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A VIRGINIA TRANSECT
Saturday, May 5th, dawned a soft, spring day amid the attractions of Colonial Williamsburg; but it was an unusual tourist who departed as early as he had arrived late, having spent time to enjoy no more than a bed and a passing view of the Palace Green in his hurry to catch as many as possible of the “honeysuckles” now blooming from here to Alabama and the mid west.
Of immediate concern was a planned sampling of the Virginia population of R. nudiflorum as it extends from Chesapeake Bay and the habitat of R. atlanticum to the Blue Ridge and the mountain home of the northern Roseshell Azalea, R. roseum. Variation in the Pinxterbloom Azalea had already posed some questions upon which a transect sampling of this kind was expected to shed light. Mass collections of R. nudiflorum were made in Gloucester County at the mouth of the Chesapeake and were continued across the state at intervals of approximately forty miles to the base of the Blue Ridge near Sperryville. From this point collections were made at each 500 ft. increase in elevation to the top of Pinnacle Peak in the Shenandoah National Park, permission to make such collections in the National Parks and Forests of the East having been obtained during the planning stages of the expedition. One of the exciting finds was at the start of this run, not far from Gloucester, Va., where among some cut-back Pinxterblooms near the roadside was one with perhaps the most remarkable coloring I saw anywhere. It was a large blossom in an intense plum purple with strong yellow blotch. There was only one flower head which I cut for a specimen and after measuring, recording and pressing the collection I returned to dig the plant for horticultural use. But unhappily my “find” was already a loss for the small plant could nowhere be found in the heavy brush. Henceforth I learned to dig first and cut afterward — or mark the plant!
At the western end of this transect, azaleas were only just coming into flower at low elevations of the Blue Ridge on this first visit on May 7th. On a return on May 21st, similar azaleas were
By this time (May 8th) R. alabamense, an azalea on which more information is needed, was surely coming into flower in Alabama. This, therefore, was the direction chosen after a brief stop for packing and mailing a good batch of specimens. This time the route kept to the western edge of Virginia and the Carolinas to secure one more coverage of R. nudiflorum and canescens before striking into Georgia where the latter species was now just about over. A call was made at the University of Georgia in Athens before heading north via Gainesville to the mountains of Lumpkin County for a check on Flame Azalea in the vicinity of Neel Gap. Early R. calendulaceum was full out in clear yellows to deep orange in Vogel State Park; it was also seen in exceptionally large flowered specimens in a small ravine just north of Gainesville. One or two of these had such brilliantly red color that one instinctively thought of the Oconee Azalea growing not too far south — and wondered whether this red in Georgia calendulaceum might have a rather special significance.
Again heading Southwest, it was on May 12th that the first true R. alabamense was found in full flower on the same hilltop in Marshall County of North Central Alabama where they had been seen in tight bud almost a month earlier. It was a real thrill to find this beautiful little white azalea with its dainty, thin-tubed flowers, yellow blotched and deliciously lemon scented. In its “best” individuals this azalea of the Alabama hills is also low growing and quite stoloniferous, it bears foliage which is often glaucous beneath — and as glandular as that of white flowered, low growing and stoloniferous R. atlanticum of coastal Delaware.
R. alabamense is obviously later flowering than R. canescens but the two have nevertheless hybridized to produce numerous intermediate individuals, intermediate in flowering time, often taller glowing than the true Alabama Azalea and varying in color from pure or yellow-blotched white to pinks, often without the deep pink tube of canescens proper. As it is followed through Cullman and Winston Counties the Alabama Azalea is found very much on the fairly dry hilltops and often on the eastern slopes where it seems tolerant of considerably more shade than R. canescens. Still white flowered but taller growing and in less “pure” form, it leaves the wooded hilltops to flow down sunny slopes to the Sipsey River in a mantle of May snow, as far as the eye can see. In such places, though without such pronounced fragrance, this is unquestionably the clearest and showiest of all white native azaleas.
Much as one would have liked to linger in this intriguing collecting area, the azaleas of the north were now calling much too loudly — calendulaceum, atlanticum north of Virginia, roseum and nudiflorum in Pennsylvania and New York, and so on; and none of them would wait. But information was still needed on the early azaleas of Tennessee. A route was consequently taken due north across the Tennessee River in the vicinity of Mussel Shoals, then east through southern Tennessee to the rising escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau. Other hills of northern Alabama were covered with the confusing R. canescens-alabamense complex mentioned earlier but good R. canescens was again found in the occasional sphagnum bogs which are scattered across the red soil land of southern Tennessee. These red soils are interspersed with limestone outcrops, and produce abundant black locust and red cedar, but few azaleas, except in these upland bogs. If these boggy areas are followed northeast from Fayetteville towards McMinnville, Tennessee, their azalea populations undergo a hesitant transition from R. canescens towards nudiflorum, settling down as relatively “pure” nudiflorum in the lowlands of Cumberland County. But the picture is quite different if we proceed directly east from Fayetteville and ascend the escarpment of the Cumberland Plateau. From below Sewanee the lower limestone strata are overlain with sand-stone and beyond this point azaleas are immediately abundant in a confused complex reminiscent of R. canescens, nudiflorum and alabamense — all thoroughly mixed together and varying in flower color from pure white to lavender, pale pink with pale tubes and pink with deep red tubes, many of the plants being highly stoloniferous.
On the southern edge of the Crab Orchard Mountains in Cumberland County a small detour was taken to explore Grassy Cove, a limestone sink of such proportions that farms and a small village are found on the level fertile floor of the huge hole sunken many hundreds of feet below the present level of the plateau. It has its own meandering river which flows northwest to disappear into a gaping cavern, and then changes its direction beneath a mountain whose lowest pass is 1000 ft. above the cove floor. It eventually reappears as the Sequatchie River flowing south towards Chattanooga. This was but one of so many marvels of scenery whose exploration and enjoyment was a constantly fascinating accompaniment to this quest for azaleas.
From Grassy Cove the route lay down the scenic Sequatchie Valley with side excursions to the plateau ridges on either side. On the upper sandstones azaleas remained abundant but on the limestone valley floor they occur only along occasional streamsides amid sandstone boulders washed from the upper slopes. It was repeatedly observed that azaleas grow in limestone areas, often abundantly, but detailed observation invariably reveals a situation like the above or a restriction to leached hilltop soils a few inches or a few feet in thickness as they cap the limestone ridges of Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee.
Leaving the Sequatchie Valley by striking east over the Walden Ridge the road descended into the Great Valley of the Tennessee River. It crossed the river and valley in a south-easterly direction and ascended the foothills of the southern Appalachian Mountains in the vicinity of the Cherokee National Forest. Apart from the appall-
[Description: Map of Skinner's itinerary through the Southern and mid-Atlantic area.]
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