Field Guide
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.
Topic
Natural History
Plants, animals, forests, and the living communities of the mountains.
Field Guide
Bog Turtle
North America's smallest turtle, living in open mountain bogs and seepage meadows that are disappearing faster than they form.
Field Guide
Carolina Hemlock
The southern Appalachian hemlock of dry rock, with needles that stick out all around the twig.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
Coosa Valley Prairies
Small openings of tallgrass prairie on cracking clay near Cave Spring, Georgia, a long way from the Midwest.
Field Guide
Cove Forest
The tall mixed hardwood forest of sheltered, moist hollows, which Blue Ridge sources call cove hardwood and plateau sources call mixed mesophytic.
Field Guide
Doghobble
The streamside evergreen that names this publication.
Field Guide
Fraser Fir
The she-balsam of the highest summits, a fir that grows wild only in the Southern Appalachians.
Field Guide
Fraser Magnolia
The mountain magnolia, with big leaves eared at the base and creamy flowers up to eight inches across in spring.
Field Guide
Grassy Balds
Treeless, grass-covered summits in a region that should, by every rule of climate, be forested to the top.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
Mountain Golden Heather
A low, needle-leaved shrub of windswept quartzite ledges in the Linville Gorge country, and nowhere else on earth.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
Southern Appalachian Brook Trout
The region's only native trout, now largely confined to the coldest headwaters.
Field Guide
Spray Cliffs
Wet rock beside the escarpment's waterfalls, where mosses, liverworts and filmy ferns grow far from their tropical relatives.
Field Guide
Spruce-Fir Forest
Red spruce and Fraser fir on the highest summits, in a climate as cold as Canada's boreal forest and wetter.
Field Guide
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.
Field Guide
Table Mountain Pine
A stocky pine of hot, rocky ridges whose spiny cones can hang shut on the tree for years.