Habitat
Coosa Valley Prairies
Small openings of tallgrass prairie on cracking clay near Cave Spring, Georgia, a long way from the Midwest.
The Field Guide
Subjects, not
destinations.
Grassy balds, cold-water fish, the shrubs of the creek bottoms, the rock under it all. Each entry gathers what is established about one subject and points to the regions where it can be found.
Habitats 5
Habitat
Cove Forest
The tall mixed hardwood forest of sheltered, moist hollows, which Blue Ridge sources call cove hardwood and plateau sources call mixed mesophytic.
Habitat
Grassy Balds
Treeless, grass-covered summits in a region that should, by every rule of climate, be forested to the top.
Habitat
Spray Cliffs
Wet rock beside the escarpment's waterfalls, where mosses, liverworts and filmy ferns grow far from their tropical relatives.
Habitat
Spruce-Fir Forest
Red spruce and Fraser fir on the highest summits, in a climate as cold as Canada's boreal forest and wetter.
Plants 9
Tsuga caroliniana
Carolina Hemlock
The southern Appalachian hemlock of dry rock, with needles that stick out all around the twig.
Rhododendron catawbiense
Catawba Rhododendron
The purple-flowered rhododendron of the high summits and heath balds, in full bloom on the Roan in the third week of June.
Leucothoe fontanesiana
Doghobble
The streamside evergreen that names this publication.
Abies fraseri
Fraser Fir
The she-balsam of the highest summits, a fir that grows wild only in the Southern Appalachians.
Magnolia fraseri
Fraser Magnolia
The mountain magnolia, with big leaves eared at the base and creamy flowers up to eight inches across in spring.
Lilium grayi
Gray's Lily
A red lily of the wet high balds, collected on the Roan by Asa Gray in 1840 and now falling fast to a leaf disease.
Hudsonia montana
Mountain Golden Heather
A low, needle-leaved shrub of windswept quartzite ledges in the Linville Gorge country, and nowhere else on earth.
Shortia galacifolia
Oconee Bells
A low evergreen of shaded stream banks on the Blue Ridge Escarpment, collected by Michaux in the 1780s and then lost to botany for almost a century.
Pinus pungens
Table Mountain Pine
A stocky pine of hot, rocky ridges whose spiny cones can hang shut on the tree for years.
Animals 8
Alasmidonta raveneliana
Appalachian Elktoe
A thin-shelled river mussel of the upper Tennessee basin in western North Carolina and the Nolichucky in Tennessee, whose larvae ride on sculpins.
Glyptemys muhlenbergii
Bog Turtle
North America's smallest turtle, living in open mountain bogs and seepage meadows that are disappearing faster than they form.
Glaucomys sabrinus coloratus
Carolina Northern Flying Squirrel
A gliding squirrel of the highest spruce, fir and northern hardwood forests, left behind on a handful of southern ranges when the ice age ended.
Aneides aeneus
Green Salamander
A flat, lichen-patterned salamander of narrow rock crevices, with a cut-off population on the Blue Ridge Escarpment that collapsed in the 1970s.
Falco peregrinus
Peregrine Falcon
The cliff falcon put back into the North Carolina mountains by release, and nesting on Whiteside Mountain each year from 1988 by the published count.
Plethodon jordani
Red-cheeked Salamander
A plain dark salamander with red cheeks that, by Tennessee's wildlife agency, lives inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park and nowhere else.
Salvelinus fontinalis
Southern Appalachian Brook Trout
The region's only native trout, now largely confined to the coldest headwaters.
Microhexura montivaga
Spruce-fir Moss Spider
One of the smallest mygalomorph spiders, living in damp moss under high-elevation fir and believed lost from Mount Mitchell, where it was first found.