Elk Knob in Bloom

Last Gray's lily of the season (6/26/2024)

Seed capsules (7/6/2024)

Same plant (2023)

 The big show on Elk Knob is over. 

 Flame azalea bloomed June 6-20 and Gray's lilies June 8-26. These quickly dried up, and by the end of the month, pollinators were grazing on the drooping leftovers.

 Turk's Cap lilies were in bloom through July, along with coneflowers and turtleheads and the relentless purple Angelica. 

 Elk Knob is one of the few places in the world where you can see Gray's lily. They are named for Harvard botanist Asa Gray, who happened to be on Roan Mountain when they bloomed in 1840. 

 My experience is that if you're a day early or a day late, you may miss them. These perennials are also ephemerals. 

 For the past three years, I've taken an informal census of the Gray's lilies on Elk Knob. This year, I found 17 plants and 18 blossoms (plus more than a dozen lilies that never blossomed). Last year, 10 plants and 17 blossoms. In 2022, I did not count plants but found 12 blossoms. These are just plants I find along the trail, plus a couple of off-trail locations that I know. I'm confident there are many more elsewhere on the mountain, but this sample gives me an indication that the population on Elk Knob is stable.

 As perennials, Gray's lilies can be found in the same place year after year. Also, wildlife scatter the seed to new locations. We evidently lost one lily, which had six blossoms last year but did not reappear in 2024. It was in the midst of the blighted beech forest, so it might have been crushed by a falling tree or nibbled by a deer. 

 Almost all these lilies were above 5,000 feet in elevation. There is one outlier at 4,600 feet, but it is too close to the trail and lost its bud to a broken stem for the second year in a row.

June 2024 was unusually cool and dry, though we were in the clouds on 6/17.

Seed capsule from the above flower (7/23/2024, later mowed down by trail workers)

 Elk Knob is a mile-high mountain in Watauga County, North Carolina, just 15 miles from my doorstep in Boone. It's been a state park since 2003, and for several years in my 50s I volunteered to help build the hiking trail to the summit. I try to hike at least once a month, often after work on summer evenings.

 The masthead of this blog shows the sun rising over Elk Knob, with a photo taken from adjacent Snake Mountain.  

 In 2024, my 70th year, my goal is to "hike my age"—70 trips to the summit. As of July 14, I count 34 ascents. If I can sustain 10 hikes per month through October, I'll easily make my goal.

 This puts me on the trail several times a week, so to keep the trips from getting tedious, I given them a purpose—this wildflower journal. I'm no authority on wildflowers, just learning on the way. I'll welcome your comments and corrections

 There's plenty of material up there for a wildflower Bible, with Jack in the pulpit, lilies bowing their heads in prayer, monkshood, Angelica, Solomon's Seal, and Hellebores.

Flame azalea starts orange, but tardy blossoms are often yellow. (6/15/2024)

These flame azalea would bloom on the first day of summer but withered within three days. (6/20/2024)

Turk's Cap Lily (7/12/2024), mile 0.2. A larger patch of these lilies is just past milepost 1.5.

Pink turtleheads (7/27/2024, just past milepost 1.25)

Marsh Woundwort (7/14/2024, milepost 1.8)

Purple Angelica (7/12/2024). These are the dominant summer plants on Elk Knob and attract yellow jackets. I know that bees can be intoxicated by the nectar of Filmy Angelica. The bees I've encountered on Elk Knob have never been aggressive.

Bee Balm (7/6/2024, milepost 1.1, off trail). This is the first time I've ever seen bee balm on the upper reaches of Elk Knob. I discovered another path below the trail at 0.85 miles. I'm told that it is more common near the backcountry campground, which is in the same drainage as these plants.

Oswego Tea, a fragrant variety of Bee Balm (7/14/2024)

Red Elderberry (6/24/2024, 0.75 miles)

Vasevine (Clematis Viorna), 6/26/2024, 1.85 miles.

Spiderwort (6/24/2024).

Dead beech trees (5/2024). Elk Knob seems to be "going bald," as a blight has killed the gnarled beech trees on the summit. I'm concerned about how the azaleas and Gray's lilies will adapt. If you're looking for a science project, here's your prompt.

Jack in the Pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum) (6/10/2024, 0.3 miles). These mostly disappeared by late June.

Jack in the Pulpit berries (7/27/2024)

Jack in the Pulpit (5/26/2024) I found dozens of stalks in late May, including two on the summit that were later mowed down by maintenance workers. These seem to grow in pairs. The name comes straight from the Church of England, where medieval preachers used a roofed pulpit to improve acoustics. 

Wake Robin Trillium (trillium erectum) first appeared 5/1/2024, mostly on the north side of the mountain. By mid-May it was prevalent along the trail almost to the summit. Blossoms faded by end of May.

Blueberry blossoms as the trail approaches the summit (5/13/2024)
 

Lesser purple-fringed wild orchid (platanthera psychodes) (6/08/2024, 0.35 miles). Two weeks later, someone cut this flower, but there are several others along the summit trail. 

 

Sedges form a distinctive understory in these Amphibolite mountains like Elk Knob are distinguished by their grassy understories. My app (PictureThis) says that this lawn, 0.65 miles up the trail, is Pennsylvania sedge. "Sedges have edges, rushes are round, Grasses have nodes all the way to the ground." Parts of Elk Knob were once pasture. Like any lawn, Elk Knob also has dandelions. 

White Trillium (trillium grandiflorum) were first seen May 1 on the lower half-mile of the trail. By mid-May, there was another patch blooming near the summit (5/19/2024)

White Trillium fades into pink (5/26/2024)

Wild Geranium (geranium maculatum) appeared near the summit in mid-May about the same time the White Trillium were turning pink (5/26/2024).

Spring Beauties (Claytonia virginica) are trustworthy prophets of spring. By April 15, they covered the understory up to the 1.25 mile marker, only to disappear when the sedges emerged in May.

Viburnum (Wayfaring Tree, or Hobblebush) also ushers in the seasons, as it is one of the first blossoms of spring and also the first to show fall colors. In the spring, it will remind flatlanders of dogwood, which I have never seen on Elk Knob. (4/15/2024)

Viburnum berries (7/27/2024)

In August of 2023, this hobblebush rolled out the red carpet to welcome me back to the mountain, five days after I had two stents placed in my heart. After a few cold nights in June 2024, I found one already changing to fall colors.

Trout lilies (Erythronium americanum) are among the first spring wildflowers on Elk Knob (4/15/2024). They are in the same family (Liliaceae) as the jewels of Elk Knob: Gray's lily (Lilium grayi) and Turk's Cap lily (Lilium michauxii), In those taxonomic names, you may recognize tributes to pioneering botanists Andre Michaux (1746-1802) and Asa Gray (1810-1888). 

5/2/2024: Trout lilies cascade down a hillside

Smooth Solomon's Seal. The flowers dangle like berries under the stem (5/30/2024). On Elk Knob, these are vastly outnumbered by the "False Solomon's Seal."

False Solomon's Seal (5/19/2024) blooms at the end of the stalk.

False Solomon's Seal fruit (8/2023)

Bluebead lily (7/12/2024, milepost 1.0)

This Birch has fascinated me since 2007, when we worked around its stout roots to build the trail. It's 0.9 miles up the trail. When I meet kids here, I ask them a riddle: "Is the rock holding up the tree, or is the tree holding up the rock?" Gravity is winning, and the rock (and roots) are now tilted enough defy the capillary action that raises the sap. Earlier this spring I feared that this tree might have died of thirst. On May 19, I was so glad to see leaves sprouting (5/19/2024)

2023

 Gray's lily usually appears in June around the summit, though I have seen it earlier around the 0.6-mile mark. Because it is so rare, I keep an informal census. This isn't comprehensive--just the ones I can find along the trail and bush-whacking the summit bald.  

 2023: 17 blossoms.

 2022: 12 blossoms. 

 PLEASE: Do not pick or try to transplant. These rare plants grow only on a few mile-high peaks in North Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia. 

2023: Note the ghostly beech trees in the background. This prolific plant did not sprout in 2024.

Turk's Cap lilies (Lilium superbum) (7/30/2023)

What ESPN missed in Boone

 When ESPN brought their #GameDay show to Boone on September 17, 2022, we were suddenly the center of the college football solar system. 

 Welcome to the Town of Boone, as the signs say. We are incorporated as a town (kinda like Clemson) because we're not comfortable being a city. (Gameday was in Clemson Oct. 1, so ESPN may need an alternate version of their theme song: "We're coming ... to your cit-ay!") We are home to 20,000 students and roughly the same number of townies and snowbirds. We ain't as quaint as we used to be, but we're more than a craft brewery with a vexxing football team.

 Clemson has Howard's Rock. Boone has Howards Knob. Clemson had Chase Brice. Now, we do.

 As ESPN booked flights to Boone (hmmmm!), GameDay commissioned an introductory video essay by Wright Thompson, a sportswriter who graduated from the Missouri J-school a generation after me. It went like this:

 Welcome to Boone, North Carolina.
 Welcome to a post-card, hippy, outdoorsy, football town.
 Welcome to, "This town is nuts." My kind of place—I don't ever want to leave town, "I need a miracle" ... mountain-bike, parking lot, French-bread pizza town.
 Eric Church Town, Class of 2000.
 Welcome to Giant-Slayer Town. Cold-beer, thin-air, Gameday town. Cameron Peoples' town.
 Ask Michigan about the real victors? [Clip from 2007: "The Mountaineers of Appalachian State have just beaten the Michigan Wolverines!"]
 Ask the Aggies? [Clip from last week: "Appalachian State has done it again!"]
 Have you ever seen the Blue Ridge Mountains, boy? And the Chattahoochee? And the honeysuckle blue?"
 Welcome to Boone, North Carolina. Upset town, USA.

 I don't know Wright Thompson. He was born the same year I enrolled at Mizzou. Wikipedia tells me that he grew up in Clarksdale, Mississippi (home of the Delta blues), was a sportswriter for the Kansas City Star and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Folks in Ireland criticized him for stereotyping Dublin in a story on fighter Conner McGregor. 

 He has a nice way with words, but in this case he demonstrates only a superficial acquaintance with the town of Boone (as opposed to Boone County, where we both went to college). 

 Fact-check: The Chattahoochee is a river in Georgia, far-far from Boone. Thompson may have been thinking of the Chattooga, based on the video clip of whitewater rafters, but that's another remote corner of North Carolina. The next-to-last paragraph is a verse from a Drivin' N' Cryin' song called Honeysuckle Blue. Jason Isbell once performed the song in Boone, but otherwise it doesn't speak for us.

 Here's how this Mizzou writer might have put it:

 Welcome to Boone, North Carolina, zip code 3333.
 Welcome to a town that's been center-stage before. Have you forgotten that we had our own Super Bowl commercial? We're the home of Foggy Pine Books: "Between the Baptist Church and the Boone Saloon." Thanks, Tom Hanks, Stephen Colbert, and Sam Elliott!*
 Did you assume we had an airport? You're not from around here, are you?
 Looking for a Home Depot, the sponsor of GameDay? Sorry, but you'll have to go off the mountain. Looking for a Pizza Hut, the official pie of GameDay? We lived without a hut for years, but we opened a new one just in time for GameDay. Nor do we have a Target, nor a steakhouse.
 We're glad we put in the four-lane highway a few years ago, so the GameDay bus could get here.
 Stop by the Chamber of Commerce. The director is the guy who brought you the call from the Big House. Moonlighting for ESPN3, he was also on the call for the Miracle on the Mountain II.
 You do remember the original Miracle on the Mountain, don't you? It involved the current Florida coach (who still seems confounded by two-point strategy), the lead singer for Needtobreathe (named for Bear Bryant), and a little overthinking by a Furman coach (who was raising a future Appalachian quarterback).
 We're not just a beer-swilling hippy town, boy. This is God's country. We're home to world-changing charities: Samaritan's Purse, World Medical Mission, and Wine to Water. GameDay actually had a campfire sound-byte from the co-founder of World Medical Mission, but they seemed not to know that his world is far bigger than football.
 The real miracle on the mountain is that about 200 million children worldwide have gotten Christmas gifts via Operation Christmas Child from right here in Boone.
 You do know the riddle of 3333, right? That’s supposedly the elevation at the Watauga County courthouse. The altitude of the field at Kidd Brewer Stadium is actually about 3,250, which gives us the highest football field in the east (except for Avery County High School, 3,760). We put up the 3,333 signs to intimidate our winded guests. Bobby Cremins, who used to coach basketball up here, once brought a team from Charleston to Boone and told his players not to worry about the thin air, since they were playing indoors!
 As you leave the mountain today, please choose and cut your own Christmas trees.
 If you call us App-Elation, mean it like this.

*Appalachian State also had a video of infamy back in 2005, back when Armanti Edwards was just a twinkle in our eye. He could have been a defensive back at South Carolina, but instead he chose a place that was HOT-HOT-HOT!

 Here's a list of Gameday locations since the show debuted in 1993 at South Bend, Indiana. On Oct. 8, Lawrence, Kansas, gets its long-awaited turn. Notable campuses that have never hosted GameDay: Cal, Illinois, Maryland, Rutgers, Duke, Virginia, and Syracuse. Back in 1869, Rutgers staged the very first college football game, but ESPN wasn't around then. Duke missed its chance in 1942, when the Rose Bowl was played in Durham.

The postman rings 100!

Tom Griffin carrying his RFD route

 Dec. 27, 2022, marks the 100th anniversary of my grandparents' wedding. Thomas Jackson Griffin and Macie Sherard were married Wednesday, Dec. 27, 1922, at the parsonage of the First Baptist Church in Anderson.
 He was 37 and she was 35. They were late to the courtship, because they were both busy taking care of elderly parents. They were married 29 years before he died of a heart attack.
 Tom and Macie met when he delivered mail to the office of Dr. J.O. Sanders, where she worked. Dr. Sanders delivered my mom on Sept. 8, 1925.
 Mom and Dad also had a Christmas wedding at First Baptist on Saturday, Dec. 26, 1953. Dr. Anne Young expected me to be born around Christmas 1954, but I tarried until Jan. 18, 1955. Mom and Dad were married 63 years before his death in 2017.

William Sherard was my
 third great grandfather

 I come from a long line of postmen. Macie's uncle, great-uncle, and great-grandfather were postmasters of the Moffettsville Post Office near Iva in southern Anderson County. Tom Griffin's dad, Pierce Butler Griffin, also served as the postmaster of the Crayton post office in the Craytonville community. Tom Griffin carried one of Anderson's early RFD routes in the Hopewell community north of Anderson.

 William Bratton, my fourth great-uncle, was postmaster at Brattonsville, S.C. His father, my fifth great-grandfather, Col. William Bratton, was a hero in the American Revolution. 

 Warren Harding was serving as the 29th president when Macie and Tom were married.

Best is the standard ... right?

 The old sportswriter in me erupted when I heard Dabo Swinney describing Clemson’s gritty but clumsy victory Saturday against Florida State as one of the top five of his career. 

 With greatest respect for what Dabo has done in Clemson: C’mon, man!  You're the one who always preaches, "The best is the standard."

 We can assume that the two “natties” vs. Alabama would be top-2 on Dabo's list. But those two plus Florida State would leave room for only two other victories in his Top Five.

 Off the top of my head, with a little help from Wikipedia, I came up with this list of Dabo's greatest wins, as ranked in order of consequence from my perspective. Which ones would you omit to make room for Florida State?

1. 2018: 44-16 vs. #2 Alabama. Bougie like natty #2.
   
2. 2016: 35-31 vs. #1 Alabama. The night DeShaun Watson declared, "Let's be legendary."
3. 2008: 31-14 vs. South Carolina. Without this victory, the Dabo era probably ends with “interim.”
4. 2016: 31-0 vs. #3 Ohio State. Can’t spell Ohio without a zero."First team from the state of South Carolina to win a BCS game," Dabo reminded us.
   
5. 2012: 25-24 vs. #8 LSU. Anything is possible, even fourth-and-16. Thanks, Tajh Boyd and Nuk Hopkins.
6. 2013: 36-35 vs. #5 Georgia. Ask a Clemson fan—would you rather beat Georgia or South Carolina?
   
7. 2014: 34-17 vs. South Carolina. Exorcising five years of Steve Spurrier.
   
8. 2018: 30-3 vs. #3 Notre Dame in a playoff semifinal.
9. 2011: 38-10 vs. Virginia Tech, the first ACC championship in 20 years. That one was probably wiped from the memory banks by what happened in the Orange Bowl against West Virginia.
10. 2011: 38-24 vs. Auburn, dethroning the national champs and atoning for the "snap infraction" of 2010.
11. 2015: 37-17 vs.Oklahoma. Two straight wins vs. a benchmark program.
12. 2016: 56-7 vs. South Carolina.
13. 2020: 34-10 vs. Notre Dame, sixth straight ACC championship.

 Sorry, but I don't see a place on that list for Saturday against Florida State. This is a team that lost to the other Gamecocks (Jacksonville State, whose quarterback Zerrick Cooper, is a former Dabo recruit. He's had a nice season, but he threw a couple of pick-sixes Saturday against Central Arkansas). 

 The one possible explanation for Dabo's comment is that there was something going on behind the scenes that we don't know. Was there an ultimatum to win or fire somebody? That doesn't sound like Clemson, and as feebly as the team has played, it's not like the season is lost. This isn't Florida. 

 By the way, give Dabo and Clemson credit for a nice tribute to Bobby Bowden in Death Valley, including a long-deserved welcome home for Tommy Bowden. I watched every punt with anticipation that somebody might run an honorary puntrooskie.

 Speaking of Tommy Bowden, I'm reminded of the upcoming home game Nov. 20 against undefeated Wake Forest. It was a Thursday night loss to Wake Forest in 2008 that doomed Bowden's tenure at Clemson and opened the door for Dabo. And it was a home loss to Wake in 1993 that sent the dominoes tumbling for Ken Hatfield. 

 In fact, the last four Clemson coaches who lost to Wake Forest have not survived. Dabo, to his credit, is 12-0 against Wake Forest. 

Once Upon a Time, Fake News Was Fun

 Friends know how nostalgic I am about newspapers and how sorry I am about what has become of them. I am a proud heir of the Fourth Estate, an ink-stained wretch who had a hand in writing the first draft of history in my corner of South Carolina.

 Back then, we could trust newspaper editors to filter out "fake news."

Asheville Citizen, March 27, 1911

  Nowadays, I get my newspaper fix from newspapers.com. It's not cheap, but it's no more expensive than an online subscription to my old newspaper. There's almost no local news in The Greenville News anymore—so either way, I'm missing last night's scores, the obituaries, and any news I can use. If I'm going to get outdated news either way, give me the classic version.

 Newspapers.com is an electronic archive of newspapers going back more than a century. It's way deeper than Google. Newspapers.com was a fountain of information when I was publishing The Stoneman Gazette, and was a rich resource for my centennial history on LeConte Lodge.

 And it occasionally reminds me of days when newspapering was fun. Such as this "Prize Lie of the Year" recently posted by my friend Terry Harmon.

 Sounds like a mountain yarn spun by by our beloved Ray Hicks. As much as I enjoy tales of old Boone, what caught my eye was the reference to the Mendacity Medal. Mendacity is one of my favorite words. Call someone mendacious, and there's a chance they might feel flattered. So what if they don't know that mendacity is lying? 

 I had never heard of the Mendacity Medal, so I looked it up on newspapers.com. The award was given tongue-in-cheek by the North Carolina Press Association to recognize creative fiction that was published as news. Evidently, it was intended to be presented over 10 years, but the only references I could find were in 1910 and 1911. The award medal, appropriately, included a "lyre."

 The Boone story was evidently written in response to the original Mendacity Medal winner: 

Durham Herald-Sun, June 11, 1910

 Here's another nominee from the Oxford (N.C.) Banner, July 29, 1911:

 I was glad to see the name Grit. When I was a kid, I remember ads for a national newspaper called Grit, "America's Greatest Family Newspaper," which thrived on far-fetched stories. I have to presume the Siler City Grit was born of the same spirit. Though that paper died long before Andy Griffith made Siler City famous, it was ahead of its time in terms of reporting fake news.

 The Siler City Grit won the 1911 medal for this story, which somehow defeated the Boone windpipes story. Evidently, the Grit editor, Isaac London, was the son of the Chatham Record editor.

 The Grit editor deserves bonus points for the clever line about pearls before swine (Matthew 7:6), though he missed an opportunity to invoke honey-glazed ham:

  Here's a 1910 clipping from The Greensboro Record. Who knows if the second item about the Wilkesboro man is mendacious? I think it is healthy to encourage readers to be skeptical. 

 These dubious stories appeared on the same page. The first of these might even have been a wink at the competing paper, the Greensboro Sun: