evocative associations with regards to both its common and scientific names.

The gardening season is upon us. Many gardeners here in the Smokies region are familiar with mole bean plant, also known as castor bean. The first name is derived from the fact the plants are often placed strategically at the corners of garden plots to discourage mole infiltrations. The bean-like seeds are also harvested and pushed down into mole runs to even more effectively eliminate the critters. The beautifully mottled seeds (which look like plump ticks to me) are also used locally to make necklaces, bracelets, and other craft items.

It seems to me that the general reputation of squirrels has declined within my own lifetime. I don’t recall hearing negative remarks about squirrels when I was growing up; indeed, most folks that I encountered back then seemed to hold them in rather high esteem. That’s no longer the case. It’s my guess that this turnabout took place because of the explosion in bird watching and feeding that has taken place in the last 30 or so years. Because squirrels are so adroit and persistent at raiding bird feeders, they are now quite often referred to as “tree rats.”

Hopefully, any encounter you have with a skunk will be a sighting, not a spraying. Neither my wife nor I have ever been sprayed by a polecat. But our dogs have — and they were pitiful creatures for days afterward.

In the natural world here in the Blue Ridge, there are certain visual images that rivet the attention of human beholders. One such is a timber rattlesnake suddenly encountered in the wild. That sight literally galvanizes the senses. The vibrating rattle-tipped tail sounds its uncanny almost-musical warning ... you freeze in mid-step, holding your breath but unaware that you are doing so ... the hair on the back of your neck stands on end ... the event remains imprinted in your memory bank.

Nothing is fairer, if as fair, as the first flower, the hepatica. I find I have never admired this little firstling half enough. When at the maturity of its charms, it is certainly the gem of the woods. What an individuality it has! No two clusters alike; all shades and sizes. A solitary blue-purple one fully expanded and rising over the brown leaves or the green moss, its cluster of minute anthers showing like a group of pale stars on its little firmament, is enough to arrest and hold the dullest eye.

— 19th century naturalist John Burroughs

Hepatica doesn’t display the earliest flowers that bloom each year. Those of bitter cress, henbit, purple dead nettle, bird’s-eye speedwell, and others appear in open moist sunny spots by late January or early February.

On one level, the natural history of a region consists of its terrain, habitats, plants, animals and how they interrelate. I also believe that no full understanding of the natural history of a region can be realized without coming to terms with its spiritual landscape. And when we consider the spiritual landscape of the Smokies region, we enter the realm of the ancient Cherokees.

The inter-related geologic and geographic heritage of the Blue Ridge Province is a complex but fascinating and rewarding subject to consider. As part of the introductory portion of my natural history workshops, I give a presentation called “Where Are We?” This allows me to touch upon the basics of the region’s geologic history as well as its present day geography — thereby laying the groundwork for subsequent field trips, during which methods for identifying the habitats, plants, and animals of the Blue Ridge are taught. That presentation goes something like this.

Last week, we reviewed current theories concerning the uplift of the Appalachian Mountains about 250 million years ago. And we also reviewed several theories about how high the Appalachians might have been when originally uplifted. Opinions among various authorities range from about 10,000 feet to 30,000 feet in elevation. This week, let’s take a closer look at the area of Appalachians in which we reside — the Southern Blue Ridge Province.

Two weeks ago, we reviewed current theories about the uplift of the Appalachian Mountains about 250 million years ago, as well as opinions about how high the Appalachians might have been when originally uplifted. Last week, we took a closer look at the geographic area of the Appalachians in which we reside — the Southern Blue Ridge Province, which extends from the Roanoke River water gap in southwestern Virginia to Mt. Oglethorpe in north Georgia, including the mountainous portions of east Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and northwestern South Carolina. This week’s final excerpt from my Blue Ridge Nature Journal text surveys the forest zones of that region.

Those who’ve participated in my natural history workshops know that that I’m not a very good source for information regarding edible plants. For the most part, I obtain vegetables at the grocery store or, in season, from our gardens. But there are exceptions.

Five turtle species reside in Western North Carolina: snapping, musk, and painted turtles are primarily found in streams, lakes, and ponds. The elusive and rare bog turtle is found in the habitat for which it’s named. The eastern box turtle will enter water during dry weather, but it’s largely terrestrial. For that reason, they are the species with which we have the most contact.

“The first large, successful American business run by a woman was said to be the Lydia E. Pinkham Medical Company, founded in 1875 by Lydia Estes Pinkham. Her main product was Lydia E. Pinkham’s Vegetable Compound, a patent medicine to treat “all those painful complaints and weaknesses so common to our best female population’ — in other words, menstrual pain. A main ingredient was black cohosh, but the concoction’s popularity might have been due to its nearly 20 percent alcohol content.”

— Jack Sanders, The Secrets of Wildflowers, (2003)

I’m no expert on regional linguistics, but through the years I’ve delighted in the dialect English still spoken here in the Smokies region. One sometimes hears or reads that it dates back to the Elizabethan era — that is, to the second half of the 16th century, when Shakespeare appeared on the literary scene — or even earlier.

“Jimson Weed is featured in a set of mystic books recently popular, Carlos Castaneda’s tales of mind expansion with the Mexican Indian shaman, Don Juan. Seeds of this common weed do indeed contain an hallucinogenic component, but, as is so often the case, the same chemical is also highly toxic, and the line between ‘a trip’ and ‘the final trip’ is a fine one and one which varies from one individual to another.”

— Jim Horton, The Summer Times (1979)

For me, those plants found here in the Smokies region that have verified practical human uses are, in the long run, of more interest than those with often overblown reputations for sacred or medicinal uses.

To myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are wholly bound up; and though I can look with happy admiration at the lowland flowers, and woods, and open skies, the happiness is tranquil and cold, like that of examining detached wildflowers in a conservatory, or reading a pleasant book; and if the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the declaration of its own flatness in all the detail of it ... it appears to me a prison, and I can not long endure it.

—John Ruskin, Modern Painters (1850)

Now is the perfect time to plan a mountain getaway excursion in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. One of the drives favored by many is the Blue Ridge Parkway to Balsam Mountain Campground Road and along Heintooga Ridge to the Round Bottom Road and Big Cove loop.

Scott Weidensaul, who lives in the mountains of Pennsylvania, is one of my favorite nature writers. His Mountains of the Heart: A Natural History of the Appalachians (Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing, 1994) has become one of the basic books about the natural history of the entire range of the Appalachians from Canada to Alabama. I’ve read most of Weidensaul’s books and was pleased to learn a few days ago that another has been published this year. I ordered a copy immediately via Amazon.com and await its arrival with anticipation.

From time to time, I like to reflect upon the plant hunters, botanists and horticulturalists that first entered these mountains during the late 18th century to survey, collect, and propagate the unsurpassed floral riches of the region.

The come back of the wild turkey in the southern mountains in recent years is one of the notable success stories in wildlife restoration. Thirty or so years ago, the sighting of a flock of wild turkeys was a rarity. Thanks to the combined efforts of the National Wild Turkey Federation and its local chapters, working in conjunction with federal and state wildlife agencies, such sightings — while always memorable — have become rather commonplace.

Do you have chinquapins growing on your property or in your vicinity? If so, you’re fortunate. For my money, “the little brother of the chestnut” (as it’s sometimes called) is one of our more graceful and interesting plants, especially during the late summer months when their fruits are ripening.

For me, the fall season is one of the most invigorating times to get out in the woods and prowl around. Many of the most beautiful wildflowers found in the Blue Ridge, especially the lobelias and gentians, are then coming into their own.

When writing about the natural world, I prefer to write about specific natural areas, plants, and animals here in the southern highlands. But from time to time I do like to pause and consider the philosophical aspects of comprehending the natural world. That’s when I invariably drag out my pet maxims: “Study the familiar,” “Go light,” “Don’t walk fast,” “Winter simplifies,” “Each trail has a life of its own,” and so on. A little bit of that sort of thing goes a long ways, so I air them out in public only when I can’t otherwise help myself.

Usually I sit on the front deck of our house for a while after getting home from work. Then, before dusk, I normally retire to the kitchen area to listen to the radio while eating supper. One evening last week, however, I remained on the deck watching the evening shadows seep down into the valley. Just before dark, I spotted what at first appeared to be a flock of birds circling over the creek and pasture.

An ancient Chinese philosopher once admonished his listeners to “Study the familiar!” Ancient Chinese philosophers were always admonishing people to do one thing or another. That was their job. Sometimes they even knew what they were talking about.